Sewellisms #4: Made up word of the week
‘Half a century on I now see only evidence of hysterical activity in the frenzied surfaces, of grotesque excess in the excrescented depths of paint’
Brian Sewell, ‘The paint’s the thing for Frank Auerbach’, Evening Standard, 05.11.09Read more: http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/arts/article-23764861-the-paints-the-thing-for-frank-auerbach.do
Definition: Excrescent
1. Something growing, usually abnormally, out of something else.
Irony: ‘excrescented’ does not seem to be a word in its own right. Brian could have just said ‘excrescent’ or perhaps ‘excrescence’. That doesn’t mean that we are criticising his use of the language. ‘excess in the excrescented depths of paint’ makes its point very well, as excrescented somehow sounds more scatological and deformed than excrescence. We would just like to point out the irony of the second meaning of excrescent:
2. (phonetics) A sound in a word without etymological reason.
