Waftage

 

 I'm flying to South Africa tomorrow to take part in the Open Book Festival. This involved numerous bits of paperwork and e-tickets and the like, none of which, to my vast misery, contained the word waftage.

Waftage was originally transportation by boat, specifically of course by a sailboat which is wafted by the wind across the alliterative water. But it also therefore means anything that can travel through the air and was being applied to witches and their broomsticks from the mid seventeenth century. A journalist of 1834 describing insects wrote:

Forest flies, ephemerals all like ourselves—but happier far in their airy waftage or watery voyaging, than the vain race of man!

And that's roughly the style in which all airlines' websites should be written.

Anyway, if any readers are in Cape Town for the next few days, here's a link to the events I'll be doing.

Thunder-Plump

I was caught yesterday in a thunder-plump, which is the correct term for a sudden delugian downpour accompanied by thunder. A thunder-plump tends to be preceded by thunder-drops which are the large, scattered raindrops that tell you that the weather is about to kick off something rotten.

Neither of these should be confused with a thunder-mug, which is an old term for a chamber pot.

Anyway, I dived for protection into a second-hand bookshop and came out with an Arden edition of The Two Gentlemen of Verona. So here, for no other reason than that it's the best speech in the play, is how to tell if somebody is in love:

VALENTINE Why, how know you that I am in love?


SPEED Marry, by these special marks: first, you have learned, like Sir Proteus, to wreathe your arms, like a malcontent; to relish a love-song, like a robin-redbreast; to walk alone, like one that had the pestilence; to sigh, like a school-boy that had lost his A B C; to weep, like a young wench that had buried her grandam; to fast, like one that takes diet; to watch like one that fears robbing; to speak puling, like a beggar at Hallowmas. You were wont, when you laughed, to crow like a cock; when you walked, to walk like one of the lions; when you fasted, it was presently after dinner; when you looked sadly, it was for want of money: and now you are metamorphosed with a mistress, that, when I look on you, I can hardly think you my master.

Welcome to London

Flourishing Paraphs

Para was Greek for beside. So lines that are parallel were para allelois or beside each other and those who are paranoid were para nous or, literally, beside their minds. Therefore, if you made a little mark in the margin of a Greek text to indicate a break or a new section this was written beside the text and was a para-graph.

Paragraph can, and has, been shortened and corrupted in all sorts of ways. John Florio's 1598 Worlde of Wordes has:

Paragrafo, a paragraffe, a paraffe, a pilcrow, whatsoever is contained in one sentence.

Pilcrow is still the standard term for the paragraph mark ¶ that you can sometimes see. But paraph has retained much more of the original meaning. You see a paraph is the technical name for the long flourishing extravagant line with which so many people end their signatures. Take, for example, Benjamin Franklin's signature:


Now that is a paraph and a half.

Speaking of a paraph-and-a-halfs, an academic fellow once told me that the best way to spot the weak point in a long essay is to flick through and find the longest paragraph, because that will always be where the writer was most confused. It's a rather good trick, and saves actually reading things.

Jumentous

Just a quick one today: jumentous. Jumentous is a nice-sounding word. If you call somebody jumentous they might even thank you. However, it means resembling horse urine. So your challenge for the weekend, dear reader, is to use the word jumentous and get away with it.

It comes, incidentally, from jument, which means beast of burden.

Apricate

The Londoners among you, will need only one word on a day like this: apricate, which means to bask in the sun. Londoners rarely get a chance to do this, and even when we do, we are liable to be disturbed by cranks and madmen of the city. This is not a new trend. Aubrey's Brief Lives has this story about Sir Thomas More (1478-1535):

Sir John Danvers's house at Chelsea stands in the very place where was that of the Lord Chancellor Sir Thomas More, who had but one marble chimney-piece, and that plain.


Where the gate then stood there was in Sir Thomas More's time a gatehouse, according to the old fashion. From the top of this gatehouse, according to the old fashion. From the top of the gatehouse was a most pleasant and delightful prospect as is to be seen. His Lordship was wont to recreate himself in this place to apricate and contemplate, and his little dog with him. It so happened, that a Tom o'Bedlam [madman] got up the stairs when his Lordship was there, and came to him and cried, "Leap Tom, leap!" offering his Lordship violence to have thrown him over the battlements. His Lordship was a little old man, and, in his gown, not able to make resistance; but having the presentness of wit, said, "Let us first throw this little dog over." The Tom o'Bedlam threw the dog down: "Pretty sport!" said the Lord Chancellor: "go down and bring him up again, and try again." Whilst the madman went down fro the dog, his Lordship made fast the door of the stairs, and called for help: otherwise he had lost his life.


Be cautious in your aprications. Nothing changes. Only the dogs are different.

Incidentally, apricate has nothing to do with apricots, which are so called because the ripen early in the summer. The Latin for early is praecox. Add an A and your get A-praecox. This means that they are more closely related to an affliction of hasty gentlemen than to the heat and calor of the day.

Not so fast.

The Polyphloisboisterous Wiliad

The following is from the London Review of Books. It's a rather recondite discussion of the historical existence of Troy and its relationship with a city called Wilusa, but it gives me such puerile pleasure that I thought I should reproduce it here so that you, dear reader, can snigger.

Wilusa is most definitely Troy. The book we know as Iliad is the adjective for the city of Ilios - in our present text of the Iliad the place is called Troié less often (53 times) than it is Ilios (106 times). Ilios sounds much closer to Wilusa than Troié but their identity need not rely on a similarity that could be coincidental, because it can be shown quite conclusively that the city's original name was 'Wilios': the W sound in both spoken and written East Ionic Greek, was used till 1200 BCE and became increasingly silent thereafter: the Iliad was really the 'Wiliad'.

Full article here.

While we're on the subject of the Wiliad, there's a word that Homer often uses to describe the sea. πολυϕλοίσβοιο or polyphloisboio, which means loud-roaring. So familiar was this word to the classically educated chaps of the C19th, that is got imported as-is and has endured a long, if rather obscure, run in the English language. First was polyphloisboioism in 1823, then polyphloisboian, then Thackeray really upped the game in 1843 with the sentence:

The line of the shore washed by the poluphlosboiotic, nay, the poluphlosboiotatotic sea.

And then in the 1890s it was portmanteaued with English to make polyphloisboisterous, which is great fun to say aloud.

 

The Inky Fool smoked his pipe obscurely.

Let's Get Terpsichoreal

As a group, the Nine Muses get a lot of words: museum (a shrine to the Muses), mosaic (a work of the Muses), music, bemused (devoted to the Muses); although weirdly they seem to have no etymological connection to the verb muse.

The individual muses tend to get less attention, largely because you'd have to remember which was which. The only one that ever sticks in my mind is Terpsichore, the muse of dance. This is largely because whenever I invite a hapless wallflower to skip the heavy fandango with me, whether at rave or discotheque, I usually phrase it "Would you like to pay homage to Terpsichore?"*

I thought that I was alone in such recondite invitations, until I found this 1960 film in which a very young Oliver Reed propositions a girl by saying:

Say, baby, you feel terpsichorical? Let's go downstairs and fly.

Well, now I know how to phrase it.

Begin then, sisters of the sacred well.

*N.B. This line is unsuccessful, but it is amusing.

Orgiophant

An orgiophant is, according to the OED, an overseer of orgies. I'm not sure whether this is a useful word for you, dear reader, but I thought I'd tell you in case the word ever popped up in the jobs section of the classified ads.

I imagine that your main duties would be getting the orgial started, as an orgial is a song sung at orgies. That and looking after the clothes.

Anyway, it's etymologically appropriate as orgy is probably related to the Greek ergon meaning to work. If this is so, then orgy would be connected to ergonomics (the study of people at work), and I suppose that would be another concern of the orgiophant.

The Inky Fool knew this would be a tricky one.

Pareidolia

POLONIUS: My lord, the queen would speak with you, and presently.
HAMLET: Do you see yonder cloud that's almost in shape of a camel?
POL: By the mass, and 'tis like a camel, indeed.
HAM: Methinks it is like a weasel.
POL: It is backed like a weasel.
HAM: Or like a whale?
POL: Very like a whale.
HAM: Then I will come to my mother by and by.
III,2

There is a word for everything, and the word for seeing shapes in clouds is pareidolia. In fact, pareidolia is the word for seeing patterns in any random system. So if you see pictures in a Rorschach Test, or a man in the moon, or have deduced the date of the Second Coming from a code hidden in the bus timetables, that is pareidolia.

The term was invented by Victor Kandinsky, who was the uncle of the painter and rather strange to boot. He had what he called a delirium of judgement, which is to say he didn't quite hallucinate but he was capable of so misinterpreting the world around him that it amounted to the same thing.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I think my cup of coffee is trying to tell me something.

Taken from this flickr stream

Dark Cully

A dark cully is defined in Grose's Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue thuslyly:

DARK CULLY. A married man who keeps a mistress, whom he visits only at night, for fear of discovery.

I rather like the idea of this worried husband running around in the dark, bumping into things and fearing for his wife. It also reminds me of the fantastic passage in the biblical Book of Proverbs, even though here it is the other way around:

For at the window of my house I looked through my casement, And beheld among the simple ones, I discerned among the youths, a young man void of understanding,Passing through the street near her corner; and he went the way to her house, In the twilight, in the evening, in the black and dark night: And, behold, there met him a woman with the attire of an harlot, and subtil of heart. (She is loud and stubborn; her feet abide not in her house: Now is she without, now in the streets, and lieth in wait at every corner.) So she caught him, and kissed him, and with an impudent face said unto him, I have peace offerings with me; this day have I payed my vows. Therefore came I forth to meet thee, diligently to seek thy face, and I have found thee. I have decked my bed with coverings of tapestry, with carved works, with fine linen of Egypt. I have perfumed my bed with myrrh, aloes, and cinnamon. Come, let us take our fill of love until the morning: let us solace ourselves with loves. For the goodman is not at home, he is gone a long journey: He hath taken a bag of money with him, and will come home at the day appointed. With her much fair speech she caused him to yield, with the flattering of her lips she forced him. He goeth after her straightway, as an ox goeth to the slaughter, or as a fool to the correction of the stocks.


Whatever happened to girls like that?

The Inky Fool catches forty winks.

Inquilinate

The word inquilinate is defined in the dear old OED as:


To dwell in a strange place.

I'm not sure if Clerkenwell counts. As the poet John Oldham wrote in 1680:

‘Tis a long way to where I dwell,
At farther end of Clerkenwell:
There in a garret near the sky,
Above five pairs of stairs I lie.

Which, other than the precise number of stairs, describes me perfectly.

That the OED is not able to quote a single usage of inquilinate proves that every man's home is ordinary to him.

Inquilination

Chambering

Lucky devil

Robert Cawdrey's Table Alphabetical of 1604 has this entry:

Chambering, lightnes, and wanton behaviour in private places.

Cawdrey was a defrocked priest, but for non conformity rather than chambering. The OED has the word too, and mentions a Byzantine Emperor who "lived a chambering, idle life within his palace".

I'd like to do that.

A Chubbingly Bulchin

Bulchin is defined in a 1736 dictionary of slang as:

A chubbingly Boy or Lad.

I don't know which word I prefer, but I think it's chubbingly.

The Inky Fool is off to lunch

February and Februation

DON PEDRO
Good morrow, Benedick. Why, what's the matter,
That you have such a February face,
So full of frost, of storm and cloudiness?
- Much Ado About Nothing

As we are now in February, you may as well know that this is the month of purification; specifically the Roman festival of purification or Februarius was held on the 15th.

Februa was the Latin for purification, and quite possibly derived from an older word for sulphur, making this sulphur-month. This means that February has some rather odd neighbours in the dictionary, such as februate, which means to purge souls by sacrifice or prayer.

Before this new-fangled Roman stuff came in, the Anglo-Saxons had a much apter name for the month. They called it Solmonath, or Mud-Month.

Mind you, the Venerable Bede called it the month of cakes, because apparently that's what pagans gave to their gods for a winter's snack.

The Inky Fool fondling an invisible cow

Piblokto

Piblokto is a word that English has taken from the Polar Eskimo language of northern Greenland. It is defined in the OED thuslyly:

Piblokto A condition affecting the Inuit peoples in winter, characterized by an episode of wild excitement and irrational behaviour followed by a period of stupor or unconsciousness, sometimes with apparent seizures.

That's a very useful word for me, as it describes most of my weekends, without giving too much away. As in: "Saturday night? I'm afraid I was utterly piblokto. But anyway, how was your weekend?"

The Inky Fool waited patiently for the art school dance to end.

P.S. One reason for my piblokto was that The Etymologicon has managed a second week at number one in the Sunday Times bestseller list for hardback non-fiction. This makes me a trifle guilty as I'm keeping Dare To Dream, the exclusive story of the winners of X-Factor (with pictures) from their rightful spot at the top.

The Cut

Here is some Cambridge University slang from the eighteenth century:

TO CUT, (CAMBRIDGE). To renounce acquaintance with any one is to CUT him. There are several species of the CUT. Such as the cut direct, the cut indirect, the cut sublime, the cut infernal, etc. The cut direct, is to start across the street, at the approach of the obnoxious person in order to avoid him. The cut indirect, is to look another way, and pass without appearing to observe him. The cut sublime, is to admire the top of King's College Chapel, or the beauty of the passing clouds, till he is out of sight. The cut infernal, is to analyse the arrangement of your shoe-strings, for the same purpose.

I have done all four of these, but never knew that there was a name for them.

Sorry, I didn't see you there.

Grum

Dr Johnson's dictionary contains the splendid word grum which means... well I hardly need to tell you what it means: a bit grim and bit glum. The word died out in the mid nineteenth century, but, if you felt like reviving it, everybody would understand exactly what you meant.

(And, for vital information on the practice of glumming, see this old post).

Bellibone

Doctor Johnson's dictionary often says a little more than it seems to. Consider the second sentence of this definition.

Bellibone n. A woman excelling in both beauty and goodness. A word now out of use.

Which is a terrible lexicographical statement about the modern woman. According to the OED the word was still going in 1586, which means that if we could get a firm date for this Donne poem of about the 1590s we would be able to pinpoint precisely when it all went wrong for the fairer sex.

Go and catch a falling star,
Get with child a mandrake root,
Tell me where all past years are,
Or who cleft the devil's foot,
Teach me to hear mermaids singing,
Or to keep off envy's stinging,
And find
What wind
Serves to advance an honest mind.


If thou be'st born to strange sights,
Things invisible to see,
Ride ten thousand days and nights,
Till age snow white hairs on thee,
Thou, when thou return'st, wilt tell me,
All strange wonders that befell thee,
And swear,
No where
Lives a woman true and fair.


If thou find'st one, let me know,
Such a pilgrimage were sweet;
Yet do not, I would not go,
Though at next door we might meet,
Though she were true, when you met her,
And last, till you write your letter,
Yet she
Will be
False, ere I come, to two, or three.

From which it will be easy to see why Johnson also described chivalrous as A word now out of use.

Phrontistery

How vainly men themselves amaze adding bits on to their houses - a games room, a gym, a private cinema. If I ever have the money, I shall build myself a phrontistery, or possibly a phrontisterion, they mean the same thing: a place for thinking.

In such a room the eager phrontist could meditate, cogitate and ponder. This would continue until I got into a bad mood, at which point I would go to the boudoir and sulk.

As Andrew Marvell said of his garden:

Fair Quiet, have I found thee here,
And Innocence, thy sister dear!
Mistaken long, I sought you then
In busy companies of men :
Your sacred plants, if here below,
Only among the plants will grow ;
Society is all but rude,
To this delicious solitude.

The Phrontisterion of Trapezous

Ultracrepidarian

Ultracrepidarianism is giving opinions on subjects that you know nothing about, and is thus a terribly useful word. Ultracrepidarian was introduced into English by the essayist William Hazlitt, but it goes back to an ancient story about the great Greek painter Apelles.

The story goes that Apelles used to leave his new paintings out on public display and then hide behind a pillar to hear people's reactions. One day he overheard a cobbler pointing out that Apelles had painted a shoe all wrong. So he took the painting away, corrected the shoe and put it out on display again.

The cobbler came back, saw that Apelles had taken his advice and was so proud and puffed up with conceit that he had made the great painter change a detail that he started talking loudly about what was wrong with the leg; at which point Apelles jumped out from his hiding place and shouted: ne sutor ultra crepidam, which approximately translates as the cobbler should go no further than the shoe. Thus ultracrepidiarian is beyond-the-shoe.

Anybody wishing to know my opinions on baseball, carpentry or Pop Idol should send a stamped self-addressed envelope somewhere else.

Leave it out, son.