Basic Saxon vs Latinate Construction for Beginners and Obsessives

You will often find that beginner writers describe ineffable experiences with conceptual, abstract language, perhaps thinking that the subject matter and method of expression should somehow match. But one does well to do the absolute opposite. Taking something that’s already difficult to describe (like a revelation or emotional breakdown) and describing it in overly thoughtful language is like pouring mud into coffee. Instead, I suggest opting for something more visceral.

See Harlan Ellison describing an out-of-body experience of death in the short story “Cold Friend”:

But when I died, it was as if I was strapped flat to the front of a subway car, spreadeagled to the wall, facing down the tunnel, into the blackness, and the subway car was hurtling along at a million miles an hour. I was utterly helpless. The air was being sucked out of my lungs and the train just slammed down that tunnel toward a little point of light.

These simple sentences are conversational, almost casual, which gives brain-gluing contrast to the immensity of the experience, and phrases like “spreadeagled to the wall” go right for the body. “Million miles an hour” is a ridiculous Latinate exaggeration but it still works in context and helps sell the air being “sucked” and the train that “slammed” down the tunnel to a “little point of light” (Saxon) rather than “sudden illumination” (Latinate).

You could imagine how this sentence might read with more Latinate construction:

But when I died, it was as if I was pinioned to the front of a subterranean vehicle accelerating to an ultimate terminus of tenebrous infinity. All oxygen was vacuumed from my lungs as the vehicle plunged toward a miniscule point of sudden illumination.

It’s not that the Latinate version lacks all feeling or fails to describe what is happening, but the intellectual tone makes the death seem almost satirical. It just doesn’t work.

Farnsworth’s contrast principle works at the word level: small Saxon words carrying large meanings, “the contrast between the size of the meanings and the size of the words.” A related move runs the same cheat code at passage length. Pile up concrete, gritty particulars and let the passage resolve into an abstract phrase at the end. The contrast between the lowly setup and the abstract payoff is what makes it land.

See Robert Bloch in “I Like Blondes”:

And yet there were some prize heifers here. I don’t mean to be crude in the least; merely honest. Here, in the reeking cheap-perfume-deodorant-cigarette-smoke-talcum-scented mist of music and minglement, strange beauty blossomed.

Bloch piles up almost aggressively physical, Saxon-flavored sensory junk (“prize heifers,” chained with “reeking cheap-perfume-deodorant-cigarette-smoke-talcum-scented mist”) and then lands the abstraction: “strange beauty blossomed.” The finish earns its weight precisely because of the cheap, bodily setup it rises out of. (Bonus points: “minglement” is a Latinate suffix bolted onto a Saxon root, a tiny mongrel coinage inside a passage about strange beauty emerging from bestial origins. A home run. At least he didn’t say “amalgamation.”)

If you want to get really master level, you can try merging the abstract so closely with the concrete descriptions that the reader will never know the difference, but feel suddenly swept away by the force of your prose:

See J.G. Ballard from Crash:

In the later photographs the bruises that were to mask her face began to appear, like the outlines of a second personality, a preview of the hidden faces of her psyche which would have emerged only in late middle age. I was struck by the prim lines these bruises formed around her broad mouth. These morbid depressions were like those of a self-centered spinster with a history of unhappy affairs.

Notice that there’s no abstract closer here because there’s no concrete setup either. Every sentence is doing both jobs at once: “bruises like the outlines of a second personality” is a physical mark and a psychological reading in a single image; “prim lines these bruises formed around her broad mouth” fuses the literal anatomy with a character judgment; even “morbid depressions” works as both the sunken bruise and the inner state. The etymology tracks the fusion at the word level too: the body words are mostly Saxon (“bruises,” “face,” “mouth,” “broad,” “struck,” “hidden”), the psychological words mostly Latinate (“personality,” “preview,” “psyche,” “emerged,” “morbid depressions,” “affairs”), and Ballard interweaves them inside the same sentences instead of splitting them into setup and payoff.