October 6, 2010

The copy-editor’s dilemma #7

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We return with another English word from Jean-Christophe Valtat’s Aurorarama that stumped our copy-editor.

williwaw: a sudden violent squall blowing offshore from a mountainous coast.

Valtat explains how he came to use this wonderfully evocative term:

I had first written “heebies-jeebies”, but, checking its origins, I discovered it was too 1940-ish for my purpose. I am not sure that “gave him the williwaws” is more of an appropriate period-piece, but as, originally, the Native-American williwaw refers, in Alaska, to “a violent gust of cold wind”, I thought it qualified as a typical New-Venetian expression.

2 Comments

  1. Dan O'Connor at 2:08 pm on October 7, 2010

    Gore Vidal’s first novel is entitled Williwaw. In a note prefacing the book Vidal defines Williwaw as “the Indian word for a big wind peculiar to the Aleutian islands and the Alaskan coast. It is a strong wind that sweeps suddenly down from the mountains toward the sea. The word williwaw, however, is now generally used to describe any big and sudden wind.” In his 1946 New York Times review of the nineteen year-old author Orville Prescott notes that Vidal “is believed to have been the youngest warrant officer in the United States Army.” During the war Vidal was stationed in the Aleutians.

  2. Dan O'Connor at 2:08 pm on October 7, 2010

    Gore Vidal’s first novel is entitled Williwaw. In a note prefacing the book Vidal defines Williwaw as “the Indian word for a big wind peculiar to the Aleutian islands and the Alaskan coast. It is a strong wind that sweeps suddenly down from the mountains toward the sea. The word williwaw, however, is now generally used to describe any big and sudden wind.” In his 1946 New York Times review of the nineteen year-old author Orville Prescott notes that Vidal “is believed to have been the youngest warrant officer in the United States Army.” During the war Vidal was stationed in the Aleutians.

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