Being enamored of Laurie R. King's writing, I snapped up her latest paperback* as soon as I learned it was available. This was another in the Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes series; it takes place primarily in India, and in it there are many references to "Kim", which I had never read. (Aside: she {the author} made me smile one time when Russell says to Holmes that she had thought Kim was fictional; he replies that Kim--whom he had met--was "as real as I am".)

Anyway, my interest was piqued enough that I took Ms. King's suggestion, and got "Kim" out of the library. I was glad that I had read the other book first; otherwise I wouldn't have gotten some of the references in "Kim", such as using the word tank for what the Russell character said we would call a pond, and the Ethnological Survey. Anyway, there were several terms in there that puzzled me, and if anyone can enlighten me on any of them, I would appreciate it. First, though, a word that Ms. King used: caparisoned. The character referred to both a camel and an elephant as being caparisoned...? Sounded almost like it could be a weird verbed form of carapace.

Okay, Kipling's words/terms:
Mavericks: some sort of Irish regiment; and
Mulligan guards, which was in a song sung by the Mavericks;

ne varietur--what Kim's father had called some sort of paper because those were the words written below his signature;

dewas--some kind of art work

Isabella-coloured clothes

contemning--our old friend

soft, black wideawake hat--worn by a Church of England chaplain

lusus naturoe--"Are there many more like you in India?" said Father Victor, "or are you by way o' being a lusus naturoe?" (p. 103)

hairpins of jade, ivory, and plasma

wry-necked (Haven't we had this one before, too?) "It was a wry-necked matter of unauthorised and incendiary correspondence..." (p. 177)

serai--this was in both books; also caravanserai.

I enjoyed reading about the Grand Trunk Road, which I had not heard of before; and I just loved this, of Kipling's:
"barracks...whose ceiling gave back his lonely footfall."



*I strongly prefer paperbacks because they take up far less shelf/bedstead space than hardbacks.