Thursday, May 01, 2008

Neologism: Upbraision

I began disgruntled with the following sentence from Chapter 2:

This passage in Thomas Hoccleve’s remonstrance to John Oldcastle has generally been read as a blanket condemnation of argumentative Lollards who dispute interpretations of the Bible.
"Remonstrance" just doesn't ring. It's there because some of the 19th c. titles of the poem identify it as "Remonstrance to Oldcastle" and so the word was the first my mind (or perhaps my fingers, which have typed the phrase several times) chanced upon.

I was casting about for a better word, and the first I came up with was "upbraiding". Now, I've in general set up a new policy: the avoidance of gerunds and participles as far as possible, since they almost always (1) make syntax more confusing for the reader and often (2) make sentences less clear. E.G., with "upbraiding" the sentence would read:
This passage in Thomas Hoccleve’s upbraiding of John Oldcastle has generally been read as a blanket condemnation....
Clearly, not an improvement. In fact, it sounds a little like Hoccleve is braiding Oldcastle up into a blanket...eek.

But then I realized the perfect word: upbraision. Thus enabling:
This passage in Thomas Hoccleve’s upbraision of John Oldcastle has generally been read as a blanket condemnation....
Ahhh, the creation of nouns from verbs - what's not to love? So what if our consciously archaic Spenser was one of the last to use upbraid as a noun? (nb. the noun form was used in Early Middle English, esp. in didactic literature)
SPENSER F.Q. III. vi. 50 Faire Psyche to him lately reconcyld, After long troubles and vnmeet vpbrayes.
-- F.Q. IV. ix. 24 Through lewd vpbraide Of Ate and Duessa they fell out. (OED)
Interesting that both instances of upbraid in FQ are "unmeet" and not earned. But let us exploit that in the connotative potential of my word. Upbraision is better than upbraid. First, the sounds are better: "pbrzn" is metonymically onomatopoetic (i.e., it sounds like a rug-burn of the spirit, if the spirit were physical). It also sounds like blowing a raspberry (as they say here in the UK), an expression of contempt. And consider the homophonic potential:
His upbraision really rubbed me the wrong way
That was some upbraisive sermon this morning!
I was advised (by a grad student) to create a Wiki article for it and then cite Wiki if challenged. Hopefully, that is not evolving into "scholarly practice"???

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