Quiicksilver means mercury.

In Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson, this week I read a description of the shipyard of the Dutch East India Company in Amsterdam, 1684:

This was a wonder all by itself, with its ropewalks–skinny buildings a third of a mile long–windmills grinding lead and boring gun-barrels, a steam-house, perpetually obnubilated, for bending wood, dozens of smoking and clanging smithys including two mighty ones where anchors were made, and a small tidy one for making nails, a tar factory on its own wee island so that when it burnt down it wouldn’t take the rest of the yard with it. pp. 480, 481

I actually know ropewalks, but only from the last few years. They’re buildings for making rope. Here’s a photo of a couple of people doing it outside that shows the amount of space you need.

making rope by Kristen Taylor, photo linked to original on Flickr

You can see that to make a long rope, protected from the weather, would require a long skinny building.

Obnubilated is new to me, although somewhat clear from context. It comes from Latin, ob- which means “in the way” — like obscure. Nubilare means “to be cloudy” and is also related our word nuance. Nebulous is related as well, but it came to English via a detour through Old High German. So, obnubilated is covered by clouds (of steam, in this case). That would be a good way to describe tall mountains or skyscrapers when you can’t see the tops due to clouds — they are obnubilated.

Wondrous Words Wednesday is hosted by Bermudaonion’s Weblog. Kathy says: “Wondrous Words Wednesday is a weekly meme where we share new (to us) words that we’ve encountered in our reading.”