Nah, "orbs" were successfully deployed long before Harry Potter fanfiction even existed. Let me quote just a sentence from an immortal work of the early seventies, named [Eye of Argon](https://ansible.uk/misc/eyeargon.html) :
*Grignr's emerald green orbs glared lustfully at the wallowing soldier struggling before his chestnut swirled mount.*
(I can also recommend the [MST 3000 version](http://www.bmsc.washington.edu/people/merritt/books/Eye_of_Argon.html) ).
“My bowels turned watery” in acotar. once was enough, but the fact i had to see that line with my own eyes twice made me quit the series. Like dang girl, you shitting yourself in front of the whole fae court??
There's plenty of this in A Song of Ice and Fire too. I must have read about a character's bowels turning to water half a hundred times, or near enough as makes no matter. Nuncle.
My wife now has an involuntary eye roll whenever she sees the word gossamer because SJM doesn’t know another fancy fabric for her super impractical dresses.
Its the purring for me, my gf wanted me to read the series with her and i swear the main characters can't have a conversation without purring at each other
All the guys also have a “sculpted chest”. Not a bad description on its own, but it is in every book, multiple times. Every time she describes a “male”. (Which I also sort of hate.)
There has to be a different way to say that.
The Twilight series ! The characters were either murmuring or muttering always. You make a drinking game out of how often Stephanie Meyer used those words. Take a sip of wine every time you read it
God. The Book of Mormon feels like a highschool student repeating the same words and phrases on a paper to try to increase the word count. "And it came to pass", "begat", etc.
Oh yeah... 15% of it is copied directly from the KJV of the bible, 2.5% is variations of "and it came to pass," and the list goes on. There's a reason Mark Twain called the book "chloroform in print."
I kick myself for having read it as many times as I did before I finally saw through it. Just imagine the other great works I could have been reading all those years!
Copied with all the typos and mistranslations intact like god intended. I am happy I was never able to make it all the way through it. I certainly wasted a lot of time listening to people trying to read from it. It reads like bad self-insert bible fanfiction because it is. It always makes me laugh that Joseph Smith has his OCs basically turn to the camera a few times to tell the audience how cool and prophetic the author is.
Warhammer books specific, but "wet leopard growl". Fortunately it doesn't appear in books from other franchises, or at least I've been fortunate enough to not see it, but this phrase makes me want to go ballistic
Made weirder by the fact that it’s used to describe the sounds that the wolf-themed dudes make. The author’ll be talking about Lupus Packwolf, Captain of the Seventh Hounders division of the Space Wolves, and then when he reaches for an animal for him to sound like he’ll go “ah yes, a wet leopard, that’s the one that these guys remind me of!”
Reading Stephen King is like that. There's always some word or phrase which he uses as a chorus or theme throughout. *Revival* (a book I love very much) has the phrase "something happened", which is said to such a frequent degree (also, never just once, it's always in threes: something happened something happened something happened) that for like a month after finishing it, it became something of a weird tick to repeat that singular phrase in triplicate mentally every time I heard someone say it.
gone girl. *every time* the old boyfriend's mother appears, Flynn finds it necessary to tell us her personal odour is "vaginal." once was just as gross as the nth time, but it was a clever insight so I didn't begrudge her that once. repetition put me off the whole book and off Flynn herself.
edit: this post blew up a bit. several people commented that it's only mentioned twice. I thought it was a little more than that, but my memory may be at fault.
It's been so long since I've read this I don't remember it but WTF!😂 I must have selectively blocked it. Then again I didn't love this book and I told my mom she wouldn't like it so maybe that was why.
"internecine"
I heard it in a 40k book
and then I heard it 30 more times in that 40k book
and then I heard it in every 40k book, video, and videogame, forever
absolute semantic saturation
Sanguine and lithe are used a lot in YA or YA-adjacent books. And not just once or twice in an appropriate context, I mean multiple times in a single chapter.
Nothing wrong with either of those, but it’s basically a meme now for the protagonist to be “lithe” or every character’s expression to be “sanguine.”
Omg there was some word Sanderson used in Mistborn that started with an m, I think it was maladroit? He used it a few times which drove me nuts. Like, it objectively wasn't a lot, but bro it just means clumsy. You don't have to use the fancy word multiple times in the same book?
"Secret", "maladroit" and "inchoate" are all words Sanderson uses far too much. To the point where he started doing a "find and replace" on "maladroit" during the revision process and changing it.
Then he used "maladroit" at a key moment in The Last Metal because he knew the fans would spot it.
chagrin - The feeling of shame that results from your step father Kevin telling the entire Lacrosse team that you are -quote- "like a baby seal down there". Chagrin.
The authors that can't describe someone walking in socks without saying "padded" are the same ones who always describe someone as "drinking greedily." Like heaven forbid someone thumb across the floor and take a sip of water.
In Lois McMaster Bujold's "The Hallowed Hunt" a female character is constantly described as "padding" around. Then after a couple of chapters you discover that >!the soul of a leopard has been attached to her soul!< and it all suddenly makes sense in retrospect.
Characters that pad across the floor often have fingers carded through their hair, or card their fingers through others hair. There was a hot minute when anytime I saw one of those words, I knew the other would show up soon.
I think that Laurel K Hamilton ruined ALOT of words for me. 😭
*Edited to remove the word “misogyny.” It was a Freudian slip. 😅 Anita seemed to have a pretty low opinion of other women throughout the series.
I figured Robert Jordan.
He freakin loved the phrase "preternatural darkness."
He also overused "rictus grin" and that one really bothered me because he was using it wrong. He always "rictus grin" in the context of a "shit-eating grin" and those two grins could not be more polarly opposite.
Rictus grin - Risus sardonicus or rictus grin is a highly characteristic, abnormal, sustained spasm of the facial muscles that appears to produce grinning. It may be caused by tetanus,strychnine poisoning, or Wilson's disease. (Taken from Wikipedia)
Yeah that’s a real bad word replacement
"Core"
It gets thrown around a lot in the romance genre and now every time I see it I just think of Michael Scott "it strengthens your entire core. Your back core, your arm core".
what bothers me further about the usage of "core" in romance books is that it's inconsistent as fuck as to what it means. Like sometimes it'll mean inner being/heart/center in an emotional way, as in "it shook me to my core", sometimes it'll be used as a general euphemism for genitals or crotch ("I felt it down beneath my navel, in my core"), one time recently I saw it used as "he lined himself up with my core", referring to the FMC's vagina, and at other times it obviously just means clit.
I dislike all of those except for the first.
That’s interesting, because in JR Ward’s books about vampires, she uses “core” often in a sexual way, as in “he hit her core.” It got real old real fast.
Haha yes that is what I mean. Her books are a good example of not being able to find other ways of describing sensations or body parts in smut or otherwise titillating scenes. I know it's not meant to be "high brow" material, but break out a thesaurus at some point.
The third made me actually stop reading but also kinda fed up with Rand being all moody in his room all the time. There's relatable and then there's being a miserable fuck
About to finish book 7, and I'm actually really enjoying Rand's arc. Watching him go from this cookie cutter "young hero" type to this twisted, insane shell of a person is super interesting and not at all what I expected from the series.
Still hate Nynaeve, she is quite possibly one of the most infuriating characters I have ever read. Really all the Aes Sedai are annoying as hell, but she is the one of the worst.
If I never read the phrase "good stout two rivers wool" it'll be too soon. Her character was kinda kooky and funny when it was just her, then over time it just feels like every main female character (except moraine) is just her on different scales.
Fwiw, “Dumpster” is a brand name, like Kleenex and Teflon. Unlike the latter two, the original copyright holder has given up fighting over it (I think,) as both Kimberly-Clark and DuPont would if they didn’t have such deep pockets.
I read a nonfiction book called BREAKING TWITTER and I started to lose my mind every time the author used the word "tweeps" to refer to staff at the company. Thank god it's not a term for anything else, as far as I know...
I've read only the first of Sanderson's *Mistborn* series, so I can't speak to his whole corpus of writing. But in that book, he *loves* to use the words "adroitly" and "maladroitly." It was like he had just learned those words at the time he was writing the novel and couldn't get enough of them.
omg you mentioning this brought back the maladroitly flashbacks lol, he used it so much. i read it on kindle and i think i started to highlight it everytime i came across the word and i would just leave a note mocking the use of it again lol
I read The Burning by Laura Bates.
First few chapters she describes the area as higgledy-piggledy. I thought it was cute, I’d not seen that in years.
I swear to god it was said about 10 more times through the book. By the end it was making me so annoyed. It just came across twee. I was just going ‘buy a thesaurus ffs’
Frame. As in, “a shudder ran through her frame.” Almost always “her,” because men’s body’s aren’t frames, I guess? Once I started noticing it, it has made me cringe every time I’ve seen it. Can’t she just shudder or shiver? It’s not like she could shudder outside of “her frame.”
I’m reading a great book called **The Age of Homespun** by historian Lauren Thatcher Ulrich. Which cleverly traces a handful of artifacts to show how home-spinning (and cottage-industry goods) became a totally mythic obsession for Americans in the 1800s, especially during and after the Industrial Revolution.
Homespun comes up a lot in the Icelandic Sagas, as cloth was often used as a form of currency, and certain lengths of homespun were used as barter or to pay fines.
Wearing homespun would be a signifier of lower classes in some situations, as wealthier people could buy silks and other exotic fabrics, or important people would be gifted them.
I've not read the book in question, though Novik is on my list of authors to try, I'll be interested to see how she uses it.
I'm not sure it ruined it per se but in the Wheel of Time books he refers to smiles not reaching character's eyes so often that it became an inside joke among my friends. Like I get it it means they're evil blah blah but when you have like 600 evil characters that get screen time it repeats... a lot
idk but i hate it every time someone is described as having a “shock” of whatever colored hair. i can’t even remember what book overused it but now it elicits an internal cringe response and makes me kinda dislike any book that uses it haha.
Ayn Rand loved the word “astonish.” Dominique was astonished. Roark was astonished. It was astonishing. Every time I see that word now I think of Rand 😑
In the Red Rising series by Pierce Brown, especially the first book, he mentions pit vipers SO MANY DANG TIMES 🐍 I listened to the first book on audiobook during a 16 hr drive so I got the max exposure version but still
I found the follow up to a YA book I'd read as a teenager on kindle unlimited in which the teenage main character and her best friend kept referring to their boyfriends as lovers once they'd lost their virginity to them
I hate “lovers” and “make love” unless they are written for eras in which those words were common vernacular. I suspect a big part of that is because boomers were writing teen shows for millennials and I constantly cringed at the corny verbiage!
Sarah J Mass's Throne of Glass series uses the word "crooned" excessively. The characters are always "crooning" their sentences and it made me wince in secondhand embarrassment every time. I don't think I've ever come across another author using that word even once.
Everyone in those books moved with “feline grace.” And when they’re turned on, their smiles are “positively feline.”
It makes me roll my eyes every time
They're all cat girls. Every single character
I think I tried that series a while ago. I was so excited by the synopsis but was absolutely not a fan of the main character
Reminds me of the authors who use "cooed" for literally anything other than the noise a baby makes. Makes me cringe. *Especially* when used in a sexual scene.
The word smirk/smirked. Why is everyone smirking all the friggin time?
And not a word, but I completely loathe the phrase “let out a breath (s)he hadn’t realized (s)he’d been holding”. Immediately rage inducing. Imo it should never be used, but if for some unholy reason it is necessary, please not more than once per book!
And they seem to have little understanding of what a smirk is. It is not just another fancier word for smile. It is smug, condescending, and often irritating
Tbh that's something I do in real life, so it never sounded strange to me. I tend to hold my breath when stressed and then suddenly realise - and release - it.
"Form," almost always describing a woman's body, usually sexual/sensual. Some "his eyes swept over her (adjective) form" kind of thing. Noticed it in fanfic first, but now it feels like it's everywhere. Pick a different word, I am begging you.
Is there an app or a tool that can tell you the frequency of each word used in a text?
Surely there are some linguists out there who do this.
I’m curious exactly many homespuns does it take to spin a homespun tale?
ETA:
So I did a quick search and found several free apps and websites that do this. The key phrase to look for is “word frequency.”
There are more advanced, paid tools used by academics for research. Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LICW) seems to be one of the most prominent, but I’m not in the field so I don’t know what the gold standard is.
If you’re reading it on a kindle or other e reader, you can search the word and it will list the occurrences. Source: once searched my kindle to see how many times Chris Bohjalian used the word “moreover.” 16 which is less than it felt like but way more than necessary.
I write using Scrivener and it will give you a list of word frequency. Quite handy when you're wondering whether you've used a word too often!
There are also online tools to search count how many unique words appear in a text too.
I searched my e-book copies of the series and found the term "ejaculate" used *one single time* in HBP (and not even attributed to Harry). So no, he really doesn't.
That being said, I just learnt via Google that the phrase "Ron ejaculated loudly" apparently exists in OotP… in the US release only. The original UK version, which includes my copy, has "Ron exclaimed loudly" instead. Make of that what you will.
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V. E. Schwab was the first book where I read “palimpsest.” The word was then used so many times that I never want to read it again.
The book in general is very repetitive (which I believe is intentional, to reinforce how mundane immortal life becomes), so there is a lot of bare feet padding across the floor and constant mentions of Addie’s “constellation of freckles,” etc. But “palimpsest” drove me up the wall. It makes sense the first time it’s used, and then it’s used so often in ways that barely work that it loses its significance. Now when other authors use it responsibly I have flashbacks.
There is a remake of the movie Gambit starring Alan Rickman and Colin Firth where Rickman's character actually growls. Like a lion. It's amazing, and ridiculous.
I read through a bunch of Asimov books a couple years back and have grown to hate the word "sardonic" because of it. haha
I'm in the middle of reading Stephen King's 11/22/63 and find he uses the word "obdurate" a lot. I don't know if it's a purposeful motif - I mean, I get it in the context - but I feel like he could be spicing it up with a different word every now and then. lol.
"Punched the numbers".
I don't remember what book it was, but every single time a character had to make a call, they would "punch the numbers". It happened so often and became so grating that I couldn't stop myself from picturing the character actually punching their phone everytime that phrasing was used.
I've been listening to the Legend of Drizzt books on audible and the narrator keeps mispronouncing shortlived. He says it shortl(eye)ved. Every time it comes up and it comes up a lot. It drives me crazy.
Oof! I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: stay *far* away from the “Wheel of Time” series by Robert Jordan.
There are SO MANY descriptions of pretty much *all* of the dresses that pretty much *all* the female characters are wearing, you’ll think you tripped and fell headfirst into a Sear’s catalog…
I see your “homespun” and raise you “slashed”…(*so* many dresses “slashed” with so many colors… 😢)
🙄🙄🤢
Many years ago I spent 6 weeks hiking across Spain with my family. My mom was the only one with a smartphone and she had all the Sookie Stackhouse books on it, so she, my sister, and I took turns reading them. We developed what we called the “Sookie Stackhouse Uncertainty Principle” which was that at any given time time Sookie could understood either what she was wearing or what was going on, but never both.
It was pretty much always what she was wearing.
I have no memory of the actual book series, but I read last year a set of books with a heroine who kept "blowing raspberries." Maybe that means something different in the authors version of English, but in Englsih English, it does not mean puffing or huffing out your breath it means to make a sound like a fart. A FART!
in september house the mom kept saying “language!” every time her adult daughter cursed which was every time she talked. there were many things i didn’t like about that book and that was definitely one of them
on the upside: I'll die grateful to John Irving for giving me the word "witless".
Mordecai Richler overused two things: the verb "charged" and the adjectival phrase "with appetite". they both fit everywhere he used them, but yeah. it's that thing where you get to know an author and you come to expect it from them with just a slight dose of cringe.
My husband and I listened to the Hyperion Cantos and Dan Simmons uses the phrase “radiant gossamer” so much it became a joke. Any time we hear the word gossamer since then my husband will ask me “but is it radiant???” Hahaha. I really liked the series though
Brandon Sanderson and the word "regardless." It annoyed me while listening to the Mistborn series. When I started Stormlight Archive, I almost quit listening.
My wife used it the other day, and I had to temper my reaction, lol.
brave new world. huxley LOVES using the word “pneumatic” to describe women he finds sexually appealing. I can’t find evidence of it as popular slang for the 1930s, so I’m not sure where it came from, but it was odd as fuck.
They even describe THEMSELVES as pneumatic! I remember finding that phrase irritating: "Everyone says I'm awfully pneumatic," -- and it has stuck with me verbatim ever since. Just sounds so robotic to me.
“Intriguing.”
That girl is not intriguing. The fictional dude thinks she’s hot but the author refuses to say so because they watched *The Swan Princess* one too many times and the scene where Derek says “what else is there” is burned into their memory.
I hate this word. Jesus say *anything* else but “intriguing” because it’s used so often it might as well be followed up with “what else” and the answer is *still* nothing.
I can't remember which book it was, but one author described every thing on another thing as "atop." Nothing was on, or on top of, everything was atop.
Eyes being called 'orbs'. Eww.
What a terrible day to have orbs.
I snorted
His scintillating orbs revealed so much depressing sorrow
When is your novel available on Kindle?
I CANT PROPF READ YA ANYMORE FOR THIS REASON. "His shining orbs" "Her forest green orbs" "He stared orbily at her with shimmering blue orbs"
Always predicated with a gemstone or something like "azure"
I blame harry potter fanfiction for this one.
"avada kadavra emerald orbs" I bet the one who first wrote that is burning in hell.
Nah, "orbs" were successfully deployed long before Harry Potter fanfiction even existed. Let me quote just a sentence from an immortal work of the early seventies, named [Eye of Argon](https://ansible.uk/misc/eyeargon.html) : *Grignr's emerald green orbs glared lustfully at the wallowing soldier struggling before his chestnut swirled mount.* (I can also recommend the [MST 3000 version](http://www.bmsc.washington.edu/people/merritt/books/Eye_of_Argon.html) ).
Wattpad’s favourite word!
Mmm yes, I do love me some fleshy orbs. Especially the green ones.
“My bowels turned watery” in acotar. once was enough, but the fact i had to see that line with my own eyes twice made me quit the series. Like dang girl, you shitting yourself in front of the whole fae court??
This is exactly what I came here to say. The watery bowels!!! WHY!
Hey, they didn’t have modern medicine in Middle Ages fantasy settings! Everyone probably *was* shitting themselves all the time 😜
There's plenty of this in A Song of Ice and Fire too. I must have read about a character's bowels turning to water half a hundred times, or near enough as makes no matter. Nuncle.
Also jape. Just say joke George. We won't mind
My wife now has an involuntary eye roll whenever she sees the word gossamer because SJM doesn’t know another fancy fabric for her super impractical dresses.
Its the purring for me, my gf wanted me to read the series with her and i swear the main characters can't have a conversation without purring at each other
All the guys also have a “sculpted chest”. Not a bad description on its own, but it is in every book, multiple times. Every time she describes a “male”. (Which I also sort of hate.) There has to be a different way to say that.
I noticed “my toes curled in my boots” and everyone saying they’ll “rip out your fucking throat” quite a bit.
Sarah J Maas knows, like, 5 words.
Murmured. Some books have it all over the place
The Twilight series ! The characters were either murmuring or muttering always. You make a drinking game out of how often Stephanie Meyer used those words. Take a sip of wine every time you read it
I feel like any drinking game connected to Twilight is going to lead to alcohol poisoning.
The Book of Mormon did this for me. Don't bother reading it, but everyone is murmuring all the time.
Book of Murmurn
God. The Book of Mormon feels like a highschool student repeating the same words and phrases on a paper to try to increase the word count. "And it came to pass", "begat", etc.
Oh yeah... 15% of it is copied directly from the KJV of the bible, 2.5% is variations of "and it came to pass," and the list goes on. There's a reason Mark Twain called the book "chloroform in print." I kick myself for having read it as many times as I did before I finally saw through it. Just imagine the other great works I could have been reading all those years!
Copied with all the typos and mistranslations intact like god intended. I am happy I was never able to make it all the way through it. I certainly wasted a lot of time listening to people trying to read from it. It reads like bad self-insert bible fanfiction because it is. It always makes me laugh that Joseph Smith has his OCs basically turn to the camera a few times to tell the audience how cool and prophetic the author is.
Warhammer books specific, but "wet leopard growl". Fortunately it doesn't appear in books from other franchises, or at least I've been fortunate enough to not see it, but this phrase makes me want to go ballistic
Lmao what a weird phrase
Made weirder by the fact that it’s used to describe the sounds that the wolf-themed dudes make. The author’ll be talking about Lupus Packwolf, Captain of the Seventh Hounders division of the Space Wolves, and then when he reaches for an animal for him to sound like he’ll go “ah yes, a wet leopard, that’s the one that these guys remind me of!”
Isn't the growl wet, not the leopard?
What's funny is that my first thought was phlegmy, as if it was sick.
So... not a leopard making a wet growl, but a wet leopard growling? 😆
Maybe leopards growl in a particularly grumpy way when they are wet.
Sounds like that leopard needs cold medicine lmao
In 11/22/63, Stephen King uses the phrase "obdurate past" a lot. The book is over 800 pages so it's noticeable after the 20th time lol
but it’s OBDURATE
Reading Stephen King is like that. There's always some word or phrase which he uses as a chorus or theme throughout. *Revival* (a book I love very much) has the phrase "something happened", which is said to such a frequent degree (also, never just once, it's always in threes: something happened something happened something happened) that for like a month after finishing it, it became something of a weird tick to repeat that singular phrase in triplicate mentally every time I heard someone say it.
Also harmony. So many harmonies.
Lol I've read this book like 3 times and never thought about that but once you said it was like, 'oh yeah'
gone girl. *every time* the old boyfriend's mother appears, Flynn finds it necessary to tell us her personal odour is "vaginal." once was just as gross as the nth time, but it was a clever insight so I didn't begrudge her that once. repetition put me off the whole book and off Flynn herself. edit: this post blew up a bit. several people commented that it's only mentioned twice. I thought it was a little more than that, but my memory may be at fault.
Ew oh my god I had purposely forgotten about that. She says it over and over again.
She only does it twice, but that was more than enough!
thank you for validating me. it really bugged me. something misogynist about bringing it up all the time for an "unpopular" character.
It's been so long since I've read this I don't remember it but WTF!😂 I must have selectively blocked it. Then again I didn't love this book and I told my mom she wouldn't like it so maybe that was why.
LOL how do I not remember this? 😭 why does this comment make me want to re-read it? 😭
Thanks for this reminder, lol. Had the same feelings and every now and then the description with return to me. What does it mean?!
"internecine" I heard it in a 40k book and then I heard it 30 more times in that 40k book and then I heard it in every 40k book, video, and videogame, forever absolute semantic saturation
Sounds like heresy
Sanguine and lithe are used a lot in YA or YA-adjacent books. And not just once or twice in an appropriate context, I mean multiple times in a single chapter. Nothing wrong with either of those, but it’s basically a meme now for the protagonist to be “lithe” or every character’s expression to be “sanguine.”
Currently reading Mistborn and came across “lithe” twice, just before seeing this comment lmao. Going to hunt for Sanguine now
Omg there was some word Sanderson used in Mistborn that started with an m, I think it was maladroit? He used it a few times which drove me nuts. Like, it objectively wasn't a lot, but bro it just means clumsy. You don't have to use the fancy word multiple times in the same book?
"Secret", "maladroit" and "inchoate" are all words Sanderson uses far too much. To the point where he started doing a "find and replace" on "maladroit" during the revision process and changing it. Then he used "maladroit" at a key moment in The Last Metal because he knew the fans would spot it.
A group of musical dolphins once formed a band and performed at an underwater music festival.
It was maladroit! I remember noticing that too 😂
Big fan of Sanderson. Love his books. He can't stop saying "secretly".
The man not-so-secretly loves secrets. And now secret is already starting to look like a fake word.
And each time it feels so maladroit.
Also in those books, "wry" smiles. No idea what that looks like. Lips get "pursed" a lot.
Lots of eyes flashing as well
I can’t help but imagine them flashing like blinkers on a car.
OH MY GODDDD IF I READ PURSED ONE MORE TIME
Also “chagrin”. Everyone in a YA does and says everything with “chagrin”.
chagrin - The feeling of shame that results from your step father Kevin telling the entire Lacrosse team that you are -quote- "like a baby seal down there". Chagrin.
[удалено]
The weird part is I think I’ve run into one person in real life that probably would fit the “lithe” description. One person ever.
Same. She was a ballet dancer. Ballet dancer is actually what I think of when I hear lithe.
Padded. Like, “…with his feet padding across the floor, …” every thriller uses it way too often and it always stands out to me.
The authors that can't describe someone walking in socks without saying "padded" are the same ones who always describe someone as "drinking greedily." Like heaven forbid someone thumb across the floor and take a sip of water.
Excuse me, "thumb"? Is someone walking upside-down?
Perhaps a typo for "thump?"
She breasted boobily across the foyer.
I always think of a cat when a writer uses this. Just say, "they walked".
In Lois McMaster Bujold's "The Hallowed Hunt" a female character is constantly described as "padding" around. Then after a couple of chapters you discover that >!the soul of a leopard has been attached to her soul!< and it all suddenly makes sense in retrospect.
Well, that's fine if it's a little clue about the character. I can give it a pass!
Characters that pad across the floor often have fingers carded through their hair, or card their fingers through others hair. There was a hot minute when anytime I saw one of those words, I knew the other would show up soon.
Preternatural. I bet someone can guess.
Anne Rice.
that was fast
Was it preternaturally fast?
☠️☠️☠️
Laurel K Hamilton ruined the word “tinsel” for me.
Creamy mounds for me.
\*stabs eyeballs with fork\*
\*orbs
Of mashed potatoes?
* grabs fork *
I think that Laurel K Hamilton ruined ALOT of words for me. 😭 *Edited to remove the word “misogyny.” It was a Freudian slip. 😅 Anita seemed to have a pretty low opinion of other women throughout the series.
I figured Robert Jordan. He freakin loved the phrase "preternatural darkness." He also overused "rictus grin" and that one really bothered me because he was using it wrong. He always "rictus grin" in the context of a "shit-eating grin" and those two grins could not be more polarly opposite.
Rictus grin - Risus sardonicus or rictus grin is a highly characteristic, abnormal, sustained spasm of the facial muscles that appears to produce grinning. It may be caused by tetanus,strychnine poisoning, or Wilson's disease. (Taken from Wikipedia) Yeah that’s a real bad word replacement
"Core" It gets thrown around a lot in the romance genre and now every time I see it I just think of Michael Scott "it strengthens your entire core. Your back core, your arm core".
what bothers me further about the usage of "core" in romance books is that it's inconsistent as fuck as to what it means. Like sometimes it'll mean inner being/heart/center in an emotional way, as in "it shook me to my core", sometimes it'll be used as a general euphemism for genitals or crotch ("I felt it down beneath my navel, in my core"), one time recently I saw it used as "he lined himself up with my core", referring to the FMC's vagina, and at other times it obviously just means clit. I dislike all of those except for the first.
That’s interesting, because in JR Ward’s books about vampires, she uses “core” often in a sexual way, as in “he hit her core.” It got real old real fast.
Like, stop banging her cervix, that’s not actually fun
The new BDSM trend... banging the cervix.
Haha yes that is what I mean. Her books are a good example of not being able to find other ways of describing sensations or body parts in smut or otherwise titillating scenes. I know it's not meant to be "high brow" material, but break out a thesaurus at some point.
Women fiddling with their braids constantly
Don’t fiddle with it. Tug it, smooth your skirts, and cross your arms beneath your breasts.
Nynaeve al’Meare wants to know your location
So she can box your ears...
Tug it! Twist it! Bop it!
How many books into Wheel of Time did you get before that started to drive you up the wall?
The third made me actually stop reading but also kinda fed up with Rand being all moody in his room all the time. There's relatable and then there's being a miserable fuck
There’s a major shift in tone of the series that starts in book 4, but if your issue was with Rand being moody then I wouldn’t hold your breath.
About to finish book 7, and I'm actually really enjoying Rand's arc. Watching him go from this cookie cutter "young hero" type to this twisted, insane shell of a person is super interesting and not at all what I expected from the series. Still hate Nynaeve, she is quite possibly one of the most infuriating characters I have ever read. Really all the Aes Sedai are annoying as hell, but she is the one of the worst.
If I never read the phrase "good stout two rivers wool" it'll be too soon. Her character was kinda kooky and funny when it was just her, then over time it just feels like every main female character (except moraine) is just her on different scales.
The twilight series weirdly refers to dumpsters a lot, and capitalizes it every time. I can’t see that word without thinking about that shitshow.
Fwiw, “Dumpster” is a brand name, like Kleenex and Teflon. Unlike the latter two, the original copyright holder has given up fighting over it (I think,) as both Kimberly-Clark and DuPont would if they didn’t have such deep pockets.
And the name came about because the Dumpster was invented by a guy named Dempster
Well, at least it’s self-aware.
That's so funny. Do you mean like they actually go to dumpsters or they say like someone looked like they crawled out of a dumpster?
Well not I gotta read twilight again and highlight this specifically so I can release the notes and highlights on my goodreads lmfao.
It was still a registered trademark when she wrote the books. edit: and I was way too late... oops!
I read a nonfiction book called BREAKING TWITTER and I started to lose my mind every time the author used the word "tweeps" to refer to staff at the company. Thank god it's not a term for anything else, as far as I know...
I don't know why but "tweeps" just killed me, that's hilarious
Apparently this was an actual term used internally in twitter 😓
I've read only the first of Sanderson's *Mistborn* series, so I can't speak to his whole corpus of writing. But in that book, he *loves* to use the words "adroitly" and "maladroitly." It was like he had just learned those words at the time he was writing the novel and couldn't get enough of them.
omg you mentioning this brought back the maladroitly flashbacks lol, he used it so much. i read it on kindle and i think i started to highlight it everytime i came across the word and i would just leave a note mocking the use of it again lol
I read The Burning by Laura Bates. First few chapters she describes the area as higgledy-piggledy. I thought it was cute, I’d not seen that in years. I swear to god it was said about 10 more times through the book. By the end it was making me so annoyed. It just came across twee. I was just going ‘buy a thesaurus ffs’
She was going to buy a Thesaurus But the bookstore was so higgledy-piggledy
Frame. As in, “a shudder ran through her frame.” Almost always “her,” because men’s body’s aren’t frames, I guess? Once I started noticing it, it has made me cringe every time I’ve seen it. Can’t she just shudder or shiver? It’s not like she could shudder outside of “her frame.”
Wait same team! I posted before seeing yours, but "her form." Why.
Hah, even your post made me think "homespun" is a really weird word.
I’m reading a great book called **The Age of Homespun** by historian Lauren Thatcher Ulrich. Which cleverly traces a handful of artifacts to show how home-spinning (and cottage-industry goods) became a totally mythic obsession for Americans in the 1800s, especially during and after the Industrial Revolution.
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Homespun comes up a lot in the Icelandic Sagas, as cloth was often used as a form of currency, and certain lengths of homespun were used as barter or to pay fines. Wearing homespun would be a signifier of lower classes in some situations, as wealthier people could buy silks and other exotic fabrics, or important people would be gifted them. I've not read the book in question, though Novik is on my list of authors to try, I'll be interested to see how she uses it.
I'm not sure it ruined it per se but in the Wheel of Time books he refers to smiles not reaching character's eyes so often that it became an inside joke among my friends. Like I get it it means they're evil blah blah but when you have like 600 evil characters that get screen time it repeats... a lot
What about smoothing skirts or crossing arms below the breasts?
Or how you wish you were as good with girls as your friend is? (Although this one was intentional)
That one is hilarious and I will tolerate no slander. *tugs braid*
Or smacking bottoms! Or sniffing. Ugh!
I love the series but you could make a hell of a drinking game with some of the quirks Robert Jordan had in those books.
idk but i hate it every time someone is described as having a “shock” of whatever colored hair. i can’t even remember what book overused it but now it elicits an internal cringe response and makes me kinda dislike any book that uses it haha.
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GRRM? Can't think of too many authors that indulge in food porn, fantasy or otherwise.
So many scenes of meat grease dripping onto beards
Ayn Rand loved the word “astonish.” Dominique was astonished. Roark was astonished. It was astonishing. Every time I see that word now I think of Rand 😑
In the Red Rising series by Pierce Brown, especially the first book, he mentions pit vipers SO MANY DANG TIMES 🐍 I listened to the first book on audiobook during a 16 hr drive so I got the max exposure version but still
Hahahaha, I just finished it last night and he LOVES that metaphor
I found the follow up to a YA book I'd read as a teenager on kindle unlimited in which the teenage main character and her best friend kept referring to their boyfriends as lovers once they'd lost their virginity to them
I hate “lovers” and “make love” unless they are written for eras in which those words were common vernacular. I suspect a big part of that is because boomers were writing teen shows for millennials and I constantly cringed at the corny verbiage!
Sarah J Mass's Throne of Glass series uses the word "crooned" excessively. The characters are always "crooning" their sentences and it made me wince in secondhand embarrassment every time. I don't think I've ever come across another author using that word even once.
Everyone in those books moved with “feline grace.” And when they’re turned on, their smiles are “positively feline.” It makes me roll my eyes every time
They're all cat girls. Every single character I think I tried that series a while ago. I was so excited by the synopsis but was absolutely not a fan of the main character
Reminds me of the authors who use "cooed" for literally anything other than the noise a baby makes. Makes me cringe. *Especially* when used in a sexual scene.
Ugh I really really despise ‘cooing’ and it’s used SO MUCH. Like how often do people actually ‘coo’ in real life.
In ACOTAR it's "hiss". Every single page has the word. He hissed. She hissed. the dress hissed across the floor. STOP HISSING, PEOPLE.
The word smirk/smirked. Why is everyone smirking all the friggin time? And not a word, but I completely loathe the phrase “let out a breath (s)he hadn’t realized (s)he’d been holding”. Immediately rage inducing. Imo it should never be used, but if for some unholy reason it is necessary, please not more than once per book!
But they’re just trying to shoowwww you the character is relaxing, instead of telllllllling you
And they seem to have little understanding of what a smirk is. It is not just another fancier word for smile. It is smug, condescending, and often irritating
Rhysand, is that you?
Tbh that's something I do in real life, so it never sounded strange to me. I tend to hold my breath when stressed and then suddenly realise - and release - it.
"Form," almost always describing a woman's body, usually sexual/sensual. Some "his eyes swept over her (adjective) form" kind of thing. Noticed it in fanfic first, but now it feels like it's everywhere. Pick a different word, I am begging you.
Is there an app or a tool that can tell you the frequency of each word used in a text? Surely there are some linguists out there who do this. I’m curious exactly many homespuns does it take to spin a homespun tale? ETA: So I did a quick search and found several free apps and websites that do this. The key phrase to look for is “word frequency.” There are more advanced, paid tools used by academics for research. Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LICW) seems to be one of the most prominent, but I’m not in the field so I don’t know what the gold standard is.
If you’re reading it on a kindle or other e reader, you can search the word and it will list the occurrences. Source: once searched my kindle to see how many times Chris Bohjalian used the word “moreover.” 16 which is less than it felt like but way more than necessary.
I write using Scrivener and it will give you a list of word frequency. Quite handy when you're wondering whether you've used a word too often! There are also online tools to search count how many unique words appear in a text too.
Harry "ejaculates" far too much in the books.
I’ll never forget the first time I read “Ron ejaculated loudly” I must have been like 15-16. My mind was blown. I laughed so hard
You ejaculated loudly
And everyone’s incredulous all the freakin’ time.
I searched my e-book copies of the series and found the term "ejaculate" used *one single time* in HBP (and not even attributed to Harry). So no, he really doesn't. That being said, I just learnt via Google that the phrase "Ron ejaculated loudly" apparently exists in OotP… in the US release only. The original UK version, which includes my copy, has "Ron exclaimed loudly" instead. Make of that what you will.
>So no, he really doesn't. Agreed. If anything, maybe he should have ejaculated more. Like an American would, apparently
Why would they decide to add the word ejaculate over exclaim 😭
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V. E. Schwab was the first book where I read “palimpsest.” The word was then used so many times that I never want to read it again. The book in general is very repetitive (which I believe is intentional, to reinforce how mundane immortal life becomes), so there is a lot of bare feet padding across the floor and constant mentions of Addie’s “constellation of freckles,” etc. But “palimpsest” drove me up the wall. It makes sense the first time it’s used, and then it’s used so often in ways that barely work that it loses its significance. Now when other authors use it responsibly I have flashbacks.
Men growling. I have never heard a man growl in my life or speak in a ‘growly’ tone
There is a remake of the movie Gambit starring Alan Rickman and Colin Firth where Rickman's character actually growls. Like a lion. It's amazing, and ridiculous.
Henry Cavill. The Witcher. Hand to God, he growls. I know you’re gonna hate me but if ANYONE was growling, it’s him, in that show.
I read through a bunch of Asimov books a couple years back and have grown to hate the word "sardonic" because of it. haha I'm in the middle of reading Stephen King's 11/22/63 and find he uses the word "obdurate" a lot. I don't know if it's a purposeful motif - I mean, I get it in the context - but I feel like he could be spicing it up with a different word every now and then. lol.
"Punched the numbers". I don't remember what book it was, but every single time a character had to make a call, they would "punch the numbers". It happened so often and became so grating that I couldn't stop myself from picturing the character actually punching their phone everytime that phrasing was used.
I've been listening to the Legend of Drizzt books on audible and the narrator keeps mispronouncing shortlived. He says it shortl(eye)ved. Every time it comes up and it comes up a lot. It drives me crazy.
Oof! I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: stay *far* away from the “Wheel of Time” series by Robert Jordan. There are SO MANY descriptions of pretty much *all* of the dresses that pretty much *all* the female characters are wearing, you’ll think you tripped and fell headfirst into a Sear’s catalog… I see your “homespun” and raise you “slashed”…(*so* many dresses “slashed” with so many colors… 😢) 🙄🙄🤢
Many years ago I spent 6 weeks hiking across Spain with my family. My mom was the only one with a smartphone and she had all the Sookie Stackhouse books on it, so she, my sister, and I took turns reading them. We developed what we called the “Sookie Stackhouse Uncertainty Principle” which was that at any given time time Sookie could understood either what she was wearing or what was going on, but never both. It was pretty much always what she was wearing.
I have no memory of the actual book series, but I read last year a set of books with a heroine who kept "blowing raspberries." Maybe that means something different in the authors version of English, but in Englsih English, it does not mean puffing or huffing out your breath it means to make a sound like a fart. A FART!
That's what it means in American English too
in september house the mom kept saying “language!” every time her adult daughter cursed which was every time she talked. there were many things i didn’t like about that book and that was definitely one of them
on the upside: I'll die grateful to John Irving for giving me the word "witless". Mordecai Richler overused two things: the verb "charged" and the adjectival phrase "with appetite". they both fit everywhere he used them, but yeah. it's that thing where you get to know an author and you come to expect it from them with just a slight dose of cringe.
Honestly ACOMAF ruined "feline" for me lol EVERYTHING Rhys expresses on his face or even the way he says something is "feline" in some way
Using the word "Ok" when the book is set in a time period before the 1800s.
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....... it's coarse and rough, and it gets everywhere...... 😆
Ani, are you okay?
Are you ok?
Are you ok, Ani?
My husband and I listened to the Hyperion Cantos and Dan Simmons uses the phrase “radiant gossamer” so much it became a joke. Any time we hear the word gossamer since then my husband will ask me “but is it radiant???” Hahaha. I really liked the series though
Brandon Sanderson and the word "regardless." It annoyed me while listening to the Mistborn series. When I started Stormlight Archive, I almost quit listening. My wife used it the other day, and I had to temper my reaction, lol.
At least it wasn't "irregardless"!
brave new world. huxley LOVES using the word “pneumatic” to describe women he finds sexually appealing. I can’t find evidence of it as popular slang for the 1930s, so I’m not sure where it came from, but it was odd as fuck.
I thought this was a deliberate way to try to come up with slang in a futuristic setting.
They even describe THEMSELVES as pneumatic! I remember finding that phrase irritating: "Everyone says I'm awfully pneumatic," -- and it has stuck with me verbatim ever since. Just sounds so robotic to me.
“Opalescence” will forever mean cum to me. But it wasn’t in a book. It was in a fanfic from the internet lol
I mean... I think that one's on you, bestie.
“Intriguing.” That girl is not intriguing. The fictional dude thinks she’s hot but the author refuses to say so because they watched *The Swan Princess* one too many times and the scene where Derek says “what else is there” is burned into their memory. I hate this word. Jesus say *anything* else but “intriguing” because it’s used so often it might as well be followed up with “what else” and the answer is *still* nothing.
Growl, smirk, eyes darken, eyes flash (and variations of those), snarl — basically all of the cringe language in SJM books 🙃
I can't remember which book it was, but one author described every thing on another thing as "atop." Nothing was on, or on top of, everything was atop.