Can you niggers help me figure out what some of these mean:[Ch IV]hasping>and the polished shoes of the horses kept hasping up...shirring>they rode with the slamming and jarring of the wagon half shirring the meat from their bones...[Ch V]sleared>where the rocks trembled and sleared into the sun...[Ch XX]alparejas>and the dried carcasses of mules with the alparejas still buckled about.[Ch XXI]thunderstone>bed of thunderstones clustered on that heath...(I understand the definition of a thunderstone, but here there is a bed of them, so what is actually being referred to? what kind of actual rock?)gaitered shirt>to the bar where several men in gaitered shirts were drawing beer
>>25203848A gaitered shirt is a shirt with long bits on the bottom to cover the legs.Spanish for horse tackle is "aparejah" or something so maybe "alparejah" is a variant (or he got it wrong?)A hasp is obviously a fastening. Doesn't really seem to fit the way he uses it, even being creative. Maybe there's another uncommon / USA meaning he's using."Shirred" usually means gathered, like material gathered into pleats. (Or "shirred eggs" = eggs poached in milk.) But he's surely using it as a combination of shaken and stirred. Maybe that's another USA thing, or maybe it's just a Cormac invention."Slear" in the OED 2nd ed. is only a corrupt variant of "slay" so not sure about that either. Looks like a misprint of "stared" to be honest..
>>25203848>thunderstoneHand axes used by injuns. Used to be said they were created by lightning.
"Alpareja" does not exist in Spanish. "Aparejo" means 'harnes' in Spanish. "Alpargata" means 'espadrille'. Maybe he mixed them up.
>>25203848Generally there are enough context clues allowing the brain should fill in the blanks whenever it encounters an archaic or obscure word. You need to start brain-maxxing, my dude.
These are all words that aren't in use as such anymore, McCarthy took them from 1800's journals and letters of the American west which he used for the material of the book. Think of the word "heeled" (armed) which is only still widely known because of its use in connection with the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. An example of one not widely known is "afly" which was used to mean fully-fledged in the 19th century west.
>>25204239'preciate the effort but nothing new or useful>>25204623never heard this one before lol>>25205480Pretty much my conclusion on this one>>25205592True but I am nailing down each word of interest... the ones that are left are in the OP >>25205630>aren't in use They in use on this board in a book we all read
>>25203848Those were words men used to use before women ruined everything.
>>25203848>>bed of thunderstones clustered on that heath...I thought he was describing a patch of earth that had been struck by lightning and the sand and clay had been baked hard into fractured rock.
>>25206141thunderstones as fulgurite
>>25205968In the 1980s? You're onto something>>25206141I'm running with this. Thanks, this is great.
>>25206985I did some research and I think I'm wrong about that. They would've been in northern Arizona during that passage, and I think he was referring to picrel, a type of volcanic geode common enough to the area. Apparently they're sometimes called "thunder eggs".I think I initially read "heath" as "hearth", and had the description of lightning storms in the night fresh in my mind, and assumed it was the result of a lightning strike.
>>25207122is this your final thought
>>25204239>But he's surely using it as a combination of shaken and stirredlmao
