Toltish

[tamaranth]

Reading Wayne Johnston's The Navigator of New York, I noted a couple of novel words.

One was piblocto, an Eskimo term which Johnston translates first as 'the weight of the world' (p. 102) and later as 'a form of Arctic madness that would pass' (p. 193). Different, but credibly connected. (Piblokto (with a 'k') defined on Cancerweb's online medical dictionary: and on Wikipedia. Also, apparently, a popular beat combo (defunct).)

And one was tolt, as in 'a tolt of rocks'.

Tölt (with an umlaut) is easy enough: it is, as any fule kno, a gait peculiar to the Icelandic horse. But tolt?

- According to one online thesaurus site (channelling Roget's) it's a synonym for 'hill'.
- It's a common (and intentionally humorous) misspelling of 'told'.
- It may well be connected to the Manx / Gaelic tholtan, a ruined building (from the 'middle hill' of the gables).
- A Writ of Tolt is 'a writ to remove proceedings on a writ of right patent from the court baron into the county court'.
- Tort is the original name of Carnation, a small town in Washington State -- named after a river in the area.
- I can't find a single online dictionary offering a definition that works in context.

I'm inclined to interpret 'tolt' as 'outcrop'. But I can't help wondering whether this is a specifically Newfoundland term; a neologism; an idiosyncrasy; or what.

Comments

[woolymonkey.livejournal.com]

Am awed by thoroughness of your research.

Spellcheck suggests Johnston meant to write 'toilet'. Does that help?