The second Detective Vera Stanhope novel by Ann Cleeves involves the murder of a teenage girl and the conviction of a local in the East Yorkshire village that is questioned ten years later. New evidence in the case throws the village into chaos as Stanhope calmly sorts it out and sets the facts straight. Telling Tales is also the second episode of the Vera television series available on BritBox TV. Both the book and the television episode are well worth the time.
In this blog I offer a different type of book review—one that’s combined with vocabulary building. In Telling Tales, I found a couple of interesting Scottish/English terms in it that I’ll highlight here.
From Telling Tales:
At the same time the baby begins to grizzle and to claw blindly in the air with both hands.
grizzle, verb (no object) British English informal: (of a child) cry fretfully: (grizzling as adjective) / complain; grumble — Origin: mid-18th century (in the sense ‘show the teeth, grin’) of unknown origin.
Also, as a noun or adjective: a mixture of dark and white hairs or having dark and white hairs mixed.
From Telling Tales:
The other table was empty, and the waitress was in the shop gassing to the woman behind the counter.
gassing, slang: engaging in long, casual or rambling conversation. Also known as “shooting the breeze.”
Other slang definitions included hyping up or praising something, or being extremely happy, thrilled or looking forward to something.
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Definitions are typically from the dictionary that comes with my Mac or The New Oxford American Dictionary.
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To connect or learn more about Ann Cleeves, find him at anncleeves.com
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“The word is only a representation of the meaning; even at its best, writing almost always falls short of full meaning. Given that, why in God’s name would you want to make things worse by choosing a word which is only cousin to the one you really wanted to use?” ― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
