The Snowflake Chronicles

Eponyms

Eponyms are defined as words derived from people's name and can be derived from both real people and fictional characters. The following are a few eponyms delived to one of my e-mail addres in the last week. I am subscribed to two different word of the day e-mail groups.

Dryasdust is from Jonas Dryasdust the person Sir Walter Scott dedicated some of his novels to. It means dry, dull or boring.

Prufrockian is from the poem The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot. It refers to someone who is timid and indecisive.

Cringeworthy is from an old English word - cringan which mean "to yield or shrink". Cringeworth refers to being extremely embarrased.

Schmendrik is from a character in an operetta by Abraham Goldfaden. It means foolish, clueless or naive.

Poindexter is from a character in Felix the Cat. This refers to someone who is extremely intelligent, but socially inept.

So I suppose if you used these as the names of character in a piece of of flash fiction you would not have to to a lot of description.