atramentous

[prettygoodword]

atramentous (a-truh-MEN-tuhs) - adj., black as ink, inky.


Also atramental, but that seems to be even less common. This goes back to the 1640s, a time when a lot of words were being imported into English directly from Latin, in this case ātrāmentum, a liquid used to blacken, which could be (and often was) ink but also a dye/stain for leather or wood, from ātrāre, to blacken, from āter, black, ultimately from PIE *h₂eh₁ter-, fire, so I'm guessing there's a sense of burnt hiding in that gap. Note that ātrāmentum also gave Middle English atrament, black ink. Me, I'm pondering possible uses of atramentous in certain styles of fantasy or horror writing.

---L.

Comments

[full_metal_ox]

If any given twenty-dollar word originated no later than 1961, and you’re hunting it in an old-school horror or fantasy context, the go-to guy is Clark Ashton Smith. Indeed he did not disappoint, although he used the less common variant:

I wandered down Sleep's vast and sunless vale,
Where silence and Cimmerian darkness lay
That never moon nor stars disturb, nor Day
With sword of golden light. Beside the trail
I groping followed, through that secret dale,
A deep and voiceless river stole its way -
Dark Lethe's stream, owning whose opiate sway
I onward went without a doubt or fail.

Till, lo! the atramental veil of night
That, stifling, hung about, behind, before,
Was sudden parted by some unseen hand,
And on my vision leapt a marvelous sight -
A green and joyous plain, with fair skies o'er,
The Dream-god's sunlight-drenched, enchanted land.

-—“The Dream-God’s Realm”.

[prettygoodword]

Oof, that's prime Ashton Smith all right.

[full_metal_ox]

On the remote chance that you’re not already aware of this, there’s a vast sprawling fannish and scholarly website devoted to Klarkash-Ton’s life and works:

http://www.eldritchdark.com/

[full_metal_ox]

Finally tracked down another use I remembered, this from andrew j. offutt’s (lowercase usage his) Conan parody “The Black Sorcerer of the Black Castle”, from the anthology Cosmic Laughter (1974):

“Kimon the Konerian gazed up at the black castle towering into the moonless sky, its murky turrets and minarets resembling dark fingers pointing the way to the shadow gods. Kimon chuckled, the deep-throated sound of a giant of a man from a dark barbarian land. Well, he mused, soon the black magician Reh and all his daemonic guardians would go to meet those sombre gods of Atramentos – or he himself would. He loosened the black pommel of his long sword, Goreater, glanced at the ring on his finger, and mounted the hill to the castle.”

(Kimon got the ring from the sage Kohl, and seeks to rescue the Princess Sabell and find the Jewels of Chthon; offutt penned this saga in fifty shades of black.)

[stonepicnicking_okapi]

I like this word! Thank you for sharing!

[prettygoodword]

I'm not sure I'll ever use it, but I like knowing it exists.