English Language & Usage Asked on January 2, 2021
I am writing a play and have reached the conclusion where the main character utters a soliloquy of just how "despicably stupid" the concept of "living" and reaching the heights of "happiness" is. Everything has lead up to this most severe moment and thus I am in need of some personal insight.
I would like to ask of a word which profanely describes an "all-hating God" who gloats upon the face of his creation’s misery and woe.
So I am asking two questions:
firstly, what is a word or phrase (kenning) to describe an "All-Hating God" rather than the more illustriously thought of "all-hallow God."
And secondly, a word to describe "Life" most vulgarly (context: life is damned due to its, in the play’s context, "futile nature") and in an almost taboo sense. A word which would instantly put an audience at unease (along with of course the way the actor would say the line) when it is used in the connotation of a concept so "sacred" as "Life." (think of Macbeth’s "Out, out brief candle" effect).
Of course, I don’t expect a single word could so immensely affect a large-scale basis, but I am just in need of some overall opinions.
There is one catch thought, the word(s) must be confined to the vocabulary of the 17th century, more specifically, London 1660s, and I am being extremely uptight on the play’s language-timed-authenticity."
For this, I have been mainly using the wonderful and virtuous help of "etymonline.com"
In the 1660s any negative description of God would have been likely to have caused public outrage.
OED Historical Thesaurus:
To excrate:
a. transitive. To pronounce a curse upon; to declare accursed. to execrate out: to drive out with a curse. Obsolete. rare.
†b. Occasionally used by way of antithesis to consecrate: To make unholy. Obsolete. a1572 J. Knox Hist. Reformation Scotl. in Wks. (1846) I. 193 The bastard Bischope, who yit was not execrated (consecrated thei call it).
execrated adj. accursed, detested.
1660 R. Coke Elements Power & Subjection 174 in Justice Vindicated If any man who serves at the altar be accused of a crime..let him eat the execrated bread [mistranslation of OE. corsnǽd].
1790 Coll. Voy. round World IV. iv. 1371 We saw this execrated island at the distance of about four leagues.
Mortiferous
1. Bringing or causing spiritual death. Now rare.
1542 T. Becon Christmas Bankette sig. F.iij In the body of him, which without ony carnall entisementes & mortiferous delectacion was conceaued.
1654 H. Hammond Of Fund. in Notion viii. 73 While we make no distinction of sins, and deem every invincible infirmity..to be as dangerous and mortiferous as the most wilful act.2. Bringing or causing physical death; death-dealing, deadly.
2. Bringing or causing physical death; death-dealing, deadly.
1660 H. More Explan. Grand Myst. Godliness vi. x. 240 Burnt up by this mortiferous Fever.
a1600 (▸1535) W. Stewart tr. H. Boece Bk. Cron. Scotl. (1858) I. 20 The perelus poysoun, mortiferus melancolie,..In that distres hes done him for to de.
Edit to add You may find this useful: https://www.historyextra.com/period/medieval/damn-your-blood-swearing-in-early-modern-english/
Answered by Greybeard on January 2, 2021
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