The Describer's Dictionary: A Treasury of Terms & Literary Quotations (14 page)

BOOK: The Describer's Dictionary: A Treasury of Terms & Literary Quotations
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seven-branched (Jewish) candelabrum
menorah
Hebrew symbol of life
c‘hai
Judaic hexagram (intersecting triangles)
Star of David, Magen of David, Shield of David
intersecting triangles one of which is light and one dark
Solomon’s seal
Buddhist symbol of the universe
yin-yang symbol, mandala
loop-topped cross (“peace symbol”)
ankh, crux ansata, key of life, key of the Nile, looped Tau
cross
three loops interlaced into a roughly triangular form
triquetra
Japanese (Shinto) shrine-gate symbol
torii
 
 
Besides the uncial writing on the convex side of the sherd [sic], at the top, painted in dull red on what had once been the lip of the amphora, was the cartouche already mentioned as appearing on the
scarabaeus,
which we had found in the casket.
H. RIDER HAGGARD,
She
 
 
The pilgrim was only a minor ingredient, as far as Francis was concerned, in a mandala design at whose center rested a relic of a saint.
WALTER M. MILLER, JR.,
A Canticle for Leibowitz
 
 
Under his eyes new cities grew. Mesa Verde, Aztec, Wupatki, Keet Seel. Each built and at the height of its prosperity abandoned until the people were gathered for their last great migration into the desert itself. Into four groups they divided themselves and in four directions they left, making a cross over the land until more hundreds of years passed and they wheeled right, forming a swastika. As this swastika wheeled, they broke into smaller groups, all returning but all moving in circles until the land was a giant’s pattern of moving swastikas and serpentines. A pueblo would live for an instant. Another group would find it and a spiral map of their predecessors’ path and then turn in the opposite direction, one eddy twisting from another, yet always directed to the finally permanent gathering at the center of the world.
MARTIN CRUZ SMITH,
Nightwing
 
 
All the gold, and stucco ornamentation, the cartouches of pan-pipes and tambourines, the masks of Comedy, and the upholstery in garnet plush were democratic stabs at palatial luxury; these were the palaces of the people.
ROBERTSON DAVIES,
World of Wonders
 
hooked cross
swastika, gammadion, fylfot, crux gammata
figure with three curved branches or legs from the same center (or a
three-armed swastika)
triskelion, triskele, triskelis
five interlocking circles (three above two)
Olympic symbol
flame-shaped symbol
flammulation
almond-shaped object or ornament
mandorla
five-pointed star
pentacle, pentagram, pentalpha
diamond-shaped scale or plate
mascle
triangular or wedge-shaped symbol
delta
moon (first or last quarter) or sickle shape
crescent
three-pronged spear associated with the god of the sea
trident
L-shape
gamma
V or upside-down-V emblem
chevron
coiled snake on a winged staff (medical symbol)
caduceus, kerykeion
human skull (as a symbol of mortality)
death‘s-head, memento mori
skull and crossbones (pirate or poison symbol)
Jolly Roger
iris symbol (royal emblem of France)
fleur-de-lis
rose-like ornament
rosette, cockade (when worn as an ornament)
 
 
He wore a green robe with gold patterns: tridents, crescents, and triangles. The sleeves, rolled back, bared his forearms, which were hairless and as yellow as old ivory. His beard, freshly washed, looked silky. Above his beard, his cheeks were plump as a baby’s. The robe had an attached hood, which framed his face and peaked as stiffly as a wizard’s conical cap.
DAVID BLACK,
Minds
 
 
He examined the hilt. It was black, beautifully enamelled, and within a circle near the top was a small white swastika.
IRIS MURDOCH,
An Unofficial Rose
 
 
I looked at six eyes which sat at a desk.... Two appertained to a splendid old dotard (a face all ski-jumps and toboggan slides), on whose protruding chest the rosette of the Legion pompously squatted.
E. E. CUMMINGS,
The Enormous Room
 
 
They turned their faces cityward, and, treading over the broad flagstones of the old Roman pavement, passed through the Arch of Titus. The moon shone brightly enough within it to show the seven-branched Jewish can dlestick cut in the marble of the interior.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE,
The Marble Faun
 
upward-pointing three-lobed or three-petaled (trifoliate) floral shape
trefoil, shamrock
four-lobed or four-petaled floral shape
quatrefoil
five-lobed or five-petaled floral shape
cinquefoil
common ornament showing spread leaves or petals
palmette
common ornament showing a radiating floral cluster
anthemion, honeysuckle ornament
common ornament showing sprouting pointed leaves
lotus
common ornament showing shapely “billowing” leaves
acanthus
upright eagle with wings outstretched
spread eagle, heraldic eagle
ceremonial-staff emblem of authority
scepter
bundle of rods with a projecting ax blade
fasces
sun surrounded by (a representation of) its rays
sunburst
wheel whose spokes project beyond the rim
catherine wheel, spider wheel
map’s circular symbol with N, S, E, and W indicated
compass rose
ornamental oval or somewhat curved frame
cartouche
Egyptian beetle-like symbol or ornament
scarab
stylized asp worn on ancient headdresses
uraeus
symbolic or memorial cluster of weapons or armor
trophy
 
 
Colored red ochre, blue and tan, they paraded along the walls in that peculiar frontal way of Egyptians, with vultures on their palms, sheaves of wheat, water lilies and lutes. They were accompanied by lion, scarabs, owl, oxen and dismembered feet. E. L. DOCTOROW,
Ragtime
curved band (often with an inscription on it)
ribbon
thin curling or spiral form like a leafless stem
tendril
Light and Colors
 
And there I saw myself as a man might expect, except that my skin was very white, as the old fiend’s had been white, and my eyes had been transformed from their usual blue to a mingling of violet and cobalt that was softly iridescent. My hair had a high luminous sheen, and when I ran my fingers back through it I felt a new and strange vitality there.
ANNE RICE,
The Vampire Lestat
 
 
The woman’s face was Chinese, brown and withered like a ginger root; she wore dark blue clothes, a necklace of turquoises and sharp little silver knives, and her hair in pigtails like two grey wires.
RUMER GODDEN, Black
Narcissus
 
 
Framed in the pale triangle ahead, the mountain showed again, gray at first, then silver, then pink as the earliest sun rays caught the summit. J
AMES HILTON,
Lost Horizon
 
 
“And not only paper, but cotton fibre, linen fibre, wool fibre, woody fibre, and
bone,
Kemp,
flesh,
Kemp,
hair,
Kemp,
nails
and
nerves,
Kemp, in fact the whole fabric of a man except the red of his blood and the black pigment of hair, are all made up of transparent, colourless tissue. So little suffices to make us visible one to the other. For the most part the fibres of a living creature are no more opaque than water.“
H . G . WELLS,
The Invisible Man
 
LIGHT
 
 
without light
dark, dusky, unlighted, unilluminated, unlit, obscure,
tenebrous, stygian, caliginous, fuliginous, sunless
having or showing forth little light
dim, dingy, murky, darkish
shadowy
shady, gloomy, umbral, umbrageous
 
giving forth light
shining, beaming, bright, illuminated, illumined, luminous,
irradiated, radiant, lucent, lustrous, luminiferous
very bright
brilliant, glaring, blazing, blinding, refulgent, effulgent
lighted
lit, lit up, alight, aglow, irradiated
 
sparkling
glittering, scintillating, coruscating, twinkling
sparkling or shining in a subdued way
shimmering, shimmery
giving off reflected light
glinting, gleaming
shining with reflected light
glistening
flashing
fulgurant, fulgurating
 
 
The houses of the central village were quite unlike the casual and higgledy-piggledy agglomeration of the mountain villages he knew; they stood in a continuous row on either side of a central street of astonishing cleanness; here and there their part-coloured facade was pierced by a door, and not a solitary window broke their even frontage. They were parti-coloured with extraordinary irregularity; smeared with a sort of plaster that was sometimes grey, sometimes drab, sometimes slate-coloured or dark brown; ...
H. G. WELLS, “The Country of the Blind”
 
 
The advance guard of the expected procession now appeared in the great gateway, a troop of halberdiers. They were dressed in striped hose of black and tawny, velvet caps graced at the sides with silver roses, and doublets of murrey- and-blue cloth embroidered on the front and back with the three feathers, the prince’s blazon, woven in gold. Their halberd staves were covered with crimson velvet, fastened with gilt nails, and ornamented with gold tassels.
MARK TWAIN,
The Prince and the Pauper
 
 
These men who looked steadily into their platinum igniter flames as they lit their eternally burning black pipes. They and their charcoal hair and soot-colored brows and bluish-ash-smeared cheeks where they had shaven close; but their heritage showed.
RAY BRADBURY,
Fahrenheit 451
 
flashing occasionally or fitfully
winking
flashing regularly
blinking, stroboscopic
flashing weakly or going out
fluttering, guttering, sputtering
 
showing deflected light rays or distortion of image
refracted, refractive
 
burning unsteadily or suddenly
flaring, blazing
giving off flame-like light
flickering, wavering, lambent
flame-colored
flammeous
glowing or luminescent with absorbed radiation in a continuing way
phosphorescent
glowing or luminescent with electromagnetic radiation
fluorescent
 
visible or glowing at night
noctilucent
 
glowing whitely with light or intense heat
incandescent
 
giving off a reddish or golden glow
rutilant
 
having
a
milky or cloudy iridescence (like an opal)
opalescent, opaline
having a pearly iridescence (like a pearl)
nacreous, pearlescent
 
transparent
sheer
BOOK: The Describer's Dictionary: A Treasury of Terms & Literary Quotations
13.15Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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