David Wallace - Both Flesh and Not - Essays

Readers familiar with David Foster Wallace’s work know that he possessed an insatiable love for words and their meanings. On his computer he constantly updated a list of words that he wanted to learn, culling from numerous sources and writing brief definitions and usage notes. A selection from this vocabulary list appears before each essay of Both Flesh and Not .

It was one of the great thrills of Wallace’s life to be invited to serve on the Usage Panel of The American Heritage Dictionary . The definitions in his vocabulary list reprinted here are quoted or paraphrased from that excellent reference work.

abattoir—slaughterhouse or slaughterhousish abrogate(adj.) — abolished or annulled by authority abscission—act of cutting off plants’ shedding leaves and stems accoutre(v.) — to outfit and equip, especially for military duty acerose—needlelike, as in pine needles, etc. acetous—vin-egary Achates—a loyal friend; faithful companion to Aeneas in The Aeneid adnexal(adj. of adnexa) — accessory or adjoining anatomical parts; e.g., ovaries & uterus adumbrate(v.) — to give a sketchy outline of; to disclose vaguely or partly; q.v. “adumbration” adversative(both n. and adj.) — word that expresses opposition or antithesis: the adversative con junction “but”; “he put out a string of adversatives” adz—axlike carpentry tool aerobe—organism requiring oxygen to live affined(adj.) — linked by very close relationship; q.v. “affinity” affray—noisy quarrel or brawl afterclap—unexpected, often unpleasant sequel to a matter that had I been considered closed akimbo—hands on hips and elbows out alastor—avenging deity or spirit albescent(adj.) — becoming white or pale aldosterone—hormone that regulakiates salt-v.-water balance of body aldosteronism—disorder that causes weakness, cardiac irregularities, etc. alembic—chemist’s device w/two vessels connected by tube for distilling liquids alible—having nutrients, nourishing aliform(adj.) — shaped like a wing alpenhorn—horn so huge you have to lay the front on the ground; “a [huge] pipe that looked like an alpenhorn” altricial—helpless, naked, and blind when hatched; “altricial birds” alveolar—part of the jaw that contains the tooth sockets amalgam—alloy of mercury with silver or tin amandine—means there’s almonds in a dish or as garnish for dish: trout amandine amaurosis—loss of vision w/o damage to eye; (adj.) amaurotic ambeer—saliva w/tobacco juice ambeer—spittle colored w/tobacco amentia—insufficient mental development amontillado—pale dry sherry from Spain amphora—two-handled jug w/slender neck used by Greeks and Romans to carry wine and oil anabatic—relating to rising wind currents (speed, or direction upward?) anaclisis—psychological dependence on others; “anaclitic” anchorite—religious hermit androgyne—an androgynous person anent—regarding, concerning, w/r/t anfractuous—full of twists and turns; tortuous anlage—axiom, fundamental principle, foundation for further development anneal—to strengthen or toughen via heat… via process for tempering glass anosmia—loss of sense of smell antimacassar—doily for head/arms on armchair antipodal—situated on opposite sides of world antipode—direct or diametrical opposite antrorse—directed forward and upward, as in the hairs on certain plants ao dai—traditional Vietnamese woman’s dress: long tunic that’s split along sides and worn over loose trousers aperient(adj.) — acting as gentle laxative apocarpous—flower with two or more distinct pistils, like roses apocryphal—of dubious authorship or reliability; fictitious; “wildly apocry phal rumors” apophasis—allusion to something by denying that it will be mentioned: “I will not bring up my opponent’s shady financial history”

ALMOST ANYONE WHO LOVES tennis and follows the men’s tour on television has, over the last few years, had what might be termed Federer Moments. These are times, watching the young Swiss at play, when the jaw drops and eyes protrude and sounds are made that bring spouses in from other rooms to see if you’re OK. The Moments are more intense if you’ve played enough tennis to understand the impossibility of what you just saw him do. We’ve all got our examples. Here is one. It’s the finals of the 2005 U.S. Open, Federer serving to Andre Agassi early in the fourth set. There’s a medium-long exchange of groundstrokes, one with the distinctive butterfly shape of today’s power-baseline game, Federer and Agassi yanking each other from side to side, each trying to set up the baseline winner… until suddenly Agassi hits a hard heavy cross-court back hand that pulls Federer way out wide to his ad (= his left) side, and Federer gets to it but slices the stretch backhand short, a couple feet past the service line, which of course is the sort of thing Agassi dines out on, and as Federer’s scramblierfng to reverse and get back to center, Agassi’s moving in to take the short ball on the rise, and he smacks it hard right back into the same ad corner, trying to wrong-foot Federer, which in fact he does — Federer’s still near the corner but running toward the centerline, and the ball’s heading to a point behind him now, where he just was, and there’s no time to turn his body around, and Agassi’s following the shot in to the net at an angle from the backhand side… and what Federer now does is somehow instantly reverse thrust and sort of skip backward three or four steps, impossibly fast, to hit a forehand out of his backhand corner, all his weight moving backward, and the forehand is a topspin screamer down the line past Agassi at net, who lunges for it but the ball’s past him, and it flies straight down the sideline and lands exactly in the deuce corner of Agassi’s side, a winner — Federer’s still dancing backward as it lands. And there’s that familiar little second of shocked silence from the New York crowd before it erupts, and John McEnroe with his color man’s headset on TV says (mostly to himself, it sounds like), “How do you hit a winner from that position?” And he’s right: given Agassi’s position and world-class quickness, Federer had to send that ball down a two-inch pipe of space in order to pass him, which he did, moving backward, with no setup time and none of his weight behind the shot. It was impossible. It was like something out of The Matrix . I don’t know what-all sounds were involved, but my spouse says she hurried in and there was popcorn all over the couch and I was down on one knee and my eyeballs looked like novelty-shop eyeballs.

Anyway, that’s one example of a Federer Moment, and that was merely on TV — and the truth is that TV tennis is to live tennis pretty much as video porn is to the felt reality of human love.