Books

I remember reading Mary Shelly's Frankenstein and seeing the word wretched everywhere.

I read the Lycans series by Jenika Snow. She uses the same phrases over and over, sometimes in back to back paragraphs. It was really annoying. "Long moments." "He didn't phrase it as a question." "Right now."

HP Lovecraft was rock fucking hard for the word "cyclopean"

Also "Non-Euclidean geometry"

I haven’t read Harry Potter since they came out, but I remember Rowling loved using the words “grin” and “I reckon”

Alan Moore loves "incidentally" anytime a character is changing a subject in a way that is not actually incidental at all.

Sniggerly- J K Rowling.

well... It's understandable, but in his last official novel, Raising Steam (released while he was still alive), Terry Pratchett used the phrase "not to put to fine a point on it" at least a dozen times.

Pratchett had early on-set Alzheimer's. His favorite band was They Might Be Giants, who have a big 1990 hit "Birdhouse In Your Soul" where the phrase is repeated as part of the chorus.

There are a LOT of foyers in Murderbot. Lol.

Jeff VanderMeer likes the term “middle distance”

Gene Wolfe liked the word “redoubt”

I was trying to read some online serial from a French guy who kept using 'Interlocutor'. I do not like that word

In the preface to Slow Learner, Thomas Pynchon makes fun of himself for overusing the word “tendril” in his early writing. It’s definitely there a lot but not so bad

Anytime I read “gaze” or “bare foot/hands/chest” in a story, I know it’ll be used often throughout. Especially if I read both. Lots of authors do it. I could turn it into a drinking game…

As in "acerbic wit"?

And yes, some words stand out. In several of his books including the Imager series, the Corean Chronicles, and his latest Councillor series, LE Modesitt Jr uses the word "eased" a lot.

When I first noticed it, he was doing it in the context of a horse being ridden. Eg. "Alucius eased the gray around the quarasote." It felt pretty natural to me. When I read his latest series and the same thing was used to describe a steam powered car being driven, it caught my attention. And then on a re-read of Imager, I noticed it was being applied to people's movement too.

Obviously, I don't have that big of a problem with it since I keep reading his books.

Robin Hobb: rebuke

Tamsyn Muir uses the words "deliquesce(nt)" and "pallid" a lot.

I'm guilty of variations of "incredulous" when people don't believe something.

Which horror author is it that notoriously loves the word “rump”?

Enzyme bonded concrete

James Luceno, Darth Paleguis, and the word genuflected. I'm not sure if I ever heard it before this book, but it sounds so fancy I kind of want to incorporate it into my speech, lol.

I love Megan Miranda but if she uses “from a remove” one more time I will scream.

If you you took a shot every time William Faulkner uses the word “recapitulation” you’d be almost as drunk as William Faulkner

Halo: Shadows of Reach.

Lechatelierite.

I remember reading through the Lensman books as a teenager, a few of which I had with me on a coach trip around Europe with the Scouts.

No-one wanted to sit next to me, because they all knew I was going to punch someone in frustration the next time I read the word "prodigious".

Reading a Warhammer book ATM and the author uses the word ochre like every other paragraph.

Haha, my most recent example of this is the exact one you used.

Yes. One book had everyone shrugging so much they had to have severe shoulder pain.