He stood, fumbling with a cigarette, blinking and pale... viewing the looming gables and mad cheminations of Pawtaw with unconcealed mistrust.

-- Michael Chabon, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay

A word invented by Michael Chabon in his recent Pulitzer Prize winning novel. He also invented aetataureate and perhaps some others he can't recall. He says chemination refers to the way a house is furnished with chimneys, and is by analogy with fenestration.

He admits that camination would be better formed, as the sequence is English chimney < French cheminée < Latin caminus < Greek kaminos 'furnace', but it sounded less like what he meant. He wanted to keep the ch sound of chimney. (Note that it's nothing to do with chemistry with its k-.)


As an aside, somewhere along the line the meaning 'road, way' arrived: French chemin, Spanish camino, but I can't explain why.

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