"On the third day of my compulsory idleness I crawled out near the grub wagon, and reclined helpless under the conversational fire of Judson Odom, the camp cook. Jud was a monologist by nature, whom Destiny, with customary blundering, had set in a profession wherein he was bereaved, for the greater portion of his time, of an audience."

Therefore, I was manna in the desert of Jud's obmutescence.

Webster's 1913 Dictionary

Definition: \Ob`mu*tes"cence\ ([o^]b`m[-u]*t[e^]s"sens), n. [L.
obmutescens, p. pr of obmutescere to become dumb; ob (see
{Ob-}) + mutescere to grow dumb, fr. mutus dumb.]
1. A becoming dumb; loss of speech. --Sir T. Browne.

2. A keeping silent or mute. --Paley.

Most excellent passage, wwh!! And what true psychological understanding is manifest there. Who wrote this passage? Very talented, whoever it was.

In another way, it's easy for a writer to create an obmutescent character because there's that much less dialogue to worry about.

Dear WW: many of these words were from O.Henry. He enjoys
challenging his readers with recondite references.

Well, it's a splendid passage and a splendid word, wwh! I'm off to Christmas dinner at my Aunt Jewel's (who is a jewel and everybody agrees here), but shall return later today to unearth a few more of your zero hits that are great fun to read through today in this time of jollity and relaxation.

Didn't everyone of you conjure up intumescence after reading obtumescence?

I will not comment about phenomenon immediately preceding detumescence. Oh, to be seventy five again!

And then there's triboluminescence of which we once discussed at length...but I suppose that's too much of a tangent, please forgive...

It would be hyperbole to write of triboluminesce preceding
detumescence. You can stretch a good thing too far, as the cowboy said when he saw his girlfriend riding astride.

You do notice, wwh, that the gutter police are off today for the holidays! And we are at least writing a lot of horses and cowboys and spurs and such at least...

What's a good Christmas Western?

Dear WW: Christmas Western reminds me of a very ribald story about in incident that happened to me long ago.
I might be able to tell it subtly enough in a PM to avoid
being too vulgar or self-aggrandizing.Maybe. All the guys downstairs thought it was very funny.

I'm just back on today, wwh, so do please tell your ribald story via PM. ...However, I don't think that it would do much harm to tell it here since there are only about a dozen or so of us who post here.