Horizontal Fall

Kate, on the museum couch in limbo and apposition with the risible dramaturge Ryan and scurrilous Sam (he a kerf in her bedpost), let her malaise show by not masking her basilect—or showing alacrity—one mote while discussing the wallflower and pesade painting they sat across from.

• limbo: 1. often Limbo Roman Catholic Church The abode of unbaptized but innocent or righteous souls, as those of infants or virtuous individuals who lived before the coming of Christ. 2. A region or condition of oblivion or neglect: Management kept her promotion in limbo for months. 3. A state or place of confinement. 4. An intermediate place or state. WORD HISTORY: Our use of the word limbo to refer to states of oblivion, confinement, or transition is derived from the theological sense of Limbo as a place where souls remain that cannot enter heaven, for example, unbaptized infants. Limbo in Roman Catholic theology is located on the border of Hell, which explains the name chosen for it. The Latin word limbus, having meanings such as “an ornamental border to a fringe” and “a band or girdle,” was chosen by Christian theologians of the Middle Ages to denote this border region. English borrowed the word limbus directly, but the form that caught on in English, limbo, first recorded in a work composed around 1378, is from the ablative form of limbus, the form that would be used in expressions such as in limb, “in Limbo.”
• apposition: 1. Grammar a. A construction in which a noun or noun phrase is placed with another as an explanatory equivalent, both having the same syntactic relation to the other elements in the sentence; for example, Copley and the painter in The painter Copley was born in Boston. b. The relationship between such nouns or noun phrases. 2. A placing side by side or next to each other. 3. Biology The growth of successive layers of a cell wall.
• risible: 1. Relating to laughter or used in eliciting laughter. 2. Eliciting laughter; ludicrous. 3. Capable of laughing or inclined to laugh.
• dramaturge: A writer or adapter of plays; a playwright.
• scurrilous: 1. Given to the use of vulgar, coarse, or abusive language; foul-mouthed. 2. Expressed in vulgar, coarse, and abusive language.
• kerf: 1. A groove or notch made by a cutting tool, such as a saw or an ax. 2. The width of a groove made by a cutting tool.
• malaise: 1. A vague feeling of bodily discomfort, as at the beginning of an illness. 2. A general sense of depression or unease: “One year after the crash, the markets remain mired in a deep malaise” (New York Times).
• basilect: The variety of speech that is most remote from the prestige variety, especially in an area where a creole is spoken. For example, in Jamaica, Jamaican Creole is the basilect whereas Standard Jamaican English is the acrolect or prestige language.
• mote: A very small particle; a speck: “Dust motes hung in a slant of sunlight” (Anne Tyler).
• wallflower: 1a. Any of numerous herbs of the genus Erysimum of the mustard family, having fragrant yellow, orange, or brownish flowers. b. Any of several perennial herbs of the genus Cheiranthus, especially C. cheiri. 2. One who does not participate in the activity at a social event because of shyness or unpopularity. 3. A security, company, or industry that is out of favor with investors. WORD HISTORY: The sweet-smelling flowers of Cheiranthus cheiri came to be called wallflowers because they often grow on old walls, rocks, and quarries. The plant name is first recorded in 1578. It is not known who first made the comparison between these delicate flowers and the unpartnered women sitting along the wall at a dance, but the figurative sense is first found in an 1820 work by Mrs. Campbell Praed entitled County Ball. Although originally used to describe women at dances, the word is now applied to men as well and used in situations remote from a ballroom.
• pesade: The act or position of a horse when rearing on its hind legs with its forelegs in the air.