In a review of Double Down, Mark Halperin and John Heilemann's behind-the-scenes story of the 2012 election, Michiko Kakutani of The New York Times chides Halerin and Heilemann for their "caffeinated prose," noting the presence of coriaceous in particular.
The authors’ taste for highly caffeinated prose can sometimes feel forced (they describe Gov. Christie, for instance, as having a “capacious personality and a coriaceous hide”), but for the most part they succeed in taking readers interested in the backstabbing and backstage maneuvering of the 2012 campaign behind the curtains, providing a tactile, if sometimes “fast and hammy,” sense of what it looked like from the inside.
Coriaceous means "leathery" or "tough" and it's not a word you see everyday. In fact, the usage tracker on coriacesous's dictionary page on Vocabulary.com shows zero uses in news, business, or arts and culture contexts. Instead, coriaceous crops up in scientific descriptions of plants, as in:
To understand why Halperin and Heilemann felt the need to conscript coriaceous from the pages of botanists' notebooks, we need to first look at the preceding "capacious personality." Capacious means "roomy," (literally "full of" -ous + capacity, "the amount a person or thing can hold or do"). It's a word that works to describe Christie on many levels. So, one can understand why they used it and also the temptation to follow it with the alliterative and rhyming coriaceous. Would anyone really want them to write "capacious personality and thick skin" instead?
Maybe so. Vocabulary.com lexicographer Ben Zimmer writes here about Balitimore Sun readers protesting the appearance of limn in a headline. Should writers shy away from words if they think there's a chance their readers might not know what they mean? Did limn signal a writer hitting the espresso a little too hard?
What do you think? Let us know in a comment below. But before you do, note that for coriaceous-complainer Kakutani, the offending limn turns out to be a favorite word.
