Uncommon and unusual words

Continuing a thread of uncommon and unusual words encountered in reading or cataloguing.

Where that original thread has gone, and even whether it was in the Green Dragon, is anyone's guess.

Two for the price of one in the first words of Forrest Reid, Illustrators of the eighteen sixties : an illustrated survey of the work of 58 British artists:

"Having grouped the following notes and divagations under the general title of Illustrators of the Sixties, I must explain that the word 'Sixties' has been used here to describe a movement rather than a decade." (Chapter I. Prolegomena).

Divagation. deviation, digression, 1550s, from Latin divagatus, past participle of divagari "to wander about," from dis (apart) + vagari (to wander, ramble). Compare vagrant.

Prolegomena. prefatory remarks; specifically a formal essay or critical discussion serving to introduce and interpret an extended work.

I don't know if this is uncommon or unusual, but it's the first time I've come across it, enislement to isolate or set apart. It doesn't come up when Googled, although when I insisted the search for the word I spelled it did give me enisle. The author (M.F.K. Fisher) used it to describe the subtle, but well mannered exclusion of her Episcopalian family from the Quaker neighborhood.

>3 MrsLee:
Is it derived from a notion of making someone, or a group, an island/isle? The en-isle, with en-isle-ment being the process? Just a thought.

ETA: I just Googled "enisle" and it gave me:
isolate on or as if on an island.
"in the sea of life enisled, we mortal millions live alone"

>4 pgmcc: Yes, I like the word. Said to an enemy; "I will enisle you!" That is the more merciful threat than annihilate you. ;)

>5 MrsLee:
I can hear the polite daleks screaming, "You will be enisleated!" "Enisleate! Enisleate! Enisleate!"

>6 pgmcc: :D

>6 pgmcc: LOLOL!

This week I learned scranbag, from Miss Pym Disposes. Which was, apparently in this case, a meal of assembled leftovers. (But usually meant a bag for holding scraps of food.)

Today I learned that cutting toast into soldiers means into long strips. That one is from The Chalk Pit.

>8 clamairy:
Yes, toast was cut into soldiers so they could be dipped into soft boiled egg and eaten.

E.T.A.:

>9 pgmcc: Yum!

That picture makes me want a soft boiled egg. It has been too long since I ate one.

It has been months and months since I've dropped in to add a book, or look for a conversation. But I'd like to say, I'll start hanging out here more soon.

I first heard of cutting toast into soldiers from one of Terry Pratchett's books. Night Watch, I think? I had to go look it up because my mind was presenting me with the little string of paper dolls you cut out of a single folded sheet of paper, except with little old fashioned soldier-y hats and rifles. Which obviously wouldn't work, but it made me laugh :)

>12 antqueen: I also wondered at first if the bread slices were trimmed into people shapes, and then toasted!

>8 clamairy: Do I detect yet another concept to be filed under "two nations divided by a common language"? Having been brought up in the "Empah", I'm sure I was introduced to toast cut into soldiers at my mother's knee before I was four! I suspect that Haydninvienna could say the same, but more so.

>14 hfglen: I do say the same!

Toast is often cut into points here. So you end up with four triangles. That is also excellent for yolk dipping. Though I can see how the soldiers would work well if the soft boiled eggs were kept in the shell.

>14 hfglen: I've heard the term soldiers on cooking shows here, though it isn't common.

>14 hfglen: I suspect it might depend on the part of the country one is raised in here, and whether one's parents were anglophiles or not. I never heard the term soldiers until I was reading British murder mysteries, then I think someone here explained the term to me. As clamairy said, we had what we called triangles.

>16 clamairy: My mother did! And now I need somebody to correct my knowledge of The Classics, and Gulliver's Travels in particular. Wasn't it the Brobdignagians who had a civil war about whether to open a boiled egg at the broad or narrow end? (Prior to dipping toast soldiers into the runny yolk, of course.)

>19 hfglen: The war was between Lilliput and Blefuscu.

Triangles are for tiny sandwiches. They couldn't possibly get deep enough to get all the yolk out of the egg. Besides, you need to line up your soldiers before you send them one by one to their glorious yolky heroic deaths.

I had thought that the Commonwealth was an anachronistic waste of space. Now i realise that it had but one invaluable service to render mankind: toast soldiers.

>21 MrAndrew: ❤️

Not exactly a new word, but a new (to me) expression. Sea change. I was reading one of the essays in M.F.K. Fisher's book today and she mentioned it referring to the different behavior of men and women while they were at sea. I thought it was a phrase she worked up.

A bit later today, I'm reading The Sea Runners, and here it is again with the leader pondering his cohorts possible reactions when they have made their escape in a canoe.

Bizarre to come across it twice in one day in such different books. Apparently it comes from a line in The Tempest, when Ariel is singing of the change the sea has made on a body resting at the bottom of the ocean. Now it is used to infer that huge shifts in attitude must happen before great changes occur.

>23 MrsLee:
I have found the expression as fairly common usage here. Some one might describe a new situation as a bit of a sea change. It could relate to a change in management in an organisation, or, as you say, a change in attitude in a population. It is, of course, a metaphor based on a change in weather conditions at sea, the implication being the people affected have to be alert to what is happening around them to be able to navigate their way through.

A radical change in government policy could be called a sea change.

>23 MrsLee: & >24 pgmcc: I've heard and read it a fair amount, too. And isn't it part of the lyrics of some famous song?

It has been a very common expression in the media here for some time, specifically relating to people who move from the city to smaller seaside towns for lifestyle reasons. It has been pretty much superseded since the pandemic lockdowns by tree change, referring to city people who move to regional areas for lifestyle reasons (mostly because the real estate in the seaside towns had become prohibitively expensive).

It was also the name of a very popular local TV show in 1998, about a woman who, well, moves to a seaside town.

Not sure which song your thinking of, but Stevie Nicks did sing "the sea changes colour but the sea does not change", which i think is accurate.

>26 MrAndrew: I think this song predates Fleetwood Mac. I tried to use Google, but there are over 10,000 lyrics containing the term 'sea change.'

I guess it took seeing "sea change" twice in one day in two different books to make me pay attention to it. Interesting that in both the references in my books used it to refer to the change in personality which comes over a man or woman when they are on a vessel in the middle of an ocean, or at the mercy of the ocean. That seems more apt than many of the modern usages.

>28 MrsLee: It doesn't take much time for words or expectations to shift meaning these days.

Just occurred to me to search LT for books whose title is or includes “sea change”. I got 937 “editions”. One of them, Sea Change by Richard Armstrong, was one of my set books in grade 8 at school.

>26 MrAndrew: >27 clamairy: The song is 'Edge of Seventeen'.

"The clouds never expect it when it rains
But the sea changes colours
But the sea does not change
So with the slow, graceful flow of age
I went forth with an age old desire to please
On the edge of seventeen"

Another Soldier fan here, from early age. Surprised to find it as one of the terms not common over the pond.

Stephen donaldson is the usual suspect when looking for unusual words of very specific meaning. Eidetic was the first time I'd had to look-up a word in a novel - meaning near perfect recall.

Oh, i'd forgotten eidetic. Strange.

It seems that the expression sea change has undergone a... you know.

>32 reading_fox:
I had friends who, when I used the term “photographic memory”, would correct me and say, “What you mean is an eidetic memory”. Note the use of the word, “had”.
:-)

My new word this week is logomachy , encountered in a Michael Innis novel. It means an argument about words.

I don't think I had ever known that the phrase "sea change" had to do with what happens to people on long voyages. One wonders how much of it is the underlying cause of "shipboard romances".

I ran into 'supererogatory' in Guns of August. Not sure I'd ever seen that one before.

"Thews" From Conan Stories. Muscles, I believe the word is referring to.

I'm currently reading The Mountain in the Sea and finding it to be challenging, speculative science fiction. The first word I encountered where I wondered if the author had made up the vocabulary was exapt a biological term which is defined as "a verb that means to repurpose a pre-existing function or adaptation".

The second word with which I was unfamiliar was qualia, "the qualities or feelings that make up our subjective experiences".

Eric Rosenthal (of blessed memory) describes a Johannesburg old-timer in Shovel and Sieve as wearing a puggaree around his hat. The omniscient Google tells me this was a lightweight scarf that could be used as a hatband or lowered as sun-protection for the back of the neck.

>39 hfglen: This page has quite a bit of info about the puggaree worn on the Australian Army's felt hat.

From another board ~ Petrichor. It's that earthy smell produced when rain falls on dry soil.

I first encountered "tatterdemalion" (a person in tattered clothing) in the DC comic "Ragman: The Tattered Tatterdemalion of Justice". I liked it so much, I used it in my own writing. I was then pleased to see it turn up in Richard Raley's "The Foul Mouth and the Cat-Killing Coyotes."

Having inherited an interest in reading Rudyard Kipling from my father, I recall needing to look up a number of words, for some of which I failed to find a satisfactory definition. One that did have a result (and that comes to mind) was "pilchard" from "Stalky & Co." A moment's thought might have made the connection to "chard," which I knew was a type of fish. But the "this side of the pond" term might be "sardine."

>41 UncleMort: I don't remember what I was reading, but I do remember that the first time I saw the word petrichor I was delighted that there was really, truly a word for that. I still smell it every time I see it.

>42 stuartperegrine: To me a pilchard is an adult Portuguese-sardine, which is a different species from a Brisling sardine, which is a baby herring. Here pilchards come in round 410-gram cans and tend to be, er, aromatic (not in a good way) when the can is opened -- and that's before they go off!

>42 stuartperegrine: For me as a child, here in the UK, pilchards came in tins in a tomato sauce (e.g. https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/254863672 ). It was the stereotypical Saturday tea, with bread and salad (then basically lettuce, cucumber and tomato, with perhaps radish or celery), watching the professional wrestling and the football results, before Dr Who came on.

Edited to tweak the URL.

>45 Cynfelyn: Sorry pardon, but that link gave me an error 404. This one might work, though.

>46 hfglen: My bad. The closing bracket got attached to the URL.

>47 Cynfelyn: Ah! It now works. I'd be curious to know where yours is packed, as I have an idea that here both brands come out of the same factory, which is physically located in Saldanha Bay next to the harbour.

Encountered the word tantalus in of all places Agatha Christie's Murcer on the Links. It's a carrying tray for bottles with a little wooden piece on the top with holes that fit around the neck of those bottles to steady them in the carrier.

>49 jillmwo: As seen in all Victorian house museums here. The bottles (normally 3 of them) are usually square in cross section, and made of cut glass. The contents are indicated by engraved silver tags on chains around the necks. IIRC there's a piece in one of the Discworld books where, in order to confuse the servants, the tags were spelt backwards: Nig, Ydnarb and Yksihw (sorry, Pete!). He observes that the servants may well see to it that at least one of the bottles is topped up with Eniru.

>50 hfglen: I had seen the decanters you describe; I know my parents had some of that description, including the little tag necklaces (not sure they were engraved silver but certainly not spelled backwards). What I was unfamiliar with was the "tray" in which they were supposed to reside. Christie only mentions that the tray was sitting on a "rather handsome oaken sideboard".

>19 hfglen: If I recall correctly, that would be the Big-Endians and the Little-Endians.

"Petrichor" as in what most of us think of as the "smell of rain, especially following a warm dry spell." Encountered in the Incryptid series, by Seanan McGuire

I'm working my way through the Guardian's backlog of literary top ten columns. Today's, from 2011-07-27, is Lil Chase's top 10 unwords:

https://www.librarything.com/topic/341768#8267752

>54 Cynfelyn: I liked the blurb on 'phonies'. Also, if Heffalump in the list, shouldn't it also include Woozle?

>38 jillmwo: I just finished The Mountain in the Sea a couple of days ago. Great book! I too had to stop and look up exapt.

Now I am reading Ruthanna Emry's Deep Roots and stumbled upon another new-to-me word: prosody...

1. the patterns of rhythm and sound used in poetry.
2. The patterns of stress and intonation in a language.

Another new word (to me at least), again from the Guardian's backlog of literary top tens, this time of top 10 siblings' stories, 2012-02-15:

pandar

"From Chaucer's character Pandare (in Troilus and Criseyde), from Italian Pandaro (found in Boccaccio), from Latin Pandarus, from Ancient Greek Πάνδαρος (Pándaros). ... (obsolete) A person who furthers the illicit love affairs of others; a pimp or procurer, especially when male". (Wiktionary).

Used in relation to Mrs Penniman in Henry James, Washington Square, "pimp or procurer" sounds a bit harsh. I don't know, but I imagine, like the narrator in L. P. Hartley, The go-between and its film adaptation, Mrs Penniman is more of a "furtherer" than a "procurer".

>57 Cynfelyn: Robert Graves, I, Claudius, uses pander several times, rather than pandar, for example, as the increasingly mad Caligula says to the increasingly nervous Claudius:

'She's your cousin Messalina, Barbatus's daughter. The old pander didn't utter a word of protest when I asked for her to be sent along to me. What cowards they are, after all, Claudius!'

The modern use of 'pandering' is a real weakening of the original meaning.

Subnivean.

>59 MrAndrew: Nice.

>59 MrAndrew: I didn't know that one either.

>59 MrAndrew: >60 clamairy: >62 jillmwo:

I thought it meant underneath the moisturising cream.

>63 pgmcc: It should probably mean this as well. Why not? LOL

>59 MrAndrew: Such a nice word!

From one of H C Bailey's short stories on Project Gutenberg, "The President of San Isidro": "[Mr Fortune] ... took out of his pocket a flat case like a housewife." (The "flat case" contains a set of lock-picking tools.) This looks like a rather weird error, but it isn't. In the British Army (then and perhaps now), soldiers were issued with a small sewing kit, called a "housewife", pronounced "huzzif". See here. For an Australian Army example see here.

Salience

The word is: Jouissance

Context (encountered in a marketing blurb on the back of a book): White salutes the perfectly useless jouissance of readerly absorption.

Frequently, the word is translated as "enjoyment" but from what I have gathered, it is supposed to mean a more intense experience -- pleasure near to the point of painful ecstasy.

>67 jillmwo:
Ouch!

Hurt me, baby!

>68 pgmcc: Let's keep the conversation within the bounds of community standards for decency and purity in here, please.

Sir Terry on his favourite word:

... if an oily surface made a noise it would go glisten. And bliss sounds like a soft meringue melting on a warm plate. But I'll plump for:
SUSURRATION
.. . from the Latin susurrus, whisper or rustling, which is exactly what it sounds like. It's a hushed noise. But it hints of plots and secrets and people turning to one another in surprise. It's the noise, in fact, made just after the sword is withdrawn from the stone and just before the cheering starts.

From "The Choice Word", in A Slip of the Keyboard, p 12.

>70 haydninvienna: That's a lovely quote! (And I agree, susurration is a great word.)

A word not unfamiliar to me, but it's been a long time since I heard it: tatterdemalion.

Used to describe the appearance of mountain men when once they made their way back to civilization. My grandma used to use it a lot to apologize for the way she was dressed when she came in from the garden in her bathrobe.

>72 MrsLee:
Why did your grandma bathe in the garden? Was she a bit of an exhibitionist?

>73 pgmcc: :D She would get out of bed, put her robe on, glance out the window and see something she wanted to investigate closer, go outside, see a weed that needed pulling, and two or three hours later realize that she should probably go in and get dressed. She loved her garden.

>74 MrsLee:
Is that her story or yours?
:-)

>75 pgmcc: I am a witness! :D I won't vouch for her when she was out camping though. There are written stories which suggest that would be unwise.

>76 MrsLee:
:-)

>76 MrsLee: You remind me of a late and much-missed lady botanist who used to take newly-arrived young colleagues up Table Mountain (Cape Town). At a certain point she used to direct them to go and look in a gorge for prize rarities while she went the other way, past a couple of "No Swimming in the Reservoir" signs and skinny-dip (at the age of 70+) in a dam that supplied the city below with drinking water.

The Oxford English Dictionary has announced (either yesterday or today) addition of 20+ Japanese vocabulary words to the OED. I thought these two paragraphs might be of particular interest here:

Also included in this update are two words for distinctively Japanese forms of entertainment: isekai and tokusatsu. Isekai is a Japanese genre of science or fantasy fiction featuring a protagonist who is transported to or reincarnated in a different, strange, or unfamiliar world. The word in Japanese was originally used in the literal sense of ‘other world’ in Haruka Takachiho’s novel Isekai no Yushi (The Warrior from the Other World), published in 1975. A recent cinematic example is Hayao Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli film The Boy and the Heron, which has recently won the Oscar, Golden Globe, and BAFTA awards for best animated feature film.

Tokusatsu is a genre of Japanese film or television entertainment characterized by the use of practical special effects, usually featuring giant monsters, transforming robots, and masked and costumed superheroes. The word is short for tokushu-satsuei, which literally means ‘special photography, special visual) effects’, a combination of tokushu- ‘special’ and + satsuei ‘action of photographing’, or in film, ‘shot, take’. Director Eiji Tsuburaya pioneered practical special effects techniques in the 1940s and 50s which were used in such classic tokusatsu films as Godzilla (1954), as well as in several tokusatsu television series. Later tokusatsu TV series of the 1970s, 80s, and 90s were popular both in Japan and internationally. An early example of the genre, Masked Rider, first aired in 1971 and remains an enduring TV favourite in Japan to this day.

For more see: https://www.oed.com/discover/words-from-the-land-of-the-rising-sun

>79 jillmwo: Cool! I like this piece of news. (I am quite tired of all the isekai anime series, though...)

Pembrokeshire Record Office, Recipes for your ancestors, includes recipes for snail water and swallow water (both 1698), and for orange water (18 cent.), including:

To make swallow water
Take 40 or 50 Swallows when they are ready to fly from their nest, bruise them to pap in a stone mortar feathers and all, then adde to it 2 ounces of Castoreum broken to powder, and 3 pints of strong white wine vinegar, mix all these very well together and still it in a Cold Still, you may draw from it a pint of very good water, more may be drawn but it will be weaker.

Sounds pretty grim. No idea what these 'waters' were used for. And "swallow water" is one of those word combinations that makes Googling impracticle. A 1671 snail water recipe online says:

"This Water is good against all Obstructions whatsoever. It cureth a Consumption and Dropsie, the stopping of the Stomach and Liver. It may be distilled with milk for weak people and children, with Harts-tongue and Elecampance."

Not an uncommon word, but as I am reading a book from the 1800s, I came across the word "sanguine." Earlier meanings could be "bloodthirsty" or "bloody" as in lots of blood, not the swear word. Most used now to mean a cheerful outlook on life. I read the history of how this meaning came about, but for fun have decided to apply the "bloodthirsty" meaning when I come across an author using it.

Washington Irving in Bracebridge Hall
"The volumes which I have already published have met with a reception far beyond my most sanguine expectations." So, did they cause a terrible war to break out? Perhaps only a murder or two because I'm not clear what his bloodthirsty expectations were. They might be small, but really I think more than one killing.

I've always thought of sanguine as chill, based on context. I like substituting bloodthirsty. We should do that for more words.

Unrelated:
Infusoria The War of the Worlds
Protozoa, amoeba, copepods, cyclops etc etc

>84 MrAndrew: So called because the Victorian way of harvesting them involved infusing hay in clean water.

Someone at my office posted this word for the day, which I thought was quite lovely:

Oubaitori (n), the idea that people, like flowers, bloom in their own time and in their individual ways.

>86 ludmillalotaria: I love this! Is it Japanese?

>87 Sakerfalcon: Yes, it is Japanese.

>85 hfglen: thanks Hugh! My cursory investigation didn't uncover that. I shared it with the workmate that originated the word, and he was suitably impressed. You're the Cyrano to my Christian (in a purely platonic relationship, d'accord!).

>86 ludmillalotaria: This is awesome.

aerious (I'll have all the vowels, thanks. Oh come on, you can't be aerious!).

caeruleaphile

>91 MrAndrew: a lover of the colour sky-blue

Sesquipedalian.

"A word that's very long and multisyllabic. For example the word sesquipedalian is in fact sesquipedalian."

"Sesquipedalian can also be used to describe someone or something that overuses big words, like a philosophy professor or a chemistry textbook."

I have seen/heard even longer words described as hippopotamosesquipedalian.

Encountered this one over breakfast this am -- Otiose -- in an introduction to Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. The author wasn't saying this was a fault of Austen, but rather a fault of various academic writers in commenting on Austen. The word otiose itself means "serving no practical purpose or result".

>95 jillmwo: A very useful word ;)

>96 Alexandra_book_life: It could certainly not be described as otiose.

We live in the Otiosecene.

Petrichor: 'a pleasant smell that frequently accompanies the first rain after a long period of warm, dry weather'

>99 superboy: ha >53 stuartperegrine:. It's a good word. btw the first rain after a dry spell is bad for motorcyclists. Although grass and foliage does smell great.

>100 MrAndrew: Not only motorcyclists. Especially if the dry spell has lasted all winter (about 5 months) as it usually does on the Highveld.

>99 superboy: I am always trying to remember that word!

Petra is rock, and chor is fluid, maybe I can remember it if I know the roots.

This is from Oxford Languages:

Origin

1960s: blend of petro- ‘relating to rocks’ (the smell is believed to be caused by a liquid mixture of organic compounds which collects in the ground) and ichor.

Two for the price of one, from J. L. & Barbara Hammond, The village labourer, vol. i, ch. vi, 'The remedies of 1795', discussing Pitt's Poor Law Reform Bill 1797:

    "The most celebrated and deadly criticism came from Bentham, who is often supposed to have killed the Bill. Some of
    his objections are captious and eristical, and he is a good deal less than just to the good elements of the scheme."

captious : "a readiness to detect trivial faults or raise objections on trivial grounds".

eristical : "given to disputation for its own sake and often employing specious arguments".

Another one from J. L. & Barbara Hammond, The village labourer, vol. i, ch. vii, 'After Speenhamland', discussing the gentry's apparant blind spot to the inhumane cruelty of the Game Laws:

    With the general growth of upper-class riches and luxury there came over shooting a change corresponding with the change that
    turned hunting into a magnificent and extravegant spectacle. The habit set in of preserving game in great masses, of organising
    the battue, of maintaining armies of keepers. In many parts of the country, pheasants were now introduced for the first time."

battue : "A form of hunting in which game is forced into the open by the beating of sticks on bushes" (Wiktionary). What I always assumed was driving the game towards the guns, carried out by beaters. Slaughtering pheasants seems to me to bear as much relationship to hunting, as does shooting air rifles at pyramids of tin cans in fun fair kiosks.

One from A Holiday History of France by Ronald Hamilton, surely a somewhat unlikely source.

"... the centenary of the Great Revolution was celebrated with ... an apolaustic repast for the country's mayors ..."

OED tells me the word dates back to about 1850, is of Greek derivation and means "devoted to pleasure". I am not convinced of this word's necessity.

>106 hfglen: Now, now, we need ALL the words.

It's a perfectly cromulent word.

These are not unknown words to me, but the usage of them in The Steel Bonnets is new to me. This would be the usage in the 1500s, along the border between Scotland and England.

Insight = all the possessions in a home which can be removed.

Furniture = all the items on a horse or human which can be removed. Like insight, only outside the home.

>109 MrsLee: How are you finding The Steel Bonnets? Is the unfamiliar usage a problem or does Fraser's writing style carry you along successfully? I note that the reviews of it here on LT seem to span a range of positive and negative.

>110 jillmwo: I am liking it enough to keep reading in spite of my eye issues and the fact that it is more than I need to know on the subject. I am judiciously skimming, but it is an area and era of history I knew very little about. I'm not sure I ever knew the difference between the "borderers" and the "highlanders" I'm sorry to say. I think the author writes well and does a good job of explaining things.

>109 MrsLee: Fascinating, especially as I believe some of the people in your book are also in my family tree. Does the book give names, and if so do any of them have the surnames Sanderson or Cairncorse?

>112 hfglen: So many names. But I don't recollect those. I can't figure out how to do a search in the book I'm reading only. I can do it if I highlight a word, but not if I want to type a word in. I will keep my radar awareness for those names as I read, but perhaps your family were not big time reivers? Possibly they were the ones being stolen from?

>113 MrsLee: In the 18th and 19th centuries they were mostly craftsmen or traders in and around Kelso. But I wouldn't have put a bit of reiving past them if they could get away with it.

>114 hfglen:
Family secrets coming to the fore; how Gothic.

>114 hfglen: This book is focused on the border area from the 1300s to the 1500s. Mostly the 1500s because of better record keeping. I get the impression that most of that reiving was over by the early 1600s, but one of the reasons I keep reading is to find out why. The author has hinted, but not explained.

New word encountered in book title: monachism (as seen in Benedictine Monachism). It means "the monastic system, condition, or mode of life". Granted that it's probably not a vocabulary word that comes up very frequently in conversaftion -- maybe restricted to academic discussions of one sort of another.

cozenage - the practice of cozening (To cheat; to defraud; to deceive, usually by small arts, or in a pitiful way)

Here's another word which wasn't new to me, but its usage was. Found in Pride and Prejudice.

Demean - Used in the context of "comport." I suppose from demeanor. Whereas we now use it to imply a loss of dignity or respect.

>118 MrAndrew: Nice one!

>119 MrsLee: I find it fascinating when words I recognize are being used in a completely unfamiliar way. Bring in John McWhorter! I'm finding that quite a bit in Frederica. Some of them are so unusual that I can't find a dictionary definition on the Kindle.

I'm working my way through the Guardian's backlog of literary top ten columns. Yesteday's, from 2013-10-09, was Mark Forsyth's top 10 lost words:

https://www.librarything.com/topic/361275#8581579

My favourite: groke, which I see as a hang-dog hanger-on..

My candidate for revival: snollygoster, "a dishonest or corrupt politician".

I grok that.

I imagined 'grok' to be slang out of one of 2000 AD's storylines, but Google suggests it comes from the Hitch-hiker's guide to the galaxy. It'll come to me eventually.

>123 Cynfelyn: I thought it was Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land.

>124 AHS-Wolfy: Yes, I'm pretty sure that was it's first usage.

Bilbo-catch, also known as bilboquet or cup-and-ball, is a traditional children's toy where the goal is to catch a ball in a cup using a spindle with a turned handle and a string.

I am not familiar with this at all, and didn't realize Bilbo was a word that anyone used before Tolkien!

I126 The game is very familiar, but I didn't know it had a name

>126 clamairy: That's a new one to me as well! I have seen those in toy departments but (like MrsLee) hadn't realized that there was a name for it. Where did you encounter the word?

>128 jillmwo: In Frederica. I'm compiling a very long list using the Notes feature on my Kindle. I will be bombarding you all with unfamiliar words when I'm finished with the book.

In Reaper Man, Pratchett has invented a word that describes a relative of mine:

Autocondimentor*

*Someone who will put certainly salt and probably pepper on any meal you put in front of them whatever it is and regardless of how much it's got on it already and regardless of how it tastes.

Oh my lol

>130 Narilka: Hahaha... I have a brother like that. He's very heavy handed with the pepper grinder.

Here's my list from my Kindle Notes.

gudgeon
mawworm
bullfinched at a regular stitcher
chawbacon
in the suds
into the hips
nodcock
on-dits
pea-goose
thatchgallows
bacon-picker
to cut his stick
archwife
addle-plot

I assumed 'pea-goose' means 'not too bright,' but as for the rest I will be looking them up later. The dictionaries I have loaded on my Kindle (Oxford Dictionary of English and New Oxford American Dictionary) were not up to the task at all.

I am pretty sure that on-dits is from the French. And I have always liked the idea of calling someone a gudgeon!!

>132 clamairy: gudgeon is the only word in that list that is familiar to me.

New word (for me) encountered in reading Fell Murder by E.C.R. Lorac. The word is shippon. It refers to a cattle barn or cow shed. It dates back to around 900 A.D. and is considered as English dialect.

>135 jillmwo: That is not what I would have thought it meant. LOL

I have heard/read this word before, but don't remember troubling to look it up before, or maybe I did and forgot. That sounds more like me.
Reading through what my family calls a "Round Robin" of letters (each person contributes their letter to the pack then sends it on, when the pack returns to them, they remove their old letter and add a new one then send it on) I came across the word:

Persiflage, meaning, "light and slightly contemptuous mockery or banter."

Well that describes the way my family interacts to a tee, especially the older generation, but carried on through the younger one as well. I had to learn to tone it down in high school and beyond because not everyone gets it. I didn't realize that not everyone interacted that way.

>137 MrsLee:
It sounds like your family is more Irish than you might have imagined.

>138 pgmcc: Still working on the family history. Ran across the name McNeal. Irish? Also Terrell and a Von Schoonhoven. I think the Terrell is England though. The Von Schoonhoven, I presume to be Dutch, but only from the name. No records.

One of my favorite names I have come across is Polly Fields. I don't know why, I just like it.

>137 MrsLee: I have accused people of persiflage and jactation.

>140 TorMented: Now that I've looked up that second word, I'm happy to say there is not much of that in my family, except perhaps in jest.

>141 MrsLee:. I had to look it up as well! But what a lovely word. I am tucking it away for use the next time I have to listen to someone with an inflated idea of their own importance.

>142 jillmwo: I like it because it somewhat resembles, "jackass," which is normally what I would call such a person. :P

One more agricultural term with which I was unfamiliar -- stirk. It's defined as a bull who is roughly a year old. Encountered in The Theft of the Iron Dogs by E.C.R. Lorac.

Here's one a friend ran across the other day and posted on other social media -- vicegerent

No, *not* viceregent. But similar.

vicegerent

noun

A person appointed by a ruler or head of state to act as an administrative deputy.
An officer who is deputed by a superior, or by proper authority, to exercise the powers of another; a lieutenant; a vicar.
The official administrative deputy of a ruler or head of state; viceregent.

This is from Death at the Sign of the Rook,
"Was that a joyous exclamation mark or a minatory one?"
It means having a menacing quality.
Nope. Not familiar with this one.

nice

Tumid. As in "the tumid river" which means swollen. New to me.

huh. i guess if its a river, its tumid, but if an organ, it's turgid. I'm too timid to go further.

coincidentally, thalweg. Which i found due to a wikipedia rabbit hole from scituate, which i thought was an archaic term but appears to be a US town or towns. From an XKCD cartoon about non-crater geographical circles. I have too much time on my hands at the moment.

char·y
/ˈCHerē/
adj:
cautiously or suspiciously reluctant to do something.

This is from The God of the Woods.

>151 clamairy: Chary. Is that really an unusual word in New York State? It's not quite basic vocabulary in English English, but it's pretty close. (I'm chary about saying 'UK English' rather that 'English English' because 'chary' is just the sort of thing that Scots will have a better and more descriptive word for).

ETA. I'm also chary about getting involved in a discussion about the extent to which Scots sits in a Venn diagram of Englishes.

I knew what chary meant, but I don't think I've heard anyone in the U.S. use it in speech. I probably got it from reading.

louche: disreputable or sordid in a rakish or appealing way.
Ultimately comes from the Latin word luscus, meaning "blind in one eye" or "having poor sight." This Latin term gave rise to the French louche, meaning "squinting" or "cross-eyed." The French gave their term a figurative sense as well, taking that squinty look to mean "shady" or "devious."

>152 Cynfelyn: We would be much more likely to use the word 'wary' instead. I believe I have seen chary before, but I just assumed it was British slang.

>152 Cynfelyn:, >155 clamairy: I would use "wary" too. I've only seen "chary" in written usage. I assumed it is archaic but perhaps not.

I agree with >156 Sakerfalcon:. This is a word I see in written work, but I don't think I've ever heard it used in ordinary conversation.

Reading my grandmother's diaries: Pogonip = ice fog. The kind of fog which freezes all over anything outside with big, beautiful ice crystals. Look up photos online, really pretty. Grandma took photos when she saw it in 1952, but I don't have those.

>158 MrsLee: That looks like what we call hoar frost. I've only seen it a couple of times but it was truly magical.

We had a bit of a conversation last night with friends over the meaning and use of the following:
(1) alacrity - enthusiastic willingness
(2) celerity - speed of movement

One of the group -- a self-published author of comic fantasy -- has one of his wizard characters speak in very long sentences and usually employing words of 4 syllables. The character has no lungs and therefore never runs out of breath.

>160 jillmwo: Dumb question: How does that character move air to speak at all? Fantasy is all very well, but only if the mechanics work.

duh. A wizard did it.

>161 hfglen: I do not know. I have not read any of his books. But as >162 MrAndrew: points out, the book is a fantasy and the character is a wizard.

Does he play the flute? Maybe he learned circular breathing.

I started down the path of enteral ventilation via anus, but i guess you still need lungs. Bit of a stretch to assume that he's made of Henneguya salminicola. I'm going to therefore assume oxygen capture via direct diffusion, like a simple organism, tapeworm or insect. Maybe gills. So that's survival without lungs sorted.

As to moving air to speak, i guess a bellows organ would do it. If it was situated down below, that would avoid interfering with the food ingestion mechanism. Thus we circle back to the anus.

Enchiridion: A manual; a book containing essential information on a subject.
Perhaps the best known is "The Enchiridion" of Epictetus, a classic of Stoic philosophy, also known as "The Manual of Epictetus." I wish I had found this book earlier in life.

From There There by Tommy Orange

gachupin - chiefly Southwest, sometimes disparaging: a Spanish settler in America who immigrated from Spain

Interesting. Wikipedia says that gachupin is mentioned in Don Quixote. I don't remember it but then i never finished it.

I was wondering if it was related to Gaucho, but according the Wikipedia there are over 50 varying theories regarding the etymology of gaucho. Seems unlikely to be linked though.

Gabriel ratchet: The cries of migrating wild geese flying by night which are often popularly explained as the baying of a supernatural pack of hounds and to which various superstitious significances (as forebodings of evil) are attributed.
(Refugees from Good Show Sir should remember this one.)

>170 TorMented:. That's a really interesting one that I've never encountered before. What were you reading when you came across the phrase? (Or was it primarily from the television show?)

>171 jillmwo: Good Show Sir is a website, currently on hiatus, dedicated to bad book covers.
Someone posted the cover to the novel "The Windhover Tapes: Fize of the Gabriel Ratchets." That led to discussions of what the title meant.

The Cŵn Annwn! Love the wild hunt in all its manifestations.

>173 MrAndrew: Yes, the discussion of gabriel ratchets is where I first went down a rabbit hole of items about The Wild Hunt. Interesting stuff.
A flock of Canada geese recently flew by me honking. They don't sound anything like dogs. Perhaps if people lived in a region without native geese (and didn't know what geese sound like) and then heard them at night, they might be mystified by what was up in the sky making those sounds.

>174 TorMented: It is a haunting sound though. I love it.

Gooseberry lay: Stealing clothes from a clothesline. Something that a very hard-up petty crook might do.
I recently read Dashiell Hammett's "The Maltese Falcon." I was glad I was reading it at a time when you can look up words and phrases like this on the internet. The people who read it when it was first published must have been puzzled a lot.
There's a passage where Sam Spade, the private detective, is taunting the gunman Wilmer. Spade says “How long have you been off the goose-berry lay, son?”
One editor refused to let Hammett use the phrase, assuming that it was sexual. But then Hammett got in a reference to Wilmer as a "gunsel." Hammett explained that the word meant a gunman, which Wilmer was. But the word is actually from Yiddish and is a rude term for a gay man.

Djibbah: shapeless middle-eastern garment not unlike a gallabiya, if the pictures Google throws up are to be believed. Seen in Gaudy Night, chapter 3.

>177 hfglen: I knew that word, but don't remember it from that story. I'm a few books away, so will be more aware when I read it this time.

Jobbery - the practice of using a public office or position of trust for one's own gain or advantage. From Procopius’ The Secret History. During the reign of Justinian, merchants charged the consumer whatever price they liked as long as officials received their cut.

anacoluthon: syntactical inconsistency or incoherence within a sentence,
especially a shift in an unfinished sentence from one syntactic construction to another.
When I first read this word, wow, it's a great word, isn't it?

CATTYWAMPUS: Definition - askew, awry, kitty-corner. Cattywampus is a variant of catawampus, another example of grand 19th century American slang. In addition to “askew” catawampus may refer to “an imaginary fierce wild animal,” or may mean “savage, destructive.

As seen in the introduction to a collection of works by Dorothy Parker - exiguity.

Sentence in which it was encountered "Exiguity of their output has not been due to any brevity of their lifespan."

Cambridge English Dictionary defines it as: the state or quality of being very small in size or amount.

Unlikely to be found in much daily or common conversation. (at least, IMHO)

Dudeen- a type of clay pipe from Sailing Around the World Alone. In this case, an absentminded man put his still lit pipe into his pocket which held loose gunpowder.

I thought I'd included a new word earlier on this page but it's not here and now I can't recall where I encountered it in context.

The word is velleity and it is defined as the lowest degree of volition felt before taking an action.

>184 jillmwo: I would never have guessed that was the meaning from reading the word.

i would have guessed some kind of fabric, or else relating to truthfulness.

A couple of words from The colour of magic, the first of Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels:

"In short, spell books leak magic. Various solutions have been tried. Countries near the Rim simply loaded down the books of dead mages with leaden pentalphas and threw them over the Edge. ..."

"Twoflower was helping the hero sort through the treasure stolen from the temple. It was mostly silver set with unpleasant purple stones. Representations of spiders, octopi and the tree-dwelling octarsier of the hubland wastes figured largely in the heap."

There is a game called 'Pentalpha', described in a Wikipedia article, that involves the intersections of a pentagram, which is probably the source of Pratchett's pentalphas. But octarsiers is completely beyond me, unless they are some sort of ei...-arsed animal. (In the context of the passage, it is probably just as well not to use the number between seven and nine. Four plus four).

>187 Cynfelyn: I'm pretty sure Pterry made up "octarsier" out of tarsier (an actual animal) and just added "oc" on the front to make it more discworldy. Like the colour "octarine" for example :)

>188 tardis: Ha. That's a neat explanation. Thanks. I've not come across tarsiers before. They are even cuter than bush babies. But 'octaries' are not just more Discworldy (and I do enjoy his word-play), but in the context of Bel-Shamharoth's temple treasure, also more two cubed-y, more two thirds of a dozen-y.

Next book, H. S. Bennett, English books & readers 1475 to 1557:

Discussing dedications, the author says (p. 50): "Patronage was sought, not only that the general reader might be encouraged, but also that the author might be protected against the evil tongue of the detractor. The fullest statement (perhaps overstatement) of the feeling against such men is to be found in The image of bothe churches (1550) by John Bale, who writes: 'The other ("cruel enemy") is Momus or Zoilus, yea rather one whiche playe it both partes under the cloke of a Christian. This cruel carper and malicious quarreller leaveth no mans worke unrebuked.'"

In a footnote, the author quotes The dictionary of syr Thomas Eliot: Momus, 'a curious carper'; Zoilus, 'a poete, whyche envied Homerus: and therefore the enviers of welle lerned men are called Zoili'.

Sounds like what we might call trolls.

Hybristophilia: An intense attraction to people who have committed serious crimes, such as murder.
Guess why this is in the news lately.

I envy science people sometimes because they get to name things, and it must be fun. I want a Labyrinthodon to be a mythical creature that menaced Greek heroes from a cave, but it's a primeval amphibian. H.M.Tomlinson mentions it in one of his reminiscences. I want an Ololygon to be a strange geometric form, but it's a kind of frog.
I want a ha-ha to be a punchline to a joke, but it's a sunken retaining wall. Etymology unknown. From C.E. Montague., and elsewhere.
I want ultracrepidarian to be a high academic honor, but it's a person who offers uninformed opinions.

Here's one encountered in a short story by Edith Wharton, read this morning.

coign which is defined as being a projecting corner or angle of a wall or building.

An older widow views the neighborhood around her from her "coign of view".

hobbledehoy -- an awkward youth

collywobbles -- queasiness in the stomach

Both from C.E. Montague: "A Writer's Notes On His Craft" 1930

I highlighted the word "baffingly" in The Dark is Rising.

A Google search leads me to believe it must be a typo in the Kindle edition, as other versions use "bafflingly" instead.

They're the exact same word!

I feel like I'm taking crazy pills!

The second time there's an l after the two f's

I am reading Guilty by Definition and it is a gold mine of old words and their meanings. Examples include:

"Mountweazel": A bogus dictionary entry to help spot plagiarism and copyright infringements.

"Philobiblist": A lover of books.

"Ipsedixitism": The assertion that something is a fact just because a single person says so.

"Pseudologiser": Inventor of elaborate lies.

"Gobemouche": Someone who, open-mouthed, believes everything they are told.

These represent only the tip of the iceberg.

OOoooh, I am well-trained as a philobiblist!

>198 pgmcc:: There is an LT member named Philobiblist, but seeing as they haven't added any books since 2008 perhaps "was" is nearer the mark. Related to your Philobiblist (in fact, I thought I'd been pipped to the post):

bibliopolist, a dealer in rare books.

From English books & readers 1475 to 1557 (still).

Time for a new thread.

>199 jillmwo:
I suspect many people here are, or at least have it in their blood.

>200 Cynfelyn:
Very interesting. Stop tempting me with book titles like that.
:-)

It's one of a trio by H. S. Bennett, each with an equally tempting book title:

English books & readers, 1475 to 1557 (1952),
English books & readers, 1558 to 1603 (1965),
English books & readers, 1603 to 1640 (1970).

Wikipedia mentions the review of the three books on the publication of the last one, in The Book Collector 19 (no 4) Winter 1970, pp. 439-454 (whoa; a fifteen-page review!?), including: "perfect commentary on the Short-title Catalogue of English Books ... 1475-1640," and "social and economic history at its best, not merely a standard work, but a classic."

I'm enjoying the first volume, although it isn't light going. One of my younglings got me The bookseller of Florence, which I may read as light relief before tackling 1558-1603.

Gone on ... be tempted. It's Christmas.

>204 Cynfelyn:
I did not know the Welsh could be so evil.
:-)