Saturday, October 24, 2009

Excellent use of "costive"

The word "costive" was new to me - I was very delighted to discover it in this context: 

from Intermezzo:
His opening Scriabin selections were cleverly juxtaposed so that he was able to run them together without any breaks. Unfortunately, this served mainly to expose the limitations in his expressive range, bathing everything in the same rhapsodic impressionistic gloss. His posture - head flung back, costive grimace - seemed more a substitute for real engagement than an expression of it. 


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