en-drag-uhn-ed | /ɛn ˈdræg ən ɛd/
The term endragoned was first used by Victorian poet Gerard Manley Hopkins in The Wreck of the Deutschland, where he writes “wind’s burly and beat of endragoned seas”, marrying the turmoil of raging seas to the primordial dragon of chaos.*
Hopkins was a prolific author of dramatic neologisms. He is credited with heavangravel for hailstones and inscape for inner essence. For thunderous skies animated by lightning, he coined goldfoil. Doomfire is another of Hopkins’ blends. Used in The Loss of the Eurydice to describe the fires of hell, it brings to mind the kind of sunsets that suggest an infernal calamity just over the horizon. It could equally describe the poet’s temperament. Hopkins was an intense and deeply religious man whose short life (he died at 44) was afflicted by depression and plagued with self-doubt.
Hopkins’ penchant for coining new terms was rivalled by James Joyce, who also turned his attention to the sublime drama of thunder and lightning, albeit with an altogether more playful approach. In Finnegans Wake, one of Joyce’s terms for thunder was the truly unhinged “bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk” – a 100-letter word concocted from parts of least 13 different languages. Whilst Hopkins tended towards high drama, Joyce was equally at home in both the major and minor keys. In Ulysses, he felt ripple didn’t sufficiently convey the play of light on disturbed water, improving on it with the altogether more satisfying ripripple.
* Hopkins may have specifically been referring to Rahab, the Hebrew water dragon associated with darkness and chaos.
Introduction Aeolian Alpenglow Apricity Asperous
Benthos Crepuscular Crispate Crown shyness
Desire lines Dreich Endragoned Edgelands
Frondescence Fumarole Gluggaveður Gossamer
Karst Komorebi Lawrence Long acre
Machair Monkey’s wedding Moonglade
Psithurism Quartz Rakuyou Roaring forties
Snag Soft estate Specular, diffuse and pellucid
Spoondrift Steam fog Swash zone Sylvan