Fuge

Michael Gilleland at Laudator Temporis Acti has a marvellous post on words ending in –fuge. He notes Thomas Hardy’s coinage of dolorifuge in Tess Of The D’Urbervilles -

“The children … had made use of this idea as a species of dolorifuge after the death of the horse.”

- and cites a contemporary reviewer of Hardy complaining about his “outlandish words” –

“Think how absolutely out of colour in Arcadia are such words as ‘dolorifuge’, ‘photosphere’, ‘heliolatries’, ‘arborescence’, ‘concatenation’, ‘noctambulist’ – where, indeed, are such in colour? – and Mr. Hardy further uses that horrid verb ‘ecstatisize’.”

There are many more –fuge words to chew over, and I may well make use of some of them in the coming year.