To untangle the knot of interlocking meanings of these painted words, each entry begins with a headword that is drawn out wordsmith author Phil Cousineau's own brief definition rendered in italics, filled in with a tint of etymology and a brushstroke quotes showing how the word is used, and ending with some touch up by way of companion words that offer a few variations. The words themselves range from the commonplace, such as biscuit, a twice-baked cake for Roman soldiers, to loanwords, like chaparral, from the Basque shepherds who came to the American West; words from the myths, such as hector; metamorphosis words, such as silly, which evolved 'holy' to 'goofy' in a mere thousand years; and words well worthy-of-revival, such as carrytale, a wandering storyteller. Whether old-fangled or new-fangled, they all possess that ineffable quality that Victoria Finlay refers to in her scintillating history of Color as the 'numinous in the luminous.'
