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Lead book review

Fizmer, feetings, flosh, blinter - enjoy these words and forget them immediately, advises Adam Nicolson

In a review of Landmarks by Robert Macfarlane Adam Nicolson reminds us that the most poetic descriptions of nature were once the everyday speech of ordinary countrymen

28 February 2015

9:00 AM

28 February 2015

9:00 AM

Landmarks Robert Macfarlane

Hamish Hamilton, pp.388, £20

Uncommon Ground: A Word-lover’s Guide to the British Landscape Dominick Tyler

Guardian Books/Faber, pp.247, £16.99

Wolfsnow is a dangerous blizzard at sea; slogger the sucking sound made by waves against a ship’s sides; ammil the sparkle of morning sunlight through hoar-frost; af’rug the reflection of a wave after it has struck the shore; blinter is a cold dazzle; sutering the cranky action of a rising heron; èit, a Gaelic word, is a piece of quartz placed in a moorland stream so that it glimmers in the moonlight and in that way attracts salmon in late summer and autumn; summer geese is steam that rises from the moor when rain is followed by hot sunshine; fizmer...

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