Wednesday, 11 July 2012

Yet More Adjectives


Ignore people who tell you to "kill your darlings" and slash all adverbs and adjectives. They're just recycling an old "How to Write" manual from 1922. More adjectives here, here and here.

arthritic: The sometimes arthritic hierarchies of the old far left Laurie Penney New Statesman February 2011

Bismarck was “a self-centred, neurotic, corrupt, vindictive, treacherous, unprincipled, despotic, gluttonous ingrate, and a habitual liar to boot” Jonathan Steinberg in Bismarck: A Life

comedically bad Owen Hatherley on Southampton’s modernist hotels

fatuous: exemplifies a marketing-led architectural approach with its thin, etched aluminium façade and fatuous decorative balustrades. Kieran Long Evening Standard 20 April 2011
Bold
grisly: Making buildings symbolise something is something generally associated with the grisly jokiness of the ‘80s, such as Terry Farrell’s TVAM eggcups and so forth. nothingtoseehere.net

hand-wringing (liberal)

interchangeable: Norwegian Wood, by Haruki Murakami, tends to send me into that pleasant haze of boredom as the interchangeable characters, quotidian detail and clunky metaphors pass by.

Lofty, ploddingly literary and rather affectedly performed, the material may have functioned as a short film, but is not nearly amusing or even interesting enough to go the distance at feature length. Variety on Le Nain Rouge, May 17 1998

mesmerisingly awful Kate Muir in the Times, May 2011, on a book about Wallis Simpson

mindless business park aesthetic @HughPearman

monumentally dull A Dance to the Music of Time darrenlollipopman Guardian Jan 8 2011

oppressively feelgood
Philip French Observer Feb 11

sappy and predictable Jonah Lehrer in the Wall Street Journal on The King’s Speech Jan 2011

stiflingly archaic and curatorial Sunday Times on the Fleet Foxes

twee: It’s the self-loving tweeness… @Quantick (David Quantick) on the Hairy Bikers

whimsical nonsense The Times on Terry Jones/Anne Dudley opera about a dog who is a doctor

whiteboy anono-rockers @Bobbi_Betamax


More adjectives here and here and here and here.

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