grimly

[macfotuk at yahoo.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 114499


--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Geoff Bannister" 
<gbannister10 at a...> wrote:
> 
> --- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "mhbobbin" <mhbobbin at y...> 
> wrote:
> 
> mhbobbin:
> > I've not done an exhaustive rereading of all the books for this 
but 
> > I ask the group to keep an eye out for it.  And let it be known 
if 
> > you find another character with that adverb description.
> > 
> > It may be nothing, of course. Just an coincidental figure of 
speech.
> 
> Geoff:
> But don't forget of course that Sirius often transfroms into a 
large 
> black dog Grim-ly. :-)
> 
> Or am I barking up the wrong tree?
> 
> Geoff

Mac: While I must admit to not having made the connect between 'the 
grim' (PoA) and Grimmauld (Grim old) place, let alone the 
word 'grimly' to describe a person's demeanour, I do believe JKR 
like any author, has a penchant for certain words.

She often uses the word 'muttered' (I'd always read muttered to mean 
what people do among one another, usually in hushed voices), but JKR 
uses it as a descriptor of a character (usually Harry) saying a 
spell soto voce/surreptitiosly. She likes the word tawny (hence wild 
speculations about H-BP since it was a word in the quote 'revealed' 
on her website) and there are a few more besides (sorry I can't 
recall more to quote them, but I'm sure you've noticed yourselves).

For some reason it has stuck in mind that a few years back BBC radio 
4 (British public radio channel) had a program in which it was 
stated that some academic had analysed famous works (Thackaray, 
Shakespeare, Tolkien, Dickens, Austen etc) for the occurrences of 
particular words to show that not only did each have their 
particular favourites, but that these were absolutley diagnaostic of 
the author (so could be used almost forensically to determine if 
unpblished/previously undiscovered works attributed to the 
particular author were, in fact, by them). Thus, JKR's key words 
might be tawny, mutter and grim. I'm sure you can think of others 
she uses that are not otherwise commonly used. It's the type of 
thing that makes us laugh, scream, wince at fan fiction and know, 
instantly, that the author, has no connect whatsoever with 
the 'real' JKR.