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| Frigerifick | Adjective borrowed directly from Latin, perhaps as late as the mid 1600s, that denoted cooling, freezing, or cold-producing. Frigerific was used originally in scientific writings and later in general literature. The word frigidarium -- a cooling-room adjacent to a Roman bath -- was borrowed from Latin, as were its companion words, the temperate tepidarium and the hot caldarium. |
| Bibulous | In the seventeenth century, "absorbent, like a sponge." It comes from the same root as imbibe and was later used figuratively to mean "addicted to alcohol." In the seventeenth century, a bib was a cloth associated with the drinking of wine worn to keep "tears of the tankard" from dripping on the tippler's waistcoat. Bybbe (from Latin bibo, "to drink") denoted the clever subterfuge of taking small, frequent sips of liquor at brief intervals so that a great deal could be absorbed without the appearance of excess. Bibacity denoted an outrageous capacity for drink. |
| Flitterwochen | Old English equivalent of today's honeymoon, roughly meaning "fleeting weeks." In Chaucer's time, flitte meant "to flee or pass away"--as the initial passion of love often does. First used around 1500, honeymoon referred to the waxing and waning of the moon but not, at least originally, to a period of one month. Because honey was once considered an aphrodisiac, it was consumed in the form of honey-wine. In A.D. 453, Attila the Hun reportedly died of drinking too much of this liquor during his flitterwochen. |
| Bowgett | The Middle English word was borrowed from Old French bouge, "small leather bag," derived from Latin bulga. By the seventeenth century, the spelling had become budget, as it has remained until the present. By 1700, the meaning of the word had come to include the contents of the pouch or wallet, a development that allowed it to take on the financial connotation of "projected English treasury expenses." By the mid 1800s, the meaning had broadened to include the money available for use by an individual --- its common meaning today. |
| Isabelline | Adjective used until the second half of the nineteenth century to indicate a grayish-yellow or parchment color. It is found in an inventory of Queen Elizabeth's wardrobe, which included "one rounde gowne of Isabella-colour satten." The most likely explanation of the word's origin involves a story that Archduchess Isabella of Austria in the late 1500s solemnly vowed not to change her small clothes (underwear) until Ostend, a city to which her father, Philip II, was laying siege, was taken. To her dismay and that of her friends, the battle continued for another three years. |
| Bridelope | Earliest English word for a marriage custom dating back to A.D. 950, first known as brydlopa. The related bridal-run was an ancient tradition in which the bride was both symbolically and physically swept off on horse-back to her husband's home by him and a helper who was later known as the best man. The Anglo-Saxon word wedd, "to gamble, wager," first referred to the livestock or other payment that the groom made to the bride's father as a more civilized alternative to abduction. |
| Monks and Friars | Words used in the eighteenth century by printers to describe errors in their craft. Pages that contained smudged or blotted letters were called monks, while letters that were deficient in ink and therefore too light were referred to as friars. |
| Cachpule | Ancestral name used through the sixteenth century for tennis or a tennis court. This forerunner of European racket sports originated in France a millennium ago although rackets were not used until the 1500s, about the time when the English adopted the game. Their first courts were like enormous squash courts, patterned after those at French monasteries. The word tennis may have come from tenez, "Take this!" in French. Tennis was eventually outlawed by the Church because of the interest it evoked. |
| Salvor | Servant of royalty or nobles whose duty was to sample the food and drink prepared for their masters who feared assassination. The word derives from the Latin salvus--"safe"--the root word of salvation and salvage. Later spelled salver, the word came to mean the silver tray on which the tested victuals were placed. By the middle of the 17th century, the platter became mainly ornamental. It was believed in the 16th century that fine glassware, such as Venetian crystal, would break and thereby protect the owner, if poison were put into it. |
| Forswunke | Middle English past participle of forswinke, "exhausted from physical exertion," most commonly in the performance of household chores. Terms with similar meanings included dwang and snool, "to oppress or exhaust one's vital energies by overwork," while tireling denoted a person who was easily fatigued by physical exertion. The sixteenth-century toilful was used of a hardworking individual or one who was characterized by toiling, and the related verb thripple meant "to toil ceaselessly." Titteravating was an early dialectic variant in eastern England of "tiresome." |
| O.K. | OK, O.K. (verb and noun) adj., adv. interj. [original
U.S. colloquium; first known use (March 23, 1839) by C.G. Greene, editor,
in the Boston Morning Post, as if abbreviation for "oll
korrect," facetious misspelling of "all correct" (cf. Am. Speech,
Vol. 38:1): popularized by use in name of Democratic O.K. Club (1840),
in allusion to Old Kinderhook, native village of Martin Van Buren, whom
the Club supported for a 2nd term] all right; correct - n., pl. OK's, O.K.'s
approval; endorsement -vt. OK'd, O.K.'d. OK'ing, O.K.'ing to put an OK
on; approve; endorse.
David B. Guralnik, Editor in Chief, "Webster's New World Dictionary of the American Language" (New York, World Publishing Inc., 1976) page 989 |
| Vampyrarchy | Derisive description from the 1820s for a parasitic group of politicians. Vampire entered the English language in the 1730s from such Slavonic words as the Bulgarian vampir. Myths about vampires were abundant in Europe, especially its eastern regions. In earlier times, pronouncing someone dead was so often the result of guesswork that a device called a Bateson's Belfry was sometimes installed in coffins; it could be rung from six feet under if the deceased awoke unexpectedly after premature burial. |
| Besom | From Anglo-Saxon besema, "bundle of twigs," this word became broomstick. A medieval couple was considered legally married if they jumped over a besom placed on their door stoop --- a custom that survived into modern times as the ritual of carrying the bride across the threshold. Divorce could occur just as easily if one member of the couple replaced the broom and jumped back. To hang out the besom once meant to have a fling while one's wife was away. |
| Sandesman | Middle English expression for messenger, literally a "man who was sent." Anglo-Saxons used the similar sandismeme, which was later anglicized to sandaroon. Until 1653, when a primitive postal system was first organized in Paris, all correspondence was delivered by courier. Fearful of how the new service might affect them, the messengers deposited mice in the new letterboxes. From this collection of liaisons eventually came the sandman, a messenger of slumber sent to lull children to sleep. |
| Smell-Feaste | Mannerless belly god, or glutton, of the period between 1540 and 1700 who appeared, uninvited, to share in a feast. Books of etiquette were first published in the 13th century in an effort to eliminate such boorish types of dining behavior as this. Partially gnawed bones, the books recommended, should be thrown on the floor, not put back on the serving platter. They also discouraged scratching fleas, lice, or one's groin at the table, as well as slottering--the making of snorting, animal-like sounds while chewing. |
| Gardyloo | Spirited warning cry that once preceded the emptying of slops, bucketsful of wastewater, from an upstairs window into the streets below. A corruption of the French expression gard de l'eau, which meant roughly "look out for the water," this expression was frequently heard in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in England and in Scotland, where a water closet is still referred to as a loo. |
| Phenakistoscope | Literally a "deceptive viewer" from Greek, this toy consisted of patterns painted on a thin oval piece of wood and spun before a mirror to produce an animated sequence. It was marketed in 1832 by its inventor, Joseph Plateau, whose research proved important in the creation of motion pictures. A man more than two millennia Plateau's senior with a remarkably similar name, the Greek philosopher Plato, created what may be the earliest recorded cinema in his allegory of the cave, from The Republic, in which chained prisoners watched a moving shadow show created by their captors in lieu of real actions. |
| Mortmain | Literally a "dead hand." From Latin through French, it meant "to give property to an organization, such as a guild or fraternity, that would hold it in perpetuity." The compound word mortgage, "dead pledge," implied that if the loan was not repaid, the collateral was dead and given to the lender; but if the loan was repaid, the pledge became dead. In the late fourteenth century, gage meant collateral to ensure repayment of a loan. |
| Lovedayes | Term for dates established in Chaucer's time for reconciling disputes by arbitration, in which day meant "to appoint a time for a decision." During the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries, dayment was a type of mediation performed by a daysman. By the sixteenth century, the name loveday had been misinterpreted as meaning a love-making or peaceful day. |
| Blash | Three-hundred-year-old onomatopoeia created from blow and one of several water-related terms such as dash in order to mimic the sound of a downpour with gusting winds. In the 1820s, the adjective form, blashly, came to describe overcooked vegetables, thin soup, and watered-down liquor or ale, popularly called blashment. In Lincolnshire, blash eventually came to mean verbal nonsense or "diluted" ideas. |
| Scrynne | A reinforced wooden chest, sometimes inlaid with ivory or jewels, which during medieval times contained precious writing materials and other valuables, such as sacred relics. Preserved in these boxes throughout Europe have been such macabre oddities as gallons of the dried holy blood of saints, vast quantities of preserved portions of their bodies, pounds of Crucifixion nails, and even "the tip of Lucifer's tail." The word scrynne was replaced with shrine around the seventeenth century. |
| Piggesnye | Term of endearment for one's sweetheart, literally "cute little pig's eye," from Chaucer, who is created with inspiring the tradition of sending love notes on St. Valentine's Day. In earlier times, boys drew girl's names from hats, or, alternatively, the first person of the opposite sex one saw on this day became one's valentine for that year. The Church tried to graft a religious holiday onto this annual event by substituting saint's names, a practice that proved unpopular and was abandoned in the sixteenth century. These rituals were influenced by the old belief that birds chose their mates on this day. |
| Tonsor | One who shaved or otherwise cut hair. Before A.D. 1000, barbers visited monasteries to cut the hair of monks according to each order's tonsure or hair pattern. The barbers, by acting as assistants, learned the art of chirurgery (literally, "hand work") --- or surgery --- and began such practices as tooth extraction, tooth scaling, abscess lancing, bloodletting, and removal of urinary stones. The red and white spiral-striped pole originated from the barber-surgeon's practice of wrapping rinsed bandages around a red pole to dry. |
| Laverock | Shortened Anglo-Saxon name for that often unwelcome herald of the dawn --- the lark. During the Middle Ages, groups of adolescent boys and girls would go into the fields to catch larks, which were considered a culinary delicacy. By the 1700s, influenced by Middle English laik, "play," lark came to mean a frolicsome adventure involving whimsical gallops on horseback, mischievous merriment, and sexual flights of fancy. |
| Galligaskin | Baggy trousers worn by sailors of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This word was a fanciful corruption of French garguesque, "in the Greek style," hinting at their place of origin. Galligaskins were not always spoken of directly in polite conversation. The first recorded substitute for them was inexpressibles in 1790, which suited Victorian taste so well that a rash of euphemisms emerged in the 1830s and 1840s, including unmentionables, inexplicables, unutterables, and the superlative unwhisperables. |
| Angnaegl | In Old English, as early as the tenth century, the lowly foot corn, ang meant "painful" (as in angst), while naegl referred to the nail-head shape of a corn. By the fifteenth century, corn began to replace angnail, aided no doubt by the physical resemblance of a dried kernal to this unpleasantry. An h was later added to angnail, and its meaning changed to the one now current, that of "frayed cuticle." By the eighteenth century, when a corn-sick patient described his ailment to a corn doctor, there would be no confusion. |
| Baker-Knee'd | Eighteenth-century description of someone whose knees rubbed together when he or she walked, as if kneading dough. Bakers, once jocularly known as burn-crusts, were said to be especially vulnerable to knee problems, as their knees typically bent slightly backward because they stood while making bread. Another anatomical term applied to bakers was bakerlegged, describing one whose legs bent backward. Records also indicate that bakers' feet were often twisted, badly shaped, or otherwise malformed. |
| Quacksalver | At the height of the bubonic plague in Europe during the 1340s, many charlatans took advantage of frightened people by selling them useless salves and accompanying treatments. The Dutch called these people kwakken-salvers, later shortened to quacks (from the resemblance to ducks' quacking when they sold their ointments). One such medicine, which was administered internally for the relief of symptoms of pestilence in the 1590s, was called the philosopher's egg. |
| Gleed | From the Old English word related to glow, this term suggested an ember or a glowing coal. Chaucer used the word gleed to describe a particular shade of red, while in the sixteenth century it meant "shafts of sunlight." As late as the 1800s, gleed was a fire that nail makers used to melt iron. From the 1400s to the 1800s, the term gleed-eyes referred to one who squinted with one or both eyes. |
| Fixfax | Scottish word for a framework or pillory, which had a variety of forms. All had holes for the neck and wrists of those convicted of such crimes as sales fraud, bad debts, and fortune telling. This device was known by such nicknames as the stocks, the thewe (for female penitents, who were called "babes in the woods"), the penance board (for the religiously inclined), and wooden parentheses (for intellectuals). The fixfax was placed in the town square, where passersby could jeer and pelt the confined with dangerous and humiliating projectiles. The practice was not completely abolished in England and America until 1837 and 1905, respectively. |
| Scaramouch | From the seventeenth century, this term has indicated a lazy swaggering coward. Based on a character from an early Italian comedy who was often pummeled for his knavish actions, the word as a verb meant to act in such a manner. The meaning of what later became skirmish was soon broadened to include encounters between groups of soldiers. Shakespeare used the expression "skirmish of wit" in 1599 to indicate verbal confirmation. The nineteenth-century rugby term scrummage and the related American football term scrimmage are other modern adaptations. |
| Scuttled-Butt | This nautical equivalent of the office water cooler was the hub of informal conversation aboard English ships of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. At that time, a butt, adopted from a fifteenth-century French botte, was a hogshead or barrel of 104- to 140-gallon capacity. A square hole large enough to allow water to be scooped out in a cup was cut or "scuttled" into the upper part of this reservoir. The direct linguistic descendant of the scuttled-butt, scuttlebutt, has become synonymous with gossip on land and sea. |
| Inkhornism | A literary composition of the sixteenth century that "smelled of the lamp" --- meaning that it was overworked --- perhaps from too much "burning of midnight oil" by hack writers, who were sometimes called candlewasters. The inspiration for inkhornism was a small, portable case of writing instruments first made of horn and used from the 1300s to the 1700s. An inkling, the diminutive of ink, which related to an older Anglo-Saxon verb imt, "to mutter," was once a sample of a written idea. |
| Flitch | From Old Teutonic flikkjo, a side of an animal -- now only pork -- that had been cured. According to records, a fourteenth century noblewoman in the Sussex County town of Dunmow, England, attempted to encourage martial contentment by offering a prize called a Dunmow flitch to any man who would swear that for the past year he had not had a household brawl or wished himself unmarried. The flitch became a symbol of domestic happiness, but, according to local records, only eight of these prizes were awarded over the next five centuries. |
| Gander-Moon | In the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries, this was the month of recovery for a woman after she gave birth to a child. A husband who became interested in other woman during this period was called a bed-swerver or a gander-mooner, a term referring to the aimless activities of a gander while his mate hatched the eggs. Until recently, gander was also an English slang term for a man who lived apart from his wife. |
| Gorgayse | Middle English word meaning "elegant, fashionable." Its root was in Latin gurges, used in the third century to refer to the throat. In the fifteenth century, a new style of women's headdress called a gorgias, which also covered the throat, was devised. It partially replaced the popular wimple, which also covered the head and which is still worn but only by Nuns. This fashion was apparently so admired that gorgayse became synonymous with "tastefulness in dress"; the derivative, gorgeous, has survived into modern times. |
| Gimlet-Eyed | Adjective for a sharp-sighted and inquisitive nineteenth-century person, derived from the name of an old piercing tool. A gimlet-eyes Saxon tailor named Tom involved in a famous legend involving the lord of Coventry, who subjected his people to merciless taxation. His wife, Lady Godiva, pleaded on their behalf. Her husband joked that he would lower the taxes if she rode through the streets of Coventry unclothed. To his surprise, she did so, after asking the locals to close their shutters and stay indoors during her excursion. All complied except the tailor, who was remembered thereafter as Peeping Tom. |
| Strigil | Ancient Roman instrument used to scrape perspiration and dirt from an athlete's body after exercise. Such hot-air baths often took the place of soap and water. Strigil, borrowed into English from Old German, was originally derived from Latin strigilis, "to touch lightly" and "to draw together." Its descendant, Old French estrille, referred to a curry-comb, which grooms still use to clean horses. The modern astringent, a substance that draws a wound together, was formed from the same Latin root. |
| Boanthropy | A rare form of insanity, written of in the nineteenth century, in which a man imagines himself to be an ox. Such madness (or at least its diagnosis) is found in the Bible in the book of Daniel, which reports that King Nebuchadnezzar "was driven from men, and did eat grass as oxen, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven." The same Greek prefix bo, as in bovine, was used in other words, such as boopic, "having prominent eyes like an ox." |
| Apple-Squire | In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a term for a prostitute's bully or apple-John, who kept sentinel at taverns for her. Eve's relationship with the apple may have influenced and precipitated this expression. Another likely possibility is that the expression derives from costermongers --- apple peddlers who worked the streets of London and sometimes acted as liaisons for harlots and their clients. The related expression apple-wife was probably a euphemism for bawd. |
| Toonioperty | One whimsical version of the many early forms of opportune that are now obsolete. Others included adjectives opportunate and opportuneful, the seventeenth-century opportunous, and the relatively recent opportuness. These derivatives share the common prefix op, "before"; the root portus denotes a port. At one time the nearing of the mouth of a harbor was considered a fortuitous time, since the vessel had successfully avoided the many hazards of a sea voyage |
| Scatches | Stilts worn in the early sixteenth to nineteenth centuries when walking in filthy places. Without them, one might have been forced to pautch, "walk uncomfortably through areas of deep mud." The word scatches is based on the same Greek root as eighteenth-century scatology, "the study of dung," and the earlier scatomancy, "fecal fortune-telling." The Dutch created the terms schaats and scatses, from Old French eschasse, in the mid 1600s. Eventally these words came to mean "(ice) skates," which were first fashioned from the lower leg bones of cows. |
| Fancymonger | Person, male or female, who in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries used legerdemain --- clever tricks --- to deceive others, often for financial gain. One of the fancymonger's theatrics was called wolf in the breast, a highly imaginative ploy used by vagrant English women with considerable acting talent to solicit donations from the gullible. In this macabre ruse, the woman attempted to convince passersby that a small wolf was gnawing her breast from inside. |
| Ezel | Added to English in the seventeenth century and corrupted soon afterward in meaning and spelling, this Dutch word originally meant any of several hoofed quadrupeds used for burden bearing, including the ass or donkey. Whimsically at first, the name of this four-legged beast of burden was used to represent the three-legged frame that holds an artist's canvas. About this same time, a well-executed piece of artwork painted on an easel by a woman was referred to as a mistresspiece, a companion word to masterpiece. |
| Toad-Eater | Originally a seventeenth-century charlatan's sidekick who, in full view of a crowd, would pretend to eat a toad, which at that time was considered to be poisonous. The assistant would feign a severe reaction, to the horror or amusement of the naïve spectators. The master would then dramatically demonstrate the curative power of the remedy he had for sale by using it to revive his sidekick. A corresponding verb, toad-eat, emerged shortly thereafter; it meant "to do something quite unpleasant on behalf of one's master." |
| Ordal | Anglo-Saxon legal term for "the judgment of God." Trial by ordeal was administered in various ways, depending on the defendant's social status. Some were tested by immersing their hands in hot water. If blisters appeared, their testimony was considered flawed, which led to the modern expression being in hot water. Suspected witches were subjected to a practice known as "swimming the witch," since the medium of water was used in baptismal rites. Water would reject a real witch, it was believed, causing her to float. |
| Grog-Blossom | Vulgar 18th century expression for a drunkard's nose, the redness of which was caused by dilation of the blood vessels from consumption of alcohol. By itself, grog meant "rum diluted with an equal part of water," not served straight, as once was customary. The unpopular Admiral Edward Vernon offered this watered-down drink to his crew in 1740 in an attempt to reduce on-board intoxication. The crew nicknamed him "Old Grog" from his oft-worn cloak or breeches, made from grogram, a coarse-textured woolen fabric. |
| Gossomer | Middle English condensation of goose summer, used in England and Scotland for the unseasonably warm autumn weather that in North America is called Indian summer. In England, gossamer was also a fine, filmy material made of the cobwebs spun by tiny spiders, especially in the fall. In Swedish, the filament was called sommartrad, "summer thread," which resembles goose down. Legend has it that this ethereal substance of God's summer was a trail left by the Virgin Mary when she ascended into heaven. |
| Bankrupture | Painful-sounding variant of bankruptcy. An Italian moneylender of the 14th century would often work outdoors on a wooden bench called a bancas, which would be physically destroyed if the banker became insolvent. That process, called bancarotto, was adopted into French in the 1500s as banqueroute and in to English shortly thereafter. The second half of this word was exchanged for Latin ruptus, "broken," in the 1530s, giving rise to such variations as bankruptism until the word settled into its present form |