What is N+7?
1.
A literary technique invented by OuLiPo (look it up) in which words in a text are replaced by the 7th similar part of speech (7th adjective, 7th verb and so on) that occurs in a good dictionary.
By extension, the replacement of a word by the 7th later near-rhyme in a dictionary.
Harry Mathews, in replacing the word 'daffodils' by 'imbeciles' using N+7 in a famous Wordsworth poem, produced:
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden imbeciles;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the imbeciles.
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