'Having the Nature or Form of Flowers'

Occasionally I encounter a word so lyrical or amusingly grotesque in its pronunciation or specialized in meaning that I add it to the word museum I carry around in my head. There’s little likelihood I’ll ever use such words in speech or print. I value clarity in language and using them would amount to showing off and confusing people. 

Reading the prose of Sir Thomas Browne yet again reliably contributes another exhibit to the cache. In this case, flosculous, found in Pseudodoxia Epidemica (1646), a volume usually known as Vulgar Errors. To my ear, flosculous sounds vaguely medical, perhaps describing a rare disorder of the kidney. All wrong. Here is the definition given by Dr. Johnson, in his Dictionary: “composed of flowers; having the nature or form of flowers.”

 

Here is one of Browne’s uses: “The outward part is a thick and carnous covering, and the second a dry and flosculous coat [of the nutmeg], commonly called Mace.” And the other: “Putting the dried Flowers of the Vine into new Wine to give it a flosculous race or spirit.” The most peculiar use comes in Chapter XXVI, “Of Sperma-Ceti, and the Sperma-Ceti Whale,” in which Browne describes whale oil:

 

“It flameth white and candent like Camphire, but dissolveth not in aqua fortis, like it. Some lumps containing about two ounces, kept ever since in water, afford a fresh, and flosculous smell.”

 

Presumably, that means a sweet smell, a floral scent, not what one expects from Moby-Dick. Flosculous hasn't been used since the 18th century. The first definition in the OED is “of, relating to, or of the nature of flowers; having the scent or fragrance of flowers.” Among the formally scientific definitions is “composed of floscules or florets.”

 

Browne is the seventy-third most frequently cited source in the OED, with more than 4,100 quotations. He is credited with coining nearly 800 words and establishing the modern usage of more than 1,600 others. In his Life of Browne (1756), Dr. Johnson defends Browne’s rococo word-horde:

 

“His style is, indeed, a tissue of many languages; a mixture of heterogeneous words, brought together from distant regions, with terms originally appropriated to one art, and drawn by violence into the service of another. He must, however, be confessed to have augmented our philosophical diction; and in defence of his uncommon words and expressions, we must consider, that he had uncommon sentiments, and was not content to express in many words that idea for which any language could supply a single term.”