If someone asks me why, I reach for the word velleity – desiring things you cannot hope to get
I keep a list of words that are strange to me. Any time I find one I half-know or do not recognise, it goes in the list. I find its existence reassuring, as if having more words at my disposal will make it easier to decode whatever confusing things happen to me each day.
The best word on my list is velleity. I found it in Don DeLillo’s Underworld (1997), in a section where a Jesuit priest is explaining to the main character, Nick Shay, the value of knowing the names for those things in danger of being lost to eternity. The priest teaches the word “velleity” to Nick. “Volition at its lowest ebb,” he calls it. “A small thing, a wish, a tendency.” He uses it in relation to his own life, to express regret at how it has passed. He has prayed a lot, sure, but what tangible things has he done in this world?
Lamorna Ash is the author of Dark, Salt, Clear: Life in a Cornish Fishing Town
