How long does it take?

Check plus for sentences that name the speed of action.


Herman Melville, Moby Dick, 1851, Chapter XCIII. The Castaway
"Tashtego stood in the bows.  He was full of the fire of the hunt.  He hated Pip for a poltroon.  Snatching the boatknife from its sheath, he suspended its sharp edge over the line, and turning towards Stubb, exclaimed interrogatively, "Cut?"  Meantime, Pip's blue, choked face plainly looked, Do, for God's sake!  All passed in a flash.  In less than half a minute, this entire thing happened.
"Damn him, cut!" roared Stubb; and so the whale was lost and Pip was saved."


David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest, 1996, page 609 (see also page 871)
"Hester Thrale now has her pink-nailed hands over her eyes and is screaming over and over for nobody to hurt nobody especially her.  It's the Bulldog Item that holds the attention.  The two guys chasing Lenz around the Montego are unarmed but look coldly determined in a way Gately recognizes.  They're not wearing coats either but they don't look cold.  All this appraisal's taking only seconds; it only takes time to list it."


And here is a different idea that brought to mind the first two:
John le Carré, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, 1974, Chapter 37
"There are moments that are made up of too much stuff for them to be lived at the time they occur."

whippowill

Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, 1885

Chapter 1. I Discover Moses and the Bullrushers

"Then I set down in a chair by the window and tried to think of something cheerful, but it warn't no use.  I felt so lonesome I most wished I was dead.  The stars were shining, and the leaves rustled in the woods ever so mournful; and I heard an owl, away off, who-whooing about somebody that was dead, and a whippowill and a dog crying about somebody that was going to die; and the wind was trying to whisper something to me, and I couldn't make out what it was, and so it made the cold shivers run over me."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OreFuVSByE

eremia

David Foster Wallace, The Pale King, 2011, page 383
"Donne of course called it lethargie and for a time it seems conjoined somewhat with melancholy, saturninia, otiositas, tristitia - that is, to be confused with sloth and torpor and lassitude and eremia and vexation and distemper and attributed to spleen, for examle see Winchilsea's black jaundice, or of course Burton."


eremia |er-ay-mee'-ah|
a solitude, an uninhabited region, a waste
Etymology:  ecclesistical Greek ἐρημίτης , < ἐρημία a desert, <ἐρῆμος uninhabited.

obtundated

David Foster Wallace, The Pale King, 2011, page 365
"'More like stupefied.  They're full-timers.  Glazed.  What's the other word.  Average burn here's three years.  Obtundated is the word."


obtundation  |ob′tundā′shən|

a greatly reduced level of consciousness. The patient is not yet comatose but is close, arousing only with very strong stimulus.

Etymology: L, obtundere, to blunt, atus, process

Baker-Miller pink

David Foster Wallace, The Pale King, 2011, page 312
"Two walls' paneling painted over in Baker-Miller pink."

http://www.colourlovers.com/color/FF91AF/Baker_Miller_Pink


and


http://www.sptimes.com/2005/06/08/Tampabay/Gritty_and_pink.shtml

banausic

David Foster Wallace, The Pale King, 2011, page 229

“Continuing on without pause, he said, ‘Exacting?  Prosaic?  Banausic to the point of drudgery?  Sometimes.  Often tedious?  Perhaps.  But brave?  Worthy?  Fitting, sweet?  Romantic?  Chivalric?  Heroic?’”


banausic |bəˈnôzik; -sik|adjective formalnot operating on a refined or elevated level; mundane.• relating to technical work.ORIGIN mid 19th cent.: from Greek banausikos ‘of or for artisans.’

semions

David Foster Wallace, The Pale King, 2011, page 73

“Our mutual contract here is based on the presumptions of (a) my veracity, and (b) your understanding that any features or semions that might appear to undercut that veracity are in fact protective legal devices, not unlike the boilerplate that accompanies sweepstakes and civil contracts, and thus are not meant to be decoded or ‘read’ so much as merely acquiesced to as part of the cost of our doing business together, so to speak, in today’s commercial climate.


semion
A semion is technically part of an anyon, the latter of which is defined in the OED as "a particle having characteristics intermediate between those of fermions and bosons in two-dimensional space." However, it seems Wallace uses the word as a form closer to "semiotics." A later search reveals that semion is Greek for "sign."

From the Infinite Jest wiki:
http://infinitejest.wallacewiki.com/david-foster-wallace/index.php?title=Pages_87-127