If you were to pick up and read a 19th century novel, or better yet, a 17th century novel, you would likely find yourself unfamiliar with words that appear to have been familiar at the time of first publishing. As we add new words to describe the world around us, we lose others along the way. Sometimes the change feels too utilitarian, with narrowly defined adjectives vanishing to be replaced by a growing amount of technical jargon and indecipherable slang. English seems to be losing its poetry.
Assuming you care and are bothered by any of this, what can we do? We are not powerless. Perhaps you can use technology to better advantage. Request that your AI use an older English form of the language when it answers your queries. I suspect if it cannot do that now, it will develop the talent in short order. It would probably be fun to have ChatGPT or Claude answer your questions in the language style of Charles Dickens or Mark Twain – and perhaps you’d keep old words alive in this way. If you do not want to rely on machines, though, there is another way. You can do the leg work of seeking out words and using them. That’s what I’m doing here.
characterized by or uttered in complaint; peevish.a querulous tone; constant querulous reminders of things to be done.Synonyms:discontented, carping, testy, petulant
Against a long and attenuated trill of the viola, Mehretu’s backgrounds become a lurid green or mysterious blue and the black lines of the paintings start to look more querulous.
One came across as a quiet, reserved, eloquent, thoughtful force of nature; the other as a boisterous, querulous, troublemaking and sometimes thoughtless and mean force of nature.
Fiennes shows us the conceit, followed by the querulous selfishness, with which Göth briefly wrestles with the idea that he might actually want to be good.
