more f-words from yesteryear

[part the third: FLAP-DRAGON to FLURT]

this week’s edition contains a mésalliance of both handy definitions (“a side of bacon”, “to laugh sarcastically”), balderdash™-style descriptions (“the person who puts the feather on an arrow”, “having a mouth like a flounder”), and suessian whimsy (flee flowns, flibberjibber, and flothery). enjoy:

• FLAP-DRAGON. A small substance such as a plum or candle end set afloat in a cup of spirits and when set on fire, snatched by the mouth and swallowed. This was a common amusement in former times but is now nearly obsolete
• FLAWPS. An awkward, noisy, untidy, and slovenly person
• FLAZE. A smoky flame
• FLEACHES. Portions into which timber is cut by the saw
• FLEAMY. Clotted with blood
• FLEE FLOWNS. The eggs of flies in meat
• FLECK. a side of bacon
• FLETCHER. An arrow maker. Properly the person who put on the feather
• FLIBBERGIBBER. A lying knave
• FLIGHT-SHOT. The distance a flight arrow would go, about a fifth part of a mile
• FLIPPERING. Crying, weeping
• FLIT. To move, especially at night to cheat the landlord
• FLIZZEN. To laugh sarcastically
• FLIZZOMS. Flying particles
• FLOKE MOWTHEDE. Having a mouth like a flounder
• FLOOD MARK. The mark which the sea at the highest tide makes on the shore
• FLOP. the scrotum
• FLOTHERY. Slovenly but attempting to be fine and showy
• FLUMP. a heavy fall
• FLURCH. A great quantity
• FLURT. To snap the fingers derisively. Hence any satirical action or speech

3 unconventional antipredator adaptations

• sea cucumbers shoot out (eviscerate) their stomach organs organs like gooey nerf balls.
• horned lizards build up sinus pressure until jets of blood gush out of their eyes.
• the carpenter ant can explode itself, spraying poison in all directions—kamikaze style.

adapted for the blogging medium from wikipædia (a site like facebook.com but dealing with the branches of knowledge instead of farmville and which of your friends did what to whom).

f-clichés

this week’s f-words are more properly f-clichés. of particular interest to yorrs tru-ly are fossil words (such as fettle and fraught) that now only exist in the english language because they have been preserved in idiom like frogs in formaldehyde.

• fall head over heals: to enter an activity so thoroughly as to be almost helpless. the head is normally over the heels, so the term would seem to make more sense as “heels over head,” and indeed that is what it was. as early as the 14th century it appeared as “hele ouer hed” in a poem, though the corruption has been around for a long time.
• feather in his cap: an honor. it was once a custom in many countries to award a feather to a soldier who had killed an enemy; the feather was worn in the helmet or some other kind of headgear. that is the literal meaning of the term; the figurative meaning of an honor or achievement was in the language by 1657.
• (to be in) fine fettle: to be in good health or spirits. “fettle” was a verb meaning to put in order. “to be in fine fettle” was to be well set up to do something.
• (of the) first water: of the highest quality. for centuries diamonds were graded as “first water,” “second water,” or “third water,” the use of “water” in this sense arising from the resemblance of the diamond to water in its clarity and translucence.
• fit as a fiddle: in fine shape. fiddles are admired for their sound and sometimes for their trim and symmetrical shape. indeed, to say “his face is made of a fiddle” was once a way of describing someone as charming. still, fiddles are not known for their fitness and one suspects the allure of alliteration in the origin and perpetuation of the saying, which is quite old.
• (with) flying colors: triumphantly. the “colors” are the flags or banners borne by a naval ship; in victory the colors remain prominently displayed.
• fraught with danger: perilous. “fraught,” is a relative of “freight.” things have been “fraught with difficulties” for at least 400 years.
• from the horse’s mouth: the truth. you can tell the age of a horse accurately by looking at its teeth, which is why one is advised not to “look a gift horse in the mouth.” the horse’s pairs of permanent teeth appear in succession at definite ages. the lore is old but the expression seems to be of 20th century origin.

from the dictionary of clichés, by james rogers (1985).

cock ale

i have tasted some weird treats in my lifetime but the thought of adding chicken gravy (and nutmeg) to my beer makes me want to dry heave.

Take a cock of half a year old, kill him and truss him well, and put into a cask twelve gallons of Ale to which add four pounds of raisins of the sun well picked; sliced Dates, nutmegs and mace.

Then boil the cock in a manner to a jelly; then press the body of him extremely well, and put the liquor into the cask where the Ale is, with the spices and fruit; then put to it a pint of new Ale yeast, and let it work well for a day. if it proves too strong, you may add more plain Ale to palliate this restorative drink, which contributes much to the invigorating of nature°.

bonus information: other popular beer cups (ale drinks with additives) at the beginning of the eighteenth century were named:

Humpty-dumpty, Clamber-clown, Hugmatee, Stick-back, Knock-me-down, Fox-comb, Stiffle, Blind Pinneaux, Stephony and Northdown.

from: the curiosities of ale and beer, by john bickerdyke, 1886.

middling talents

certain writers elect to go by their middle name. usually this is because the mafia forced them to do it or a company holds a copyright for their first name and threatens to take them to court. other times it is because of medical conditions like 1. dyslexia or 2. chronic boogers. whatever the reason, here is a list of these individuals and their actual first names.

• (william) somerset maugham
• (henry) graham greene
• (samuel) dashiell hammet
• (henry) charles bukowski
• (harry) sinclair lewis
• (mary) flannery o’connor
• (dillard) mills baker
• (paul) thomas mann
• (adeline) virginia woolf
• (nicole) harper lee
• (joseph) rudyard kipling
• (clarence) malcolm lowry
• (frederick) ogden nash

should you ever find yourself in the sack with any of the people in the list above, you now know the proper word to holler.

also: i have been slowblogging the pulp outta my source. if lists and literature are your thang, then you might want to consider buying this book from your local bookstore or shoplifting it from barnes and/or noble.

UPDATE (9/10/2009):

• (arthur) evelyn (st. john) waugh

a character study

perhaps the only honor for an author greater than having his or her name adjectivised is having the name of his or her characters adjectivised. here are a few that i was able to find (irregulars are italic):

Arthurian, Bunyanesque*, daedal, Dryasdustic†, Falstaffian, Faustian, gargantuan, Herculean, Holmesian, narcissistic, Œdipal, Panglossian, Pecksniffian, pickwickian, quixotic

for the record, the hierarchy of literary adjectivisation goes something like this:

author’s name < character’s name < author’s name in lowercase < character’s name in lowercase (lowercase is the best case)

the ultimate achievements in this regard are cervantes, rabelais and dickens.

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*were i to venn these character terms with the previously posted auctorial terms, you would note that the single overlap is bunyanesque, referring both to john the writer and paul the folktale hero.

†a great summary word for this post.

auctorial descriptives -or- literary eponymous adjectives

i have always been fascinated by demonyms and so i compiled this fairly* exhaustive list on similar terms related to authors. what really tickles my pickle are: 1. the irregularities (given in italics) and 2. the authors that have not been adjectivised:

Asimovian, Austenian, Baconian, Ballardian, Balzacian, Borgesian, Brechtian, Bunyanesque, Byronic, Carrollian, Cartesian, Chaucerian, Checkovian, Chestertonian, Conradian, Dantesque, Dickensian, Durrellian, Dostoevskian, Emersonian, Erasmian, Faulknerian, Gravesian, Homeric, Huxleyan, Jamesian, Joycean, Juvenalian, Kafkaesque, Lawrentian, Lovecraftian, Machiavellian, Marlovian, Maughamian, Menippean, Miltonic, Nabokovian, Orwellian, Pinteresque, Poundian, Proustian, Rabelaisian, Randian, sadistic†, Sapphic, Sartrean, Shakespearean, Shavian, Spenserian, Tennysonian, Thurberesque, Thoreauvian, Tolkienian, Tolstoyan, Trollopian, Vergilian, Voltairean, Vonnegutian, Waughian, Wildean, Woolfian.

notice: huxleyan and tolstoyan BUT dostevskian
miltonic and byronic‡ BUT chestertonian
marlovian, thoreauvian, and shavian BUT waughian
pinteresque and thurberesque BUT spenserian

conspicuously absent: twain, poe, hemingway, conan doyle, ibsen, dickinson, rowling <gag>, wallace, et alii

see also: the literary onomasticon and/or this humorous article.

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*i say fairly because i omitted a bunch of classical “writers” that we really don’t owe any sort of credit to. seriously, what literary legacy of any value did the greeks or romans leave for us?

†this adjective from the marquis de sade is the only term on the list that is genuinely lowercase.

‡there are scads of great rhyming words here for my man, baba.

diæresis pieces

i think that we can all agree that english is a pretty bitching language and i don’t want to be overly diacritical, but i amn’t alone in wishing that english orthography contained at least a few more interesting characters.

here is a wikipedia list of the small number of english words that actually have diacritical marks. most of these are loan words from klingon and old elvis but a few words like reëlect and blessèd° are ACTUALLY NATIVE ENGLISH WORDS WITH DIACRITICS.

that stooopid grave accent on blessèd is stooopid and deserves to be forgotten about but the diæresis (NOT to be confused with its germanic doppelgänger, the umlaut) on reëlect must be preserved at all costs. and that is why i am instituting this usage as the ragbag house style (i hear that the new yorker may be copycatting me in this nostalgic hypercorrection). here is a list of english language words that are blinged out in diæreses:

• boötes
• continuüm
• coöperate [-ion, -ive]
• coöpt
• coördinate [-ed, -ing, -ion, -or, -ors]
• daïs
• naïf
• naïve
• naïveté
• faïence
• noël
• noöne
• oölogy
• opïum
• preëminent [-ly]
• preëmpt [-ion, -ive]
• reëlect [-ed, -ing]
• reënter [-ed, -ing]
• reëstablish [-ed, -ing]
• residuüm
• zaïre
• zoölogy

if you catch me writing one of these words in the future without the bling, i will abandon vegetarianism for 1 day. also, just for lols i will try and write the following words the way they originally appeared in english: cañón, rôle, piraña, hôtel, élite, and dépôt.

some grose f-words

i suppose that it was inevitable that i would eventually turn to cap’n grose’s dictionary of the vulgar tongue for some ribald f-words. i first came across this lexicon of “buckish slang, university wit, and pickpocket eloquence” back in the seventh grade when i found it on the top shelf (read: most private) of my uncle’s bookcase. needless to say, i spent the duration of my stay perfecting my footman’s mawnd, practising my figure dancing (are we human or are we figure dancer?) and flashing the hash when my fubsey aunt served me a field lane duck lasagna.

part one: facer to flash the hash

• facer: a glass filled so full as to leave no room for the lip.
• fagger: A little boy put in at a window to rob the house.
• fakement: A counterfeit signature. A forgery.
• fam lay: Going into a goldsmith’s shop, under pretence of buying a wedding ring, and palming one or two, by daubing the hand with some viscous matter.
• fartleberries: Excrement hanging about the anus.
• field lane duck: A baked sheep’s head.
• figure dancer: One who alters figures on bank notes, converting tens to hundreds.
• fire priggers: Villains who rob at fires under pretence of assisting in removing the goods.
• to flash the hash: To vomit.

part two: footman’s mawnd to fussock

• footman’s mawnd: An artificial sore made with unslaked lime, soap, and the rust of old iron, on the back of a beggar’s hand, as if hurt by the bite or kick of a horse.
• free booters: soldiers who served without pay, for the privilege of plundering the enemy.
• french leave: To take French leave; to go off without taking leave of the company: a saying frequently applied to persons who have run away from their creditors.
• froglander: A Dutchman.
• frosty face: One pitted with the small pox.
• fubsey: Plump. A fubsey wench; a plump, healthy wench.
• fussock: A lazy fat woman. An old fussock; a frowsy old woman.

part three: fusty luggs

• fusty luggs: A beastly, sluttish woman.

the new york times book review best sellers in fiction

1. MIND STRETCH, by Pamela McLaughlin. (Warner, $24.95.) Trang Martinez suspects her Pilates instructor may also be a vicious serial killer.
2. SAGEKNIGHTS OF DARKHORN, by Gerry Banion. (Morrow, $26.95.) Astrid Soulblighter attempts to reclaim the throne from the wicked Scarkrig clan. The fifteenth volume of the “Bloodrealms” series.
3. THE BALTHAZAR TABLET, by Tim Drew. (Doubleday, $24.95) The murder of a cardinal leads a Yale professor and an underwear model to the Middle East, where they uncover clues to a conspiracy kept hidden by the Shriners.
4. GREAT FISH, by Liz Martin. (Simon & Schuster,$23.95.) The Biblical story of Jonah, retold from the point of view of the whale.
5. NICK BOYLE’S SHOCK BLADE: LYNCHPIN by Simon Moskowitz. (Broadman & Holman, $24.99.) After a coup by Admiral Chao threatens to destroy the Internet, the ShockBlade team is forced to ally with their Chinese rivals.
6. KINDNESS TO BIRDS, by Preston Brooks. (Penguin Press, $25.95.) On a journey across the Midwest, a downsized factory worker named Gabriel touches the lives of several people wounded by life.
7. A WHIFF OF GINGHAM AND PECORINO, by Jennifer Austin-Meyers. (Osprey, $19.95.) On a hilltop villa in Sicily, an American divorcee finds new love with a local cheesemaker involved in a blood feud.
8. INDICT TO UNNERVE, by Vic Chaster. (Putnam, $24.95.) A prosecutor is the target of an investigation spawned by the daughter of an international assassin he paralyzed in a golf accident.
9. EXPENSE THE BURBERRY, by Eve Smoot. (Simon and Schuster, $23.95) A young woman in Manhattan spends her days testing luxury goods and her nights partying and complaining.
10. SECRETS OF BEFORE-TIME, by T. Addison Rich. (Morrow, $26.95.) In a post-nuclear future inhabited by intelligent cockroaches, Lt. Cccyxx discovers there was once a race of sentient humans.

from how i became a famous novelist, by steve hely (2009).

the complete list (in genuine nyt fauxness) which also includes non-fiction best sellers can be found here.

in addition: you can tweet (as i have done) your own descriptions of fake best sellers with the #hely tag.

onemorething: here is another highlarryus list of other ficitonal books that appear in the life of gargantua and pantagruel.

sound advice

this week’s f-words come from charles harrington elster’s big book of beastly mispronunciations (1999). while my own strong opinions about orthoepy vacillate between yes! and who-cares?, i have found this book to be (if nothing else) 1—a valuable bet settler and 2—a great way to show your barbarous buddies how much a pedant you can be.

• feral: FEER-ul. this pronunciation is favored by all 4 major american dictionaries.
• fifth: FIFTH or FITH. if you can pronounce the second f, good for you. but there’s nothing slovenly about dropping it… it is biestly however, to drop the h and say FIFT or drop the th and say FIF.
• finis: FIN-is (occasionally, FY-nis). the popular variant fee-NEE is wrong. finis is not french for “finished,” as many apparently imagine. it comes through middle english from the latin word meaning “the end, conclusion.”
• flaccid: FLAK-sid, not FLAS-id. apparently the flabby FLAS-id has been limping around in educated circles for most of the 20th century. webster 3 was the first dictionary to recognize FLAS-id, labeling it with its esoteric symbol of disrepute, the obelus [÷]. flaccid is a book-learned word which may explain why so many educated speakers have swallowed the beastly FLAS-id without giving a second thought to the pronunciation of analogous words. consider: accident, succeed, eccentric, etc.
• forbade: fur-BAD. in 1961, webster 3, in opposition to all previous authority, arbitrarily indicated that forbade should be pronounced fur-BAYD. the controversy may soon be academic: the evidence of my ears says that forbid is fast replacing forbade as the past tense of forbid.
• formulae: FORM-yul-LEE, not -LY. as any science savvy person knows, antennae, larvae, papillae, and so on have a long i sound at the end, right? wrong. words borrowed from latin that form their plurals in -ae properly have a long e sound at the end. that’s why, for example we say AL-jee for algae.
• forte (strong point): properly FORT, now usually FOR-tay.
• fracas: FRAY-kis. the first a is properly long. when you enter the fray, you enter a fracas.
• fungi: FUN-jy (j as in judge), never FUN-gy (g as in gout).

and for another look at how everything that you are saying, you are saying wrong, there is this and this.

state bird oddities

• the state bird of utah is the california gull (related: the highest point of connecticut is on a mountain which peaks in massachusetts. go red sox!)
• 5 states have selected official birds FOR EATING in addition to their official state bird (3 turkeys and 2 quails)
• mississippi has selected a state waterfowl (the wood duck) IN ADDITION to its official state bird.
• the state bird of colorado, the lark bunting, is notable for a reason that i shall never reveal.
• the state birds of california, hawaii, rhode island, and delaware all have their state’s name in their name.
• the delaware blue HEN is a BREED of chicken (rather than a sex). why it was never called the (infinitely preferable) blue cock, we shall never know.

pete tarslaw's 16 rules of novel writing

• rule 1: abandon truth.
• rule 2: write a popular book. do not waste energy making it a good book.
• rule 3: include nothing from [one’s] own life.
• rule 4: must include a murder.
• rule 5: must include a club, secrets / mysterious missions, shy characters, characters whose lives are changed suddenly, surprising love affairs, women who’ve given up on love but turn out to be beautiful.
• rule 6: evoke confusing sadness at the end.
• rule 7: prose should be lyrical.
• rule 8: novel must have scenes on highways, making driving seem poetic and magical.
• rule 9: at dull points include descriptions of delicious meals.
• rule 10: main character is miraculously liberated from a lousy job.
• rule 11: include scenes in as many reader-filled towns as possible.
• rule 12: give readers versions of themselves, infused with extra awesomeness.
• rule 13: target key demographics.
• rule 14: involve music.
• rule 15: must have obscure, exotic locations.
• rule 16: include plant names.