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gramarye [gram-uh-ree]

noun:
(archaic) magic, necromancy, or occult learning

Examples:

You are holding these assertions in your hands, looking through them. The 'you' I am looking through is the camera itself, magical carver of worlds, bringer of gramarye and glamour. (Tim Davis, Tim Davis on the Joys and Pitfalls of Seeing through the Camera, aperture, June 2021)

The poem concludes by naming England 'Merlin's Isle of Gramarye,' suggesting that accumulated history has made the land itself enchanted... By calling England "Merlin's Isle of Gramarye," Kipling suggests that the accumulated layers of history have made England a place of wonder -- not ordinary earth, but ground charged with the residue of centuries. ('Puck's Song' by Rudyard Kipling - Literary Analysis, aperture, October 2026)

But in all this there is a singular touch of illusion, of what his contemporaries had learnt from Scott to call gramarye. (George Saintsbury, A History of Nineteenth Century Literature (1780-1895))

In front of him the sibylline signs and the figures inscribed upon that Table of the Law seemed the gramarye which would enable the old sorcerer to tell in what direction the young man's destiny was shaping. (Marcel Proust, Cities of the Plain)

Now the Magian, when Queen Marjanah overtook him with her ships, baffled her by his artifice and gramarye; swearing to her that he was not with him and that he knew nothing of him. (Celia Wren, The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night)

For our own part, we become aware of a subtle spice of gramarye as soon as we see the station lamps at East Williston, which have tops like little green hats. (Richard Francis Burton, Plum Pudding Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned)

Origin:

early 14c., 'grammar,' also 'learning, erudition,' hence 'magic, enchantment' (late 15c.), a variant of grammar; perhaps from Old French gramare, gramaire 'grammar,' also 'book of conjuring or magic' (hence Modern French grimaire 'gibberish, incomprehensible nonsense'). Gramarye was revived by Scott ('Lay of the Last Minstrel,' 1805) in the 'dark magic' sense. (Online Etymology Dictionary)

Gramarye 'occult learning” is a doublet of grammar, and both derive via Old French gramaire and Latin gramatica from Ancient Greek grammatikḕ (téchnē) 'grammatical (art),' from grammatikós 'knowing one's letters' and earlier grámma 'letter, something drawn; small weight.' The story of how an ancient word for 'letter” evolved into gramarye, grammar, and even glamour (via Scots) is full of semantic twists and turns. The sense 'knowledge of letters' shifted to the broader definition of 'the study of how a language's sentences are constructed,' and this is the definition of grammar today. In the Middle Ages, because grammar was taught only among the upper classes, grammar became a symbol of general 'higher' learning, which also included subjects such as astrology, magic, and the occult at the time. Glamour and gramarye are simply variants of grammar that kept this connection to magic, though glamour later shifted again to refer to enchantingly good looks. Gramarye was first recorded in English in the early 1300s. (Merriam-Webster)

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Mr Frankel is most convincing when he avoids bold statements, however, and instead immerses himself in the skulduggery of Kansas City politics or the treacherous demimonde of Hollywood. (Anna Mundow, 'Black Dahlia' and 'Sisters in Death': Her End Still Echoes, The Wall Street Journal, January 2026 )

Soprano Nicole Car’s initially elegant Elizabeth accumulates both physical and vocal intensity as the opera exposes more and more skulduggery around her. (Scott Cantrell, Thwarted love, political unrest in 16th century Spain, Dallas Morning News, February 2026)

The Ethics and Integrity in Educational Contexts series is not the first place you would turn for tales of skullduggery, international police work, kidnapping, murder and an exploding Russian hand grenade. (Nathan M Greenfield, The many - always deleterious - faces of credential fraud, University World News, June 2023)

Fleeing both from villains and law enforcement, who suspect him in a murder, Hannay survives skulduggery in a vaudeville theater, a chase atop a speeding train and other cloak-and-dagger stuff. (Celia Wren, Constellation's '39 Steps' is a comic thriller without thrills, Washington Post, February 2020)

The educators at Abbott Elementary may not resort to the same levels of criminal mischief as the gang from Paddy's Pub, but they’re not above a bit of skullduggery either. (Kaleena Rivera, The Gang Gets a Lesson From 'Abbott Elementary', Pajiba, January 2025)

Origin:

'underhanded dealings, roguish intrigue,' apparently an alteration of Scottish sculdudrie 'adultery' (1713), 1856 via sculduddery 'bawdry, obscenity, grossness, unchastity' (1821), a euphemism of uncertain origin but probably popularized in English via Scott. (Online Etymology Dictionary)

Skulduggery, which can also be spelled skullduggery, was first documented in the mid-19th century spelled as scull-duggery. Etymologists aren't sure exactly how the word arrived in English, but they do not believe it has anything to do with skulls. It is possibly derived from the now-very-rare sculduddery, a term once used to refer to gross or lewd conduct, but unfortunately the origins of that word are also unknown.

Our antedating of the week is skulduggery ('underhanded or unscrupulous behavior'), as someone somewhere is always engaging in this sort of thing. Our earliest known use had previously come in 1856, but recent findings show that we were engaging in skulduggery a decade or so earlier. 'Mr. G. said he saw at once that Mr. B. had some of his scull-duggery on hand. He thought that this was an act of small character.' The Tennessean, Nashville, TN, 15 December 1845 (Merriam-Webster)

(Also the basis for one of my own favourite adjectives, the rarer but still used by wordlovers skullduggerous :)

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Bildungsroman [bil-doongz-roh-mahn, beel-doongks-raw-mahn]

noun:
a novel concerned with a person's formative years and development

(click to enlarge)

Kuang once again crafts a unique Bildungsroman that doesn't fulfill the usual expectations for what fantasy is or perhaps, what a Western fantasy is expected to be - and that is its most profound strength. (Hanh Nguyen, Salon’s favorite books of 2022 - fiction and nonfiction, Salon, December 2022)

Herzog’s early years read like a Bildungsroman, like something he had immortalised in one of his own films. (Xan Brooks, Werner Herzog: 'I'm fascinated by trash TV. The poet must not avert his eyes', The Guardian, June 2020)

A classic bildungsroman follows the growth and development of a young person, who typically matures from a dreamer into a rational being. Jane Austen was a master of the genre: in her posthumously published novel Northanger Abbey, she satirizes the overly imaginative Catherine Morland, a voracious reader who perceives her life as a Gothic story. (Bekah Waalkes, The Enlightenment Is Just One Side of the Story, The Atlantic, October 2024)

Now, for English-speakers, the arts journalist Jackie Wullschlager has written not the prettified fairy tale of Andersen’s life, but his bildungsroman. Her moving and well-written book compels interest in Andersen’s life, even for non-Danes. (Alexandra Mullen, Gulliver among swans, New Criterion, September 2001)

Origin:

'novel set in the formative years, or the time of spiritual education, of the main character,' 1910, from German Bildungsroman, from Bildung 'education, formation, growth' (from Bild 'picture, image, figure') + roman 'novel'. German Bild is from Old High German bilade, from Proto-Germanic biliþja or bilaþja, the source also of Dutch beeld, Old English biliþe, but the ultimate origin is unknown. (Online Etymology Dictionary)

'Bildungsroman' is the combination of two German words: Bildung, meaning 'education,' and Roman, meaning 'novel.' Fittingly, a 'bildungsroman' is a novel that deals with the formative years of the main character - in particular, his or her psychological development and moral education. The bildungsroman usually ends on a positive note with the hero's foolish mistakes and painful disappointments over and a life of usefulness ahead. Goethe's late 18th-century work Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship) is often cited as the classic example of this type of novel. Though the term is primarily applied to novels, in recent years, some English speakers have begun to apply the term to films that deal with a youthful character's coming-of-age. (Merriam-Webster)

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bête noire [bayt nwahr, bet nwar]

noun:
a person or thing that one particularly dislikes or dreads

Examples:

There’s plenty of satisfying comic justice to come when Salieri is left alone to his own devices - and to spend a lot of climactic alone time with the audience - long after his bête noire is gone. (Chris Willman, 'Amadeus' Review: Jefferson Mays Shines as a Funny and Frothing Salieri in a Gorgeously Mounted, Essential Revival at the Pasadena Playhouse, Variety, November 2018)

They are the bête noire of many nutritionists - mass-produced yet moreish foods like chicken nuggets, packaged snacks, fizzy drinks, ice cream or even sliced brown bread. (Philippa Roxby, Why we might never know the truth about ultra-processed foods, BBC, February 2026)

For me, shoes are the bête noire of packing, taking up so much space that I often just travel with the ones on my feet (Maria Adelmann, My Favorite Slippers Are Also Super Packable, New York Times, February 2025)

The word dog is the bête noire of English etymology. (Anatoly Liberman, Not a dog's chance, or one more impenetrable etymology, OUPblog, May 2016)

He was prepared to be as cold as a refrigerator, and the banker to follow his example, at finding this bête noire of the Chaussée d'Antin tête-à-tête with Nina. (Ouida, Beatrice Boville and Other Stories)

Origin:

1844, from French bête noire, literally 'the black beast'. For bête see beast; noire is from Latin niger (Online Etymology Dictionary)

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horripilation [haw-rip-uh-ley-shuhn, ho-]

noun:
a bristling of the hair of the head or body (as from fright or excitement); goose bumps

(click to enlarge)

I can’t have been the only person who spent the evening in a pretty much constant state of horripilation. (Alexis Soloski, Review: In 'All Is Calm,' Thrilling Song in the Trenches, New York Times, November 2018)

Goosebumps, chills, horripilation, nail-biting, and cold shivers were the many states many were left in at the Miss Malaika Fashion show after the arrival of Ghana's most renowned style icon, Nana Akua Addo. (Kwasy Danyels, How Nana Akua Addo Slayed At Miss Malaika Fashion Show In Her Stunning Outfit, Modern Ghana, October 2018)

Adrenaline stimulates tiny muscles to pull on the roots of our hairs, making them stand out from our skin. That distorts the skin, causing bumps to form. Call it horripilation, and you'll be right — bristling from cold or fear. (Adam Cole and Ryan Kellman, The Hair-Raising Science Of Goose Bumps, NPR, December 2019)

It seemed by its thorns to be in a state of perpetual horripilation, and by its roaming black antelopes to be rolling its eyes. (Norman Douglas, Old Calabria)

Suddenly he was swept by horripilation. The goosebumps swept up from his ankles all the way to the nape of his neck, where the hairs stirred and tried to stand up. (Stephen King, Under the Dome)

A wonderful desire and love impel men from distant regions to visit the holy spot, and the first sight of the Ka'abah causes awe and fear, horripilation and tears. (Sir Richard Francis Burton, Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah & Meccah)

Origin:

1650s, from Late Latin horripilationem (nominative horripilatio), noun of action from past participle stem of horripilare 'bristle with hairs, be shaggy,' from stem of horrere 'to bristle' + pilus 'hair'. The verb horripilate is attested from 1620s. (Online Etymology Dictionary)

Horripilation is a technical term for what happens when your hair stands up, such as when you’re cold, scared, or excited. We popularly call this goose bumps (or goose pimples, gooseflesh, or goose skin). Horripilation doesn’t only happen in humans. When some animals get startled or threatened, their fur raises in response. (When the fur becomes raised in this way on the neck, such as on a dog or cat, we say they’ve raised their hackles.)The same thing happens in humans, and is usually most noticeable in places where we don’t have much hair or the hair is very fine, such as the arms and neck. The verb horripilate means to trigger horripilation - to give someone goose bumps, as in Horror movies have the power to horripilate the viewer. It can also mean to experience horripilation - to get goose bumps. Example: A well-known example of horripilation in animals is the raising of a porcupine’s quills. (Dictionary.com)