I’m currently reading The Duke and I and the author is constantly using the word “acerbic”. I had never heard of the word before now and had to google the definition. The word has shown up so much that I’m tempted to go through the book and count its appearances lol.
Have you noticed any authors having favorite words that they use page after page?
Brandon Sanderson loves the word adroit.
And “regardless”
Also the phrase: “(s)he raised an eyebrow”. He used that over 40 times in one of his books.
Also “(s)he pulled his/her mouth into a line.” Constantly in the Stormlight archive, at least.
And bemused.
Adroit, maladroitly. Several times in every book it seems like.
Is maladroitly an alloy of adroitly?
Not to mention the word “advent”!
Maladroitly in Mistborn. Ostentatious in Warbreaker.
Ostentation gets a pass because it’s a sin in 2/3 of the main character’s religion so it would make sense to come up a lot.
I seem to recall alacrity also being used quite often.
Only in his early books. Elantris, Mistborn. He’s grown out of it since then.
Yeah it was like 3 uses in first mist born. And only 1 in rest of series. But because it was there so much in the first book it became a meme. Uncertain about how much it was in Elantris.
He used it twice in one chapter in Yumi and the Nightmare Painter, which was released this year.
No, I read two of them in a single chapter in Yumi and the Nightmare Painter which is what reminded me.
Brandon Sanderson also has new favourite words/ expressions for each book. In one book, everyone did everything ‘for some reason’. It annoyed me so much. Especially since the reason was sometimes obvious (like someone being solemn for some reason after a character died.) I had a whole list of these words, a new bad habit for every new book, so to speak.
Not to mention the hundreds of times someone “paused” in his Mistborn series
“He frowned”