palimpsestuous
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 0.00 in modern English
20
Scrabble Score
14
Letters
3
Syllables
10
Unique Chars
Meaning
adj
Pertaining to the textual relationality of a palimpsest; referential to earlier works or self-referential between several meanings of a single text.
Example Sentences
- "But this missive from Boston may be taken as a palimpcestuous précis of Finnegans Wake itself"
- "In a palimpsestuous reading, the hypertext, or the original, always stands to gain by having its hypertextual status perceived."
- "All adaptations are palimpsestuous (Hutcheon 2006), and Holmes's “are perhaps the most palimpsestuous of all popular-cultural reworkings" (McCaw 2013:36)"
- "Nonetheless, Tuyen combines the planned part of her artwork, the book of longings, with found objects and parts of previous projects, which again makes the artwork resemble a more palimpsestuous structure."
- "What renders these poems valuable in a post-Writing Culture context of contested cultural representation is a peculiar, palimpsestuous quality."
Etymology
From palimpsest + -ous by surface analysis, but also a humorous blend of palimpsest (“a text with several layers”) + incestuous (“involving relationships between related things”). Coined by Anthony Burgess (as palimpcestuous, with a suggested alternative form palincestuous to make the connection with incestuous clearer) to describe self-reference and the use of wordplay in the works of James Joyce.
Word Breakdown
Inflected Forms
more palimpsestuous (comparative)
most palimpsestuous (superlative)
palimpcestuous (alternative)
palincestuous (alternative)