Sunset, Wednesday, 9 December 2009

William Theodore Van Doren. Painted at Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on watercolor block, 16 x 20.

The word of the day is something I encountered in “Mystification,” a crazy little story by Edgar Allan Poe. 

That he was unique appeared so undeniable, that it was deemed impertinent to inquire wherein the uniquity consisted.

(The story can be found online in a few places, all of which seem to share the defect of not showing italics.) 

Uniquity ... somehow sounds bad, as in “a den of uniquity.”

My spell check, no surprise, objects to the word. Webster’s doesn’t have it. However, it’s in a 1955 revision of The Oxford Universal Dictionary.

The story’s plot turns on characters intimidating, or seeking to intimidate, each other – to “mystify” – through the use of very arcane and particular mumbo-jumbo. It’s an appropriate device, since the story satirizes the very arcane and particular codes of dueling.

What this has to do with sunset ... not sure. Write it off, perhaps, as obliquity.