GAUCHE

I picked up a dictionary or 3 last week (and a few more this one) and this is the best of the lot. Which isn't saying much but when your store of choice is a thrift or estate sale you take what is offered.

I learned the word gauche in 10th or 11th grade thanks to an old bird teacher who hated us all. Our ignorance repulsed her and she would oft grumble under her breath "how gauche." To which we inquired, "What does that mean?" Reluctantly, she told us in her offhand way with white foam bubbling in the corners of her mouth and then guffawed with pronounced disgust thick in her hushed rebuttal of our existence. This book is hardly a champion tome of wordsmithmanship but it'll suffice.

GAUCHE

(gohsh), adjective

Tactless; lacking in social refinement. A socially inappropriate remark or action could be considered gauche.



from The Words You Show Know by David Olsen

PULPALGIA

Now before you poo-poo this book based solely on the look of the generic cover and similar title, as I did, there are quite a few good words within. Most lack a significant definition but that can be easily overlooked with the quality of some words Here's one:

PULPALGIA

pain in the pulp of the tooth


 

from the Home Medical Dictionary

NACA DUCT

I'm guessing that the blurry image tacked onto this post was what the original dust jacket for this book looked like but since it's fuzzier than my hairy back it's useless for the cause. Thus, I'll use it anyway. Perhaps a definition will suffice, ye?

NACA DUCT

an inlet duct named for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, the U. S. agency that did extensive research into the design of inlet ducts with minimum drag for jet engines. NACA ducts are used extensively on racing cars and some production cars such as the Lamborghini Espada to efficiently feed air to the engine for breathing, for cooling the engine and cockpit and for forcing air through water and oil radiators. 

And you thought you were THE pansophist!

from The Road & Track Illustrated Dictionary by John Dinkel

SOMRAW

This ain't no joke, peoples of the word. Since I am a rabid hater of the Trek of Stars I detest this book and its contents with all the vigor of a MAGA kid (as seen through the delusional eyes of Council on Foreign Relations members who eat children and pose as journalists in their spare time). While I can't abide by this schlock of sorts perhaps some other mutated quarter-wit can and will.

A word, shall we?

SOMRAW

(Somraw as shown) muscle



from The Klingon Dictionary by Marc Okrand

PANJANDRUM

A panjandrum is "the name of a pompous, pretentious official with considerable power, which heshe is likely to use unwisely." The full definition as given by Hook is:

PANJANDRUM

n  Samuel Foote, an eighteenth-century English writer, created some nonsense about Picninnies, Joblillies, Garyulies, "and the Grand Panjandrum himself, with the little round button on top." The other characters have almost vanished from human memory, but panjandrum survives as the name of a pompous, pretentious official with considerable power, which heshe is likely to use unwisely.

from The Grand Panjandrum: And 1,999 Other Rare, Useful, and Delightful Words and Expressions by J.N. Hook

DUX AND COMES

DUX AND COMES

(L., leader and companion). Older terms for the leading and the imitating voice parts in fugues and canons.



from The Harvard Brief Dictionary of Music by Willi Apel and Ralph T. Daniel

ADAMITISM

The third of my three John King book purchases from a week or two ago. Hey, I deserved to splurge on my day off after working until 1 AM and also selling 4 things on eBay in the previous 24 hours. Yay, me or some bosh of sorts. 

As for the book, it's from 1981 and was published by the Gale Research Company of Detroit, which only added to the allure of the superbly plain and jacket-less cover. But enough with my preamble.

ADAMITISM

the practice of going naked for God; the belief of some ascetic sects in ritual nakedness. --Adamite, n. --Adamitic, adj. Cf. gymnosophy.



from -Ologies & -Isms: A Thematic Dictionary, ed. by Laurence Urdang

OMADHAUN

OMADHAUN

is another word for "idiot, fool or simpleton." Dictionaries generally give the pronunciation as OM-uh-don, but we have heard the thon sound for the last syllable. It's a word which has come direct from Ireland with no change in spelling and is heard in families of Irish ancestry.



from the Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins by William and Mary Morris

BARBAE TENUS SAPIENTES

BARBAE TENUS SAPIENTES

[men are wise as far as their beards]: referring to those who pretend to have knowledge they do not in fact possess



from Latin for the Illiterati by Jon R. Stone

TYPHOID MARY

TYPHOID MARY

1. A person of either sex who spreads a disease he or she is immune to. 2. A jinx. [After the nickname given to Mary Mallon, a XIX Irish immigrant who worked in NYC as a cook.]

HISTORIC. The existence of immune carriers of typhoid infection had earlier been documented in Europe, when in 1888 an outbreak of typhoid fever sent U. S. public health authorities in search of such a carrier. The poor wretch turned out to be Mary, an immigrant girl with no way of making a living except as a cook and domestic. Since there seemed to be no charges on which Mary Mallon could be held, she was released but forbidden to work as a cook, food handler, or domestic. Mary, however, had to eat; and after another outbreak of typhoid fever in N. Y. in 1906, she was once more tracked down and found to be working as a cook under an assumed name. Since there were was no known way to change her physical nature as a carrier, U. S. health authorities classified her as a menace to public health and kept her confined and isolated until she died in 1938, probably with some choice but unrecorded reflections on the gifts of the gods.



from A Browser's Dictionary: A Compendium of Curious Expressions & Intriguing Facts by John Ciardi

MORT AUX VACHES!

Having read E. E. Cummings since my high school days I know a smattering of French words and phrases, most of which were purposely bastardized by the poet and wordsmith.

He would turn phrases such as Honi soit qui mal y pense, a French maxim used as the motto of the British chivalric Order of the Garter meaning "Shame be to him who thinks evil of it", into his own idiolaliac wordplay, honey swoRkey mollypants. Yes, the "R" was supposed to be capitalized in the middle of "swoRkey".

Petite guerre (petty warfare) and merde (shit) were others that I picked up from Cummings.

By the by...his voice is featured in a new Volvo commercial spot imploring the view to "follow no one." But enough of my prattling.

MORT AUX VACHES!

down with the pigs!



from Merde Et!: Merde Encore!: The Real French You Were Never Taught At School by Geneviève

RUBS

Since I went and introduced frivolity into the spectrum of words with the last post featuring "The Foolish Dictionary" let's take another step toward mental Gomorrah with this rubbish entry. "The Totes Ridictionary" is mostly a compilation of words that millennials have amputated at the fag-end and made their own though a few are portmanteaus. I probably won't revisit this book very often here.

RUBS

Not a suspect variety of sensual massage that a middle-aged man with an above-average hairy back might journey to Thailand to receive, but an abbrev of rubbish. When you don't get recalled for that second interview, have your heart pulverized by a total shit who just won't commit, or max out your credit card shopping on Amazon whilst inebriated, friends may offer a consolatory, "Aw, babes, that's rubs."

"That Carly Rae Jepsen single is total rubs."



from The Totes Redictionary by Balthazar Cohen

GERMAN

I forgot about this so-called alt-dictionary from 1905 that I picked up at an estate sale a few months ago despite its ratty condition. It was originally published in May of 1904 but must have been a success because my copy is the 9th edition published by The Robinson, Luce Company of Boston, Massachusetts. I'll add this to the blog and get tagged as fake news since the words are parodies.

I do like the one for POLYGLOT though. "A Parrot that can swear in several languages."

POLE-CAT is pretty bad/good as well: "A small animal to be killed with a pole, the longer the pole the better."

POSTSCRIPT bests them all: the only thing readable in a woman's letter.

But some, like the one for the definition of a GERMAN can only be understood as a scanned page and as a follow-up to the word GERM. Brilliant:

GERMAN

More animal life, living on beer.



from The Foolish Dictionary by Gideon Wurdz

SCUNGILAGINOUS

I'll admit to not having read this book in over 5 years since it was packed away in a box that I didn't realize I even had until about 5 years ago when I briefly glanced at it and then put it into a crate for another 4 or 5. That said, just a brief glance turns up some excellent words. Here's one:

SCUNGILAGINOUS

(skun·ji·la' jə·nəs)

Of the semifluid gelatinous consistency of male genitalia. Probably from the Italian word scugilli, meaning conch



The Grandiloquent Dictionary: A Guide to Astounding Your Friends with Exotic, Curious, and Recherché Words by Russell Rocke

GOURMAND

I'd probably buy any book with the word dunce in it even if it wasn't that good. This is one such book. It's an interesting dichotomy just the same as many words in the English language have not only changed their meaning through the years but some mean the exact opposite of what they were previously defined as. Gourmand isn't one of them but since it's unfamiliar to most I'll include it here:

GOURMAND

(person devoted to excessive eating and drinking)

The disparaging use of 'gourmand', almost meaning 'glutton', has existed in English since the fifteenth century. In the eighteenth century, however, the word acquired a more favourable sense, closer to 'gourmet' (although not under the influence of it since this latter word was not used in English until a century later). This usage can be seen, for example, in a fairly trivial poem of 1839 by Winthrop M. Praed:

You know that I was held by all 
The greatest epicure in Hall, 
And that the voice of Granta's sons 
Styled me the Gourmand of St. John's. 

Charlotte Brontë, too, used the word favourably, with an appropriately feminine ending, in Villette (1853): 'Fifine was a frank gourmande; any body could win her heart through her palate'. This meaning appears to have been ousted, or even replaced, by 'gourmet', however, when it caught on in the nineteenth century, and 'gourmand' today has only its undesirable sense.



from Dunces, Gourmands & Petticoats: 1,300 Words Whose Meanings Have Changed Through the Ages by Adrian Room

RÊVE À DEUX

This is one of my least favorite of the dictionaries. Not because it's poorly written or compiled but mainly due to the fact that I'm not a fan of foreign words or phrases interjected into spoken English. They sound pompous, ridiculous and out of place in common conversation, especially since the speaker is usually the only person who understands its meaning. Its usage in written form is another matter since perusing the dictionary while reading is hardly a social trespass. As such, here's one example from the book:

RÊVE À DEUX

rêve à deux (French): A mutual dream or shared hallucination. [noun]



from They Have A Word For It: A Lighthearted Lexicon of Untranslatable Words and Phrases by Howard Rheingold

CODED

CODED

In some hospitals, coded is a euphemism for "died" ("That woman in 304 coded last night"), drawing on the code nomenclature commonly used in this setting, such as "Code Blue" for heart failure. One doctor was startled to hear "demise" used as a verb when he was told that a patient had demised. Professionally speaking, doctors' patients don't die, they experience a negative outcome, one that might have resulted from a therapeutic misadventure. Most often, doctors, like the rest of us, simply say a patient went ("she went peacefully") or that they've lost a patient. The latter led one immigrant doctor to observe how odd this seemed to him when he arrived in the United States: "I wanted to say, 'Well, we didn't really lose your husband,'" this oncologist told medical researcher James Sexton. "'We know where he is. It's just that he's not breathing any more.'"



from Euphemania by Ralph Keyes

BACK TEETH ARE FLOATING or AFLOAT, MY

BACK TEETH ARE FLOATING or AFLOAT, MY

The expression of an intense need to urinate. Eric Partridge (Catchwords) says that this is a twentieth-century expression, slightly obsolete in Britain by 1960. It is still, however, commonly used by both men and women in the United States. It may be compared to the less urgent need TO GO TAP A KIDNEY. (See also KEG.)



from The Wordsworth Book of Euphemism by Judith S. Neaman and Carole G. Silver

GONGOOZLER

GONGOOZLER

(gön-goozler'ler) n.

someone who stares for hours at anything out of the ordinary.



from Mrs. Byrne's Dictionary of Unusual, Obscure, and Preposterous Words by Josefa Heifetz Byrne

TAHM

TAHM

A Yankee dictionary defines it as "A nonspatial continuum in which events occur in apparently irreversible succession from the past through the present to the future." Let's just say you either have too much of it or not enough. "It takes a long tahm to read the Sunday New York Tahms."



from How To Speak Southern by Steve Mitchell

FRESH BOILED OWL

FRESH BOILED OWL

By most careful research philologists have learned that many years ago, in colonial times, a Yankee whose provisions had run short in the dead of winter, took his gun and set forth through the snows in search of game to feed his family. His luck was poor, he sighted nothing until near sundown, when he spied a big owl perched on the limb of a blasted pine. He let fly with his gun, got the critter and lugged it home to feed his wife and hungry children. She boiled it and when it came out of the kettle it closely resembled old Uncle Jehosophat when he was in his cups, which was most of the time. From then on, whenever he saw Uncle Jehosophat under the weather, he said he was "as stewed as a fresh boiled owl." The term spread and became common and has endured to this day, an instance of how something that one man said so long ago can become a part of the language. This phenomenon continues to puzzle philologists, although research upon it continues and we may be on the threshold of an important breakthrough in this field of science.



from the Yankee Dictionary by Charles F. Haywood

CHAMER

CHAMER

A stupid fellow, especially a stubborn one. "Stanley Reed was 'the Chamer,' which means fool, or dolt, or mule in Hebrew" (Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter's private code-term for fellow Justice Stanley Reed, as recalled by Philip Elman, Columbia Oral History Project, 1983). See also DOLT, FOOL, MULE, and SCHNOOK.



from Wicked Words by Hugh Rawson

HUNKY-DORY

HUNKY-DORY (adj fr middle 1800s)

Satisfactory; fine; =COPACETIC: That may be hunky-dory...with the jumping and jiving youngsters--Bosley Crowther



from American Slang by Robert L. Chapman

DHOTI

DHOTI

a Hindi word. "A flowing garment" is what it says in the passage quoted, but my three desk dictionaries call it "a loin cloth worn by Hindi men." So do W2 and W3. Also dhooti.

Like most leaders of the movement, he does have a shaved head, a saffron-colored flowing garment called a dhoti, and streaks of Ganges River mud on his forehead.



from I Always Look Up The Word "Egregious" by Maxwell Nurnberg

MOLOCH

MOLOCH

the inexorable, all demanding God. Moloch, or Molech, was the god of the Ammonites, who burnt their children in his honour (Lev. xviii. 21 and 2 Kings xiii 10).

Milton in Paradise Lost, says that Moloch was worshipped in Rabba, Argob and Basan.

David took the crown from the head of the idol (2 Sam. xiii. 30) and Solomon built a high place for him (I Kings xi. 7).

The name is continually applied to any fiercely destructive person or state, such as personal tyrants, war, mob rule, the guillotine, etc.



from Word Origins: The Romance of Language by Cecil Hunt

SOCKDOLAGER

Just as writing a blog everyday is the pinnacle of tedium, trying to cram too much information into one post mirrors that daunting task. You forget 75% of the imparted material and lose your reader. Luckily I have no readers. Despite that I'm going to keep this post to a one-word demonstration. Here goes.

SOCKDOLAGER 

Early nineteenth-century term for a climax or crescendo, which in salesmanship might be called the "close" or "finisher." Sockdolager was constructed from sock, a knockout punch, and doxology, a motivational hymn or "verse of thanksgiving" sung near the conclusion of church services. Sermons were once so carefully prepared to maximize the dramatic impact of the sockdolager that clever preachers sometimes noted in the margins where they "cough'd or hemm'd," as Butler alluded to in Hudibras:

And with hearty noise he spoke 'em
The ignorant for current took 'em...
And when he happened to break off
In the middle of his speech or cough,
H' had hard words ready to show why
And tell what rules he did it by....
Have pow'rful preachers plied their tongues,
And laid themselves out, and their lungs;
Us'd all means, both direct and sinister,
I' th' power of gospel-preaching minister?

Sockdolager became a popular word in America for an unexpected event, particularly a violent one. In Davy Crockett's 1835 account of his American wilderness exploration, Bear Hunt, he recalled giving a "fellow a socdolager [sic] over the head with the barrel of my gun." In Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain wrote: "The thunder would go rumbling and grumbling away, and quit--and the rip comes another flash and another sockdolager." By extension, sockdolager denoted surprise ensnarement by a patented double-pronged fishhook of the 1840s, which upon being bitten snapped together in a fish's mouth.



from Forgotten English by Jeffrey Kacirk

LAETARE SUNDAY

LAETARE SUNDAY

The fourth Sunday of Lent, when the introductory word of the Introit is laetare, "Rejoice O Jerusalem." As it is Mid-Lent Sunday, rose vestments are worn, flowers are permitted on the altar, and the organ is played. On this day the Golden Rose is blessed. The day is referred to also as Mediana, Mid-Lent, Mi-Carême, Mothering, Rose, or Refreshment Sunday. See also GAUDETE SUNDAY.



from the Pocket Catholic Dictionary by John A. Hardon, S.J.