Monday, April 18, 2011

Corybantic

This is an awesome word that I didn't know until today. It means frantic or without restraint. It might be one of my new favorites.

“No, no, no!” the director shouted. “It’s flat, sagging, like a corpse on the far side of rigor mortis. It’s even letting off a putrescent stench.” The dancers scowled. None of them appreciated his metaphors, which seemed more likely to turn stomachs than clarify concepts. “You need to breathe life into the choreography. You need to commit, at least. Better to do something decisively wrong than pussyfoot around.” Another conspiratorial glance – there had been too many derisive lectures about footwork to forget.

“In fact, just forget it. Make something up. Improvise. Just don’t run into each other. From the top.”

1 comment:

Tom Havener said...

Doesn't livor come after rigor?

THEN putrefaction.

I think the Mortis sisters (Pallor, Algor, Rigor, and Livor) sang on the Lawrence Welk TV show in the late fifties and early sixties. They were less popular after color TVs became available, although Latin speakers had always been squeamish.