November 22, 2013 by Angela Tung

The Words of George Eliot

Mary Ann Evans, the English novelist who went by the pen name of George Eliot, was born on this day in 1819.

A journalist and translator, Eliot was one of the leading writers of the Victorian Era and “used a male pen name. . .to ensure her works would be taken seriously” and “to escape the stereotype of women only writing lighthearted romances.”

Her 1872 novel, Middlemarch, is considered by some to be “the greatest novel in the English language.”

In celebration of the author’s birthday, here are eight words you might not know she coined or popularized.

chintzy

“The quality of the spotted one is best, but the effect is chintzy and would be unbecoming.”

Letter, 1851

Chintzy means “decorated with chintz,” but also gaudy, trashy, stingy, or miserly. Eliot’s is the earliest recorded usage of this figurative sense.

Chintz, which is a “cotton cloth printed with flowers or other patterns in different colors,” comes from the Hindi chint, which comes from the Sanskrit chitra-s, “clear, bright.”

More English words that come from Indian languages.

floppy

“The caps she wore would have been pronounced, when off her head, utterly heavy and hideous — for in those days even fashionable caps were large and floppy.”

“Scenes of Clerical Life,” George Eliot’s Works, 1858

As you probably guessed, floppy comes from flop, an old word dating from 1600 as a variant of flap, which is probably imitative. Floppy disk is from about 1974.

horribile dictu

“In some circles the effort is, who shall make the best puns, (horribile dictu!) or the best charades.”

The Writings of George Eliot, 1854

Horrible dictu translates from Latin as “horrible to relate” and is analogous with mirabile dictu, “wonderful to relate.”

lampshade

“I have bought the Lucifers and done my duty about the Lamp shade, but to get one it will be necessary to send the old one as a pattern.”

Selections from George Eliot’s Letters, 1850

The next time put a lampshade on your head to party, you can thank George Eliot for coining the word, or at least having the earliest recorded usage.

Lampshading or lampshade hanging is dealing with an element of a story that threatens the audience’s suspension of disbelief “by calling attention to it and simply moving on.”

The Lucifers in the quote, by the way, refer to a brand name of matches.

lunch-time

“But after this week I shall be most glad if you and Dr Congreve will come and see us just as and when you would find the least inconvenience in doing so — either at lunch-time (half past one) or at a later hour.”

Life of George Eliot: As Related in Her Letters and Journals, 1859

The word lunch came from the word luncheon in the early 1800s, says the Oxford English Dictionary. Around 1931, lunch began to surpass supper as the word for a noontime meal. Lunchtime, while used by Eliot in the mid-1850s, didn’t really start to gain popularity until after 1960.

pop

“But there is too much ‘Pop.’ for the thorough enjoyment of chamber music they give.”

Life of George Eliot: As Related in Her Letters and Journals, 1862

Michael Jackson would be nothing without George Eliot — or at least he would need a different moniker. Eliot’s usage is the earliest recorded one of pop meaning to popular music. Pop is also a count noun, says the OED, referring to “a popular song or piece of music.”

self-criticism

“The self-criticism which prompted the suppression of the dedication did not, however, lead him to improve either the rhyme or the reason of the unfortunate couplet.”

“Worldliness and Other Worldliness: The Poet Young,” The Essays of George Eliot, 1857

In the early 1930s, self-criticism gained the added meaning of “criticism undertaken publicly by oneself of one’s actions, attitudes, or policies, considered as a duty in order to ensure conformity with communist party doctrine.”

Siberia

“Probably this projected transportation may be to a Cape of Good Hope instead of a Siberia.”

Letters, 1841

Eliot’s is the earliest recorded usage of Siberia to mean, figuratively, “a remote undesirable locale.” This area of central and eastern Russia had been “used as a place of exile for political prisoners since the early 17th century.” In the early 1890s, construction of the Trans-Siberian Railroad began, and “from 1801 to 1914, an estimated seven million settlers moved from European Russia to Siberia.”

The population and settlement continued to expand through the twentieth century although “in the early decades of the Soviet Union (especially the 1930s and 1940s), the earlier katorga system of penal labour camps was replaced by a new one that was controlled by the GULAG state agency.” Many of these camps and prisons were in Siberia.

[Photo: “Chintz,” CC BY 2.0 by CycloKitty]
[Photo: “lightheaded,” CC BY 2.0 by Peter Castleton]
[Photo: “Siberia,” CC BY 2.0 by Giuseppe Tescione]

June 13, 2013 by Angela Tung

The Words of Fanny Burney

Before Jane Austen, there was Fanny Burney.

English writer Fanny Burney was born on this day in 1752. Known as Madame d’Arblay after she married, Burney wrote several novels and plays, as well as voluminous journals and letters.

Jane Austen was a great fan, going as far as to derive the title of one of her most-loved books from the concluding pages of Cecilia, Burney’s 1782 novel: “The whole of this unfortunate business, said Dr Lyster, has been the result of PRIDE and PREJUDICE.”

In addition to inspiring other writers, Burney also coined or popularized at least a few dozen words that we still use today. Here are our 10 favorites.

Bonbons

bonbon

“’Incomparably well observed!’ cried he, collecting some bonbons from a bonboniere, and swallowing one after another with great rapidity.”

Camilla, or A Picture of Youth, 1796

A bonbon is a dainty candy that is often covered in chocolate and has at its center fondant, a kind of sweet creamy paste, fruit, or nuts. The word is French in origin and reduplication of bon, “good.” Burney was the first to bring the word into English.

In case you were wondering, a truffle could be considered a kind of bonbon. While truffles are always chocolate, bonbons may or may not be.

bumptious

“No, my dearest Padre, bumptious!—no! I deny the charge in toto.”

Diary and Letters, Volume 6, 1793-1812

Burney formed bumptious, “crudely or loudly assertive; pushy,” by combining bump, perhaps with the idea of someone rudely bumping into another, and the –tious suffix of words like fractious.

fubsy

“In the evening we had Mrs. Lawes, a fat, round, panting, short breathed, old widow; – & her Daughter, a fubsy, good-humoured, Laughing, silly, merry old maid.”

Early Journals and Letters of Fanny Burney, Volume 4, 1780-1781

Fubsy is British slang for “somewhat fat and squat.” Burney added an –sy to the already existing fub, “a plump, chubby person,” which is now obsolete. Fubsy may be a play on chubby, which was coined around 1611, according to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED).

gag

“I gagged the Gentleman with as much ease as my very little ease would allow me to assume.”

Early Journals and Letters of Fanny Burney, Volume 2, 1774-1777

Gag meaning “to play jokes upon” is older than the noun meaning, “a joke, especially a practical joke; a farce; a hoax.” Burney’s use was either figurative “with the notion of thrusting something down the throat of a credulous person,” says the OED, or imitative, like an older meaning of the word gaggle, “to make a noise like a goose; cackle.”

Day 261: Grumpy

grumpy

“You know very well I wanted to borrow Mr. Smith’s room, only you were so grumpy you would not let me.”

Evelina, or The History of a Young Lady’s Entrance into the World, 1778

Before grumpy, or even grump, there was humps and grumps, “slights and snubs,” a phrase coined by author Daniel Defoe in 1727, according to the OED. Next came the grumps, a state of ill-humor, the grump, and finally Burney’s grumpy.

For even more on grumpy words, check out our post, A Short-Tempered History of the Curmudgeon.

keepsake

“She sent me a neat little pocket volume, which I accept from that valuable friend, as just the keepsake, I told her, that could give me only pleasure from her hands.”

Diary and Letters of Madame D’Arblay, 1778-1840

While now a memento in general, Burney originated the word keepsake specifically as “a token of friendship.” The word was also “used as the title of some of the holiday gift-books formerly published annually.”

Around 1839, says the OED, the word gained the cynical meaning of “having the inane prettiness of faces depicted in a keepsake volume,” or “the namby-pamby literary style of such books.”

pinafore

“A pin-a-fore for Master Mortimer Delvile, lest he should daub his pappy when he is feeding him.”

Cecilia: Memoirs of an Heiress, 1782

A pinafore is “a sort of apron worn by children to protect the front part of their dress,” and is so-called because it was formerly pinned to the front of the dress. In pinafores means “ at a very young age, childish, inexperienced,” according to the OED.

A pinafore dress is like a jumper in American English, “a sleeveless dress worn over a blouse or sweater.” To add to the confusion, in British English, a jumper is a pullover sweater.

sulk

“In sitting down, he flung himself unto the back of his Chair just as he used to do at Twickenham, when he was not in spirits, & I never in my life saw a youngman sulk longer.”

The Early Letters and Journals of Fanny Burney, 1782-1783

The next time the teenager in your life goes to sulk in his room, you can tell him the word is a back-formation of sulky, which may be an alteration of the obsolete sulke, “sluggish.” The sulks, like the grumps, are a state of ill-humor, and came about after Burney’s use of sulk as a verb.

tea-party

“The room was so very much crowded, that but for the uncommon assiduity of Sir Clement Willoughby, we should not have been able to procure a box (which is the name given to the arched recesses that are appropriated for tea-parties) till half the company had retired.”

Evelina, or The History of a Young Lady’s Entrance into the World, 1778

Burney probably didn’t expect the seemingly innocuous phrase tea party to become as loaded as it is today.

What was “an afternoon social gathering at which tea and light refreshments are served” became linked to the Boston Tea Party, a demonstration in 1773 by Bostonians disguised as American Indians. As a protest against taxation without representation (for instance, on tea), they “raided three British ships in Boston harbor and dumped hundreds of chests of tea into the harbor.”

The Tea Party movement is an American political movement that “tends to be anti-government, anti-spending, anti-Obama, anti-tax, nationalistic, in favor of strict immigration legislation and against compromise politics.”

tranquilizer

“I find, however, useful employment the best tranquiliser, & however my heart still aches – I have less of the violent emotions which have hitherto torn me.”

The Journals and Letters of Fanny Burney, 1797-1801

While we may primarily think of a tranquilizer as a drug to reduce anxiety or put you sleep, it originally referred to anything soothing or relaxing. Burney’s usage, the earliest recorded, is from 1800.

Tranquilize originated around 1623, says the OED, and tranquil in 1616. The earliest citation of tranquil is in Shakespeare’s Othello: “Farewell the tranquile mind, farewell content.”

[Photo: “Bonbons,” CC BY 2.0 by fdecomite]
[Photo: “Day 261: Grumpy,” CC BY 2.0 by Emily]

April 23, 2013 by Angela Tung - 1 Comment

Cullions, Fustilarians, and Pizzles: A Short Dictionary of Shakespearean Insults

William Shakespeare

While Shakespeare’s actual date of birth remains unknown, April 23, the date of his death, is celebrated as his birthday. Bardolators pay homage by learning to talk like him and his characters – what better way to start than with insults?

Here we round up ten of our favorite Shakespearean jabs, what they mean exactly, and where they came from.

assinego

Thersites: “Ay, do, do; thou sodden-witted lord! thou hast no more brain than I have in mine elbows; an assinego may tutor thee.”

Act 2. Scene I, Troiles and Cressida

Assinego, also spelled asinego, is “a little ass” or “foolish fellow.” The word comes from the Spanish asnico, diminutive of asno, “ass.”

bed-presser

Prince Henry: “I’ll be no longer guilty of this sin; this sanguine coward, this bed-presser, this horse-back-breaker, this huge hill of flesh,—”

Act 2. Scene IV, Henry IV, Part 1

A bed-presser is someone who’s lazy and loves their bed. Other old-timey synonyms for sluggard include idlesby, loll-poop, curry-favel, and, our favorite, loitersack.

bull’s pizzle

Falstaff: “’Sblood, you starveling, you elf-skin, you dried neat’s tongue, you bull’s pizzle, you stock-fish!”

Act 2. Scene IV, Henry IV, Part 1

This quote from Henry IV is jam-packed with insults. A starveling is someone who is starving but probably means a weakling here. An elf-skin is “a man of shrivelled and shrunken form,” says the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). A neat’s tongue is a tongue of cow or ox, where neat is an obsolete term for a “domestic bovine animal,” and a stock-fish is fish “cured by splitting and drying hard without salt,” perhaps with the idea of something dried up and shriveled.

Finally, a bull’s pizzle is a bull’s penis. The word pizzle comes from a Low German word meaning “tendon,” and is now mostly used in Australia and New Zealand, according to the OED. Penis, in case you were wondering, is Latin in origin.

cullion

Queen: “Away, base cullions!”

Act 1. Scene III, Henry VI, Part 2

A cullion is “a contemptible fellow; a rascal.” An earlier meaning is “testicle,” coming from the Latin culleus, “bag.” See also cully and cojones.

fustilarian

Falstaff: “Away, you scullion! you rampallion! You fustilarian! I’ll tickle your catastrophe.”

Act 2. Scene I, Henry IV, Part 2

Another quote that’s teeming with taunts! A scullion is “a servant who cleans pots and kettles, and does other menial service in the kitchen or scullery,” a rampallion is a villain or rascal, and a fustilarian is a scoundrel.

Fustilarian comes from fustilugs, “an unattractive, grossly overweight person.” Fustilugs comes from a combination of fusty, musty or lacking freshness, and lug, “anything that moves slowly or with difficulty.”

Catastrophe here refers to “the posteriors,” as the OED puts it. So I’ll tickle your catastrophe means something like “I’ll kick your ass.”

harebrained

Charles: “Let’s leave this town; for they are hare-brain’d slaves, / And hunger will enforce them to be more eager.”

Act 1. Scene II, Henry VI, Part 1

Harebrained means having “no more brain than a hare.” Shakespeare’s is the earliest recorded use of this word, which is now often associated with the phrase harebrained scheme.

The earliest mention of harebrained scheme we found was from an 1892 New York Times article: “Of course this is nonsensical, but it appears to have a certain excuse in the fact that the Queen did harbor some such harebrained scheme, and actually summoned Devonshire to Osborne House to discuss it.”

Know of an earlier mention of harebrained scheme? Let us know in the comments.

hobby-horse

Leontes: “My wife’s a hobby-horse, deserves a name / As rank as any flax-wench that puts to/ Before her troth-plight: say’t and justify’t.”

Act 1. Scene II, Winter’s Tale

In this context a hobby-horse is a loose woman or prostitute, according to Gordon H. Williams’s Dictionary of Sexual Language and Imagery in Shakespearean and Stuart Literature. The hobby-horse was “one of the principal performers in a morris-dance,” which says Williams, was “notorious for licentious behaviour under the mask of Maygaming.”

lily-livered

Macbeth: “Go prick thy face, and over-red thy fear, / Thou lily-liver’d boy.”

Act 5. Scene III, Macbeth

Lily-livered means cowardly or timid, and this use in Macbeth seems to be the earliest. Shakespeare seemed to also be the first to use lily to mean pale or bloodless. During Elizabethan times, the liver was believed to be the “seat of love and passion,” according to the Online Etymology Dictionary. As a “healthy liver is typically dark reddish-brown,” a pale liver is presumably unhealthy and weak.

puppy-headed

Trinculo: “I shall laugh myself to death at this puppy-headed monster.”

Act 2. Scene II, The Tempest

Being puppy-headed means being stupid, like a puppy. While puppy at first meant “a small dog kept as a lady’s pet or plaything; a lapdog,” says the OED, by Shakespeare’s time it meant “a young dog.”

In the quote Trinculo is referring to Caliban, “a ‘savage and deformed’ slave of Prospero, represented as the offspring of the devil and the witch Sycorax,” and “figuratively, a person of a low, bestial nature.”

three-suited

Kent: “A knave; a rascal; an eater of broken meats; a base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited, hundred-pound, filthy, worsted-stocking knave.”

Act 2. Scene II, King Lear

Three-suited means having “only three suits of clothes,” and therefore being “beggarly,” or so petty or paltry “as to deserve contempt.” Broken meat refers to “fragments of meat” left after a meal. Worsted stockings seem to be lower quality stockings.

Not insulting enough? Check out these, these, and finally these as told by, what else, cats. Also be sure to see these Wordnik-made lists, Slings and Arrows, 135 Offensive Shakespearean Terms, and today’s list of the day, Knaves, Rogues, and Stewed Prunes. For some now-common words and phrases that the Bard coined or popularized, revisit last year’s post.

[Photo: CC BY 2.0 by tonynetone]

February 7, 2013 by Angela Tung - 1 Comment

Dickensian Soup: 11 Words from Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens

Two hundred and one years ago today, English writer Charles Dickens was born. The prolific author’s inventive character names have given rise to many words now common in the English language, and he has been credited with the coining of dozens of words.

While some of these words have been antedated – for example, an earlier citation of boredom, long credited to Dickens, has been found – there’s no denying the author’s role popularizing words that may have disappeared into obscurity. Today we round up 11 of our favorites.

abuzz

“The court was all astir and a-buzz, when the black sheep—whom many fell away from in dread—pressed him into an obscure corner among the crowd.”

Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities, 1859

Dickens was one of the first authors to use abuzz, “characterized by excessive gossip or activity.” Another “early adopter” of the word was George Eliot, who used it in her 1859 novel, Adam Bede: “I hate the sound of women’s voices; they’re always either a-buzz or a-squeak.”

creeps, the

“She was constantly complaining of the cold, and of its occasioning a visitation in her back which she called ‘the creeps‘.”

Charles Dickens, David Copperfield, 1850

You may be surprised to know the modern-sound phrase, the creeps, “a feeling of fear and revulsion,” was coined by Dickens. He may have been influenced by the sense creepy, “chilled and crawling, as with horror or fear,” which originated around 1831.

devil-may-care

“Not that this would have worried him much, anyway—he was a mighty free and easy, roving, devil-may-care sort of person, was my uncle, gentlemen.”

Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers, 1837

Devil-may-care, meaning “reckless; careless,” or “jovial and rakish in manner,” seems to come from the saying, “The devil may care but I don’t.”

flummox

“And my ‘pinion is, Sammy, that if your governor don’t prove a alleybi, he’ll be what the Italians call reg’larly flummoxed, and that’s all about it.”

Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers, 1837

To flummox means “to confuse; perplex.” The origin is probably an English dialectal word which Dickens brought back into popularity. According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), the formation of the word “seems to be onomatopoeic, expressive of the notion of throwing down roughly and untidily; compare flump, hummock, dialect slommock sloven.”

gonoph

“He’s as obstinate a young gonoph as I know.”

Charles Dickens, Bleak House, 1853

Gonoph is slang for a pickpocket or thief. The word comes from gannabh, the Hebrew word for “thief.” Dickens’s seems to be the earliest recorded usage of the word in English.

gorm

“It appeared, in answer to my inquiries, that nobody had the least idea of the etymology of this terrible verb passive to be gormed; but that they all regarded it as constituting a most solemn imprecation.”

Charles Dickens, David Copperfield, 1850

Gorm is “a vulgar substitute for (God) damn,” according to the OED. In the television show, Firefly, gorram is a common expletive, presumably a corruption of goddamn. Whether or not the show’s creators were influenced by Dickens is unknown.

lummy

“To think of Jack Dawkins—lummy Jack—the Dodger—the Artful Dodger—going abroad for a common twopenny-halfpenny sneeze-box!”

Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist, 1839

Lummy is slang for “knowing; cute,” or “first-rate,” and probably comes from lumme, a corruption of “(Lord) love me,” according to the OED. Lummy is another Dickens-coined word that has fallen into obscurity, though we would like to see it make a comeback.

on the rampage

“When I got home at night, and delivered this message for Joe, my sister ‘went on the Rampage,’ in a more alarming degree than at any previous period.”

Charles Dickens, Great Expectations, 1860

The phrase on the rampage comes from the earlier verb form of rampage, “to act or move in a ramping manner; spring or rush violently; rage or storm about.” The word rampage may come from ramp, “to rise for a leap or in leaping, as a wild beast; rear or spring up; prepare for or make a spring; jump violently.”

red tapeworm

“If in any convenient part of the United Kingdom, (we suggest the capital as the centre of resort,) a similar museum could be established, for the destruction and exhibition of the Red-Tape-Worms with which the British Public are so sorely afflicted, there can be no doubt that it would be, at once, a vast national benefit, and a curious national spectacle.”

Charles Dickens, Household Words, 1851

A red tapeworm is, according to the OED, “a person who adheres excessively to official rules and formalities.” The phrase plays off red tape and tapeworm, and was coined by Dickens in Household Words, a weekly magazine he edited.

Red tape, slang for “the collection or sequence of forms and procedures required to gain bureaucratic approval for something, especially when oppressively complex and time-consuming,” comes from the English practice of using red or pink tape to tie official documents. The figurative sense arose around 1736, says the OED. A tapeworm is a ribbonlike parasite.

Some call a phrase like red tapeworm a sweet tooth fairy, “three words where the first and second form a known expression and the second and third form a known expression and all three together make a credible expression.”

sawbones

“‘What! Don’t you know what a sawbones is, sir?’ inquired Mr. Weller. ‘I thought everybody know’d as a sawbones was a surgeon.’”

Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers, 1837

Sawbones is slang for a surgeon or doctor. Before the advent of anesthesia in 1846, speed was of the essence for surgeons. With a saw like the one pictured in this article, Victorian physicians could amputate a leg in half a minute.

whiz-bang

“‘Present! think I was; fired a musket—fired with an idea—rushed into wine shop—wrote it down—back again—whiz, bang—another idea—wine shop again—pen and ink—back again—cut and slash—noble time, Sir. Sportsman, sir?’ abruptly turning to Mr. Winkle.”

Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers, 1836

Whiz-bang in this example means something “very rapid and eventful; rushed,” and is imitative of something that moves quickly, or whizzes, and perhaps lands with a bang.

During World War I, whiz-bang came to refer to “the shell of a small-calibre high-velocity German gun, so called from the noise it made,” according to the OED. By 1916, the term referred to “a resounding success,” and in 1960, a type of firecracker.

[Photo: CC BY 2.0 by USM MS photos]

January 24, 2013 by Angela Tung - 3 Comments

Lewis Carroll: Through the Looking-Glass, and What Words We Found There

Alice Through the Looking-Glass (1871)

This Sunday is the birthday of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, better known as Lewis Carroll, the English mathematician and writer whose most famous works include Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Through the Looking-Glass, and The Hunting of the Snark.

Such works featured Carroll’s specialty: coining blends and nonce words. We take a look at 10 of our favorites here.

boojum

“But oh, beamish nephew, beware of the day,
If your Snark be a Boojum! For then
You will softly and suddenly vanish away,
And never be met with again!”

Lewis Carroll, The Hunting of the Snark, 1876

The boojum is “a particularly dangerous variety of ‘snark,’” an imaginary creature of Carroll’s invention. The word boojum has inspired the naming of everything from “a species of tree. . .native to Baja California, Mexico” (found in 1922 by plant explorer Godfrey Sykes, who proclaimed, “It must be a boojum!”); to a supersonic cruise missile that “was determined to be too ambitious a project. . .and was canceled in 1951”; to “a geometric pattern sometimes observed on the surface of superfluid helium-3,” as named by physicist David Mermin in 1976.

chortle

“He chortled in his joy.”

Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass, 1871

To chortle means “to exclaim exultingly, with a noisy chuckle.” According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), Carroll coined the word as a blend of chuckle and snort.

frabjous

“‘O frabjous day!’ rejoiced Emma Dean, using her bath towel as a scarf and performing a weird dance about the room.”

Jessie Graham Flower, Grace Harlowe’s Return to Overton Campus, 1915

Frabjous means “great, wonderful, fabulous,” and is a blend of either fabulous and joyous, or fair and joyous. “O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!” cries the narrator of The Jabberwocky upon learning that the Jabberwock has been slain.

galumph

“I struggle to keep up on an particularly cold winter evening as I galumph my way across rough downland in pursuit of a tour guide.”

Ian Vince, “Stonehenge Landscape Can Still Surprise with Its Stunning Vistas,” The Telegraph, January 14, 2010

Galumph means “to move heavily and clumsily,” and is a blend of gallop and triumph.

jabberwocky

“In theory, the pledge could do most of the same work if we had children say it in Anglo-Saxon or Arapaho, or if we replaced it with the lyrics to ‘Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah.’ They’re going to turn the words into jabberwocky anyway.”

Geoff Nunberg, “I Pledge Allegiance to Linguistic Obfuscation,” NPR, March 30, 2010

The Jabberwocky is “a nonsensical poem that appears in Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll,” while the Jabberwock is “a fantastical dreaded monster with flaming eyes who is depicted” in the poem. Regarding the word itself, according to Carroll:

The Anglo-Saxon word ‘wocer’ or ‘wocor’ signifies ‘offspring’ or ‘fruit’. Taking ‘jabber’ in its ordinary acceptation of ‘excited and voluble discussion.’

Jabberwocky came to mean “nonsensical speech or writing” around 1908, says the OED.

mimsy

“I mean, their hair looks like it was designed on a Spirograph in the dark, then carelessly flopped on to them from atop a rickety step ladder, while their fans are all exactly the kind of mimsy mugginses who ‘Instagram’ pictures of wheelie bins to stick on their Tumblr, because, you know, it’s properly, like, photography, yeah?”

Gareth Aveyard, “This Week’s New Singles,” The Guardian, January 6, 2012

Mimsy was coined by Lewis Carroll in 1855 as a blend of miserable and flimsy. According to the OED, by 1880 mimsy also came to mean, in British English, “prim; careful; affected; feeble, weak, lightweight.” Mim is a much older word meaning “primly silent,” either imitative of the pursing up of the mouth, or coming from the Scottish Gaelic min, “delicate, meek.”

portmanteau word

“Portmanteau words are now a staple of the magazine competition, and amid the waste of failed invention, every so often one meets a need: smog, stagflation, chocoholic. I don’t know how we ever did without ‘metrosexual’, coined by my friend Mark Simpson.”

Philip Hensher, “Sarah Palin’s Struggle with the English Language,” The Telegraph, July 21, 2010

A portmanteau word is “a word formed by merging the sounds and meanings of two different words.” A portmanteau is “a case used in journeying for containing clothing,” and comes from the French porter, “to carry,” plus manteau, “cloak.”

Carroll coined portmanteau word in 1882 based on the idea of “two meanings packed up into one word,” says the Online Etymology Dictionary.

slithy

“Hearing these slithy and suggestive movements, I declined to remain any longer ignorant of their meaning.”

Ernest Raymond, Tell England: A Study in Generation, 1922

In 1855, Carroll combined slimy and lithe to form this nonce word. However, slithy as a variation of sleathy, “slovenly, careless,” has been around since 1622, says the OED.

snark

“The Snark was one of that strange man’s imaginary animals, but when novelist Heidi Julavitz used the word to describe unpleasantly critical book reviewers in her indifferently researched 2005 McSweeney’s magazine article, the word gained, as they say, ‘traction.’”

Bob Hoover, “Hunting Snarks with a Pop Gun,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, January 18, 2009

Snark referring to “an imaginary animal” was coined by Carroll in 1876 in his poem, The Hunting of the Snark, according to the Online Etymology Dictionary. In the 1950s, snark was the “name of a type of U.S. cruise missile and in 1980s of a type of sailboat.”

The word snark also has the meaning of “to snore; to snort,” which originated about 10 years before Carroll’s imaginary animal, according to the OED. This gave rise to snarky, “rudely sarcastic or disrespectful; snide,” or “irritable or short-tempered; irascible,” around 1906, which gives us snark‘s modern meaning of “snide remarks.”

vorpal

“Because, really, there’s nothing more grandiose and theatrical than the vorpal blade. It’s the weapon of dueling gentlemen and swashbuckling adventurers, of knights in armor and the horse lords of Rohan.”

Daniel Engber, “Nerd Violence,” Slate, January 3, 2011

Vorpal meaning “sharp or deadly” was coined by Carroll in 1871. In the role-playing game Dungeons and Dragons, the vorpal sword is a sword “capable of decapitation, specifically through magical means,” which aligns with the plot of The Jabberwocky:

One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

[Photo: CC BY 2.0 by Cea.]

December 27, 2012 by Angela Tung - 3 Comments

The Words of Rudyard Kipling

Photo by ketrin1407

This Sunday marks the 147th anniversary of the birth of British writer Rudyard Kipling. The author of The Jungle Book was highly prolific, penning numerous short stories and poems, and three novels. Along the way, he coined and popularized quite a few words. Here are 10 of our favorites.

“’Tisn’t beauty, so to speak, nor good talk necessarily. It’s just It. Some women’ll stay in a man’s memory if they once walked down a street.”

Rudyard Kipling, Traffics and Discoveries, 1904

Kipling’s is the earliest recorded use of it meaning “sex appeal (especially in a woman).” The term was later popularized by British novelist and scriptwriter Elinor Glyn in her 1927 novel, It. Glyn went on to help “make a star of actress Clara Bow for whom she coined the sobriquet ‘the It girl’.”

just-so story

“But these days, some of the most frequent and pungent disparagements of Kipling have been delivered not by defenders of political correctness, or even by the gatekeepers of literary greatness, but by, of all people, biologists, for whom ‘just-so story’ has become a phrase of opprobrium.”

David P. Barash and Judith Eve Lipton, “How the Scientist Got His Ideas,” The Chronicle Review, January 3, 2010

A just-so story is “a story that cannot be proven or disproven, used as an explanation of a current state of affairs.” The phrase comes from Kipling’s Just-So Stories, “fictional and deliberately fanciful tales for children, in which the stories pretend to explain animal characteristics, such as the origin of the spots on the leopard.”

kissage

“Ere they hewed the Sphinx’s visage
Favoritism governed kissage,
Even as it does in this age.”

Rudyard Kipling, Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads, 1922

Kissage, another word for kissing, may have regained popularity from its usage in a 1998 episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer: “It’s like, freeze frame. Willow kissage – but I’m not gonna kiss you.”

grinch

“It’s woe to bend the stubborn back
Above the grinching quern,
It’s woe to hear the leg bar clack
And jingle when I turn!”

Rudyard Kipling, “The Lament of the Border Cattle Thief,” Ballads and Barrack-Room Ballads, 1897

Grinch in this context means “to make a harsh grating noise,” says the Oxford English Dictionary, and may be related to the French grincer, “to grate, creek, screech.”

Related to grincer is grincheux, a cranky person. Some speculate that Theodor Geisel, aka Dr. Seuss, may have been influenced by grincheux when coming up with the name of that ultimate holiday killjoy.

old-school tie

“After which, it is only fair to tell you that I tied up my platoon on parade this morning owing to an exalted mentality which for the moment (I was thinking over the moral significance of Old School ties and the British social fabric) prevented me from distinguishing between my left hand and my right.”

Rudyard Kipling, Limits and Renewals, 1932

Old-school tie refers to “a necktie that has the colors of a British public school”; “the upper-middle-class solidarity and system of mutual assistance attributed to alumni of British public schools”; and “the narrow clannish attitudes characteristic of the members of a clique.”

Old school, meaning “of the old school; of earlier times; as originally or formerly established, propounded, or professed; old or old-fashioned,” is much older, originating around 1749, according to the Online Etymology Dictionary.

overseas

“All things considered, there are only two kinds of men in the world—those that stay at home and those that do not. The second are the most interesting. Some day a man will bethink himself and write a book about the breed in a book called ‘The Book of the Overseas Club,’ for it is at the clubhouses all the way from Aden to Yokohama that the life of the Outside Men is best seen and their talk is best heard.”

Rudyard Kipling, Letters of Travel, 1920

Kipling’s usage is the earliest recorded of this meaning of overseas: “of, relating to, originating in, or situated in countries across the sea.”

Overseas Chinese refers to “a person or people of Chinese ethnicity, living in a non-Chinese country.” Overseas experience, says the OED, is either “experience of life and culture in an overseas country,” or a New Zealand term for “an overseas working holiday, usually to Britain or Europe, undertaken by young New Zealanders and freq. considered as a virtually obligatory part of an informal education.”

penny-farthing

“Remembering what she had done, it was pleasant to watch her unhappiness, and the penny-farthing attempts she made to hide it from the Station.”

Rudyard Kipling, Plain Tales from the Hills, 1888

Penny-farthing, or pennyfarthing, meaning “ineffective,” was formed by combining penny and farthing, “an English piece of money equal to one fourth of a penny,” says the Online Etymology Dictionary, “the two together making but a small sum.”

Penny-farthing, “an early bicycle having a large front wheel and much smaller rear one” (perhaps named for the different sizes of the coins), came about later in 1927.

slack-jawed

“Look you, I have noticed in my long life that those who eternally break in upon Those Above with complaints and reports and bellowings and weepings are presently sent for in haste, as our Colonel used to send for slack-jawed down-country men who talked too much.”

Rudyard Kipling, Kim, 1901

Slack-jawed means “with the mouth in an open position and the jaw hanging loosely, especially as indicating bewilderment or astonishment,” or “unsophisticated or unthinking; dimwitted in appearance.”

Cletus Spuckler, aka “Cletus the Slack-Jawed Yokel,” is a stereotypical redneck character on the animated TV series, The Simpsons.

squiggly

“The squiggly things on the Parsee’s hat are the rays of the sun reflected in more-than-oriental splendour, because if I had real rays they would have filled up all the picture.”

Rudyard Kipling, Just So Stories, 1907

Squiggly may come from the older squiggle, which originally meant “to work wavy or intricate embroidery,” according to the OED, before it came to mean, more commonly, “to squirm and wriggle,” or “to move about like an eel.”

Svengali

“’I’m glad Zvengali‘s back where he belongs.”

Rudyard Kipling, A Diversity of Creatures, 1917

A Svengali is “a person who, with evil intent, tries to persuade another to do what is desired,” and is named for Svengali, “the hypnotist villain” in the 1894 novel Trilby by George du Maurier.

Kipling’s is the first recorded figurative use of Svengali. In the quote, the speaker is referring to “a dog with a mesmeric stare,” says the OED.

[Photo: CC BY 2.0 by ketrin1407]

December 14, 2012 by Angela Tung

Celebrating ‘The Hobbit’: Journey Words, Unexpected or Not

Hobbits, by loresui

We here are Wordnik are quite excited that The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey opens today. While we didn’t go as far as to don Hobbit ears and wizard caps and camp out in front of our favorite theater, we did gather 10 of our favorite journey words (not Journey words) right here.

booze cruise

“The head of the Massachusetts Port Authority resigned yesterday after it was learned that he went on a ‘booze cruise‘ paid for by his agency during which a woman bared her breasts.”

“‘Booze Cruise’ Flap Ousts Board Head,” Toledo Blade, August 19, 1999

In American English, booze cruise refers to “a recreational trip on a cruise ship or boat usually tailored to young people, with the expectation of heavy consumption of alcoholic beverages.” This meaning originated around 1979, according to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED).

The British English meaning, “a brief trip from Britain to France and/or Belgium in order to buy alcohol (or tobacco) in bulk quantities without paying excise duty,” is newer, coming about in the mid-1990s, says the OED.

The word booze comes from the Middle English bousen, “to drink to excess.”

jaunt

“Such a jaunt was a rare treat to the child, for Isabella Spencer seldom allowed her to go from home with anybody but herself.”

L.M. Montgomery, Further Chronicles of Avonlea

A jaunt is “a ramble; an excursion; a short journey, especially one made for pleasure.” An earlier definition was “tiresome journey,” says the Online Etymology Dictionary, and earlier than that was the verb sense, “tire a horse by riding back and forth on it.” The origin is unknown, perhaps coming from “some obscure Old French word.”

Jaunty, “having a buoyant or self-confident air” or “crisp and dapper in appearance,” has a different origin, coming from the French gentil, “nice,” which in Old French means “noble.”

junket

“Businesses are providing lavish junkets to little-known but highly-influential staff across swathes of the public sector, a Sunday Herald investigation can reveal.”

Paul Hutcheon and Tom Gordon, “Junket Scotland,” Herald Scotland, October 18, 2008

A junket is “a trip or tour,” especially “one taken by an official at public expense.” The word’s earliest meaning is “a basket made of rushes,” or a type of marsh plant; then, “curds mixed with cream, sweetened, and flavored,” and by extension, “any sweetmeat or delicacy.”

The meaning shifted in the 1520s, says the Online Etymology Dictionary, to “a feast or merrymaking; a convivial entertainment; a picnic.” The led to the sense of “pleasure trip,” and to the American English meaning, around 1886, of “tour by government official at public expense for no discernable public benefit.”

The word ultimately comes from the Latin iuncus, referring to the rush marsh plant. Iuncus also gives us junk, originally a nautical term meaning “old or condemned cable and cordage cut into small pieces,” perhaps named for its similarity in appearance to the reedy marsh plant.

milk run

“Tired of the same old ‘milk run‘ to work every morning? Try the ‘computer run.’”

“Coming Next, The Morning Computer Run,” The Milwaukee Sentinel, July 23 1966

A milk run is “a routine trip involving stops at many places,” as well as “an uneventful mission, especially a military sortie completed without incident.”

The phrase, which originated around 1909, seems to come from older milk round (1865), which, according to the OED, is “a fixed route on which milk is regularly collected from farmers or delivered to customers; a milk delivery business covering such routes.” Milk round gained the figurative meaning of “a series of (typically annual) visits to universities and colleges made by business representatives to recruit graduates.”

mush

“I just came in from a seventy-five mile ‘mush,’ but will start to-morrow for Chena. Nearly all our people are going or have gone. I have no dogs, but combine with two other fellows and pull our sleds.”

“The Assembly Herald,” Presbyterian Magazine

Mush, which is “used to command a team of dogs to begin pulling or move faster,” also refers to the journey itself, “especially by dogsled.” Earlier was the verb sense, “to trudge or travel through the snow, while driving a dog-sled.” The word may come from the French marcher, “to walk, go.”

peregrination

“After slipping among oozy piles and planks, stumbling up wet steps and encountering many salt difficulties, the passengers entered on their comfortless peregrination along the pier; where all the French vagabonds and English outlaws in the town (half the population) attended to prevent their recovery from bewilderment.”

Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit

A peregrination is “a traveling from one country or place to another; a roaming or wandering about in general; travel; pilgrimage.” The word ultimately comes from the Latin peregrinus, “from foreign parts, foreigner.” The first child born in Plymouth Colony was Peregrine White, where peregrine means “a foreign sojourner.”

sally

“Even a captain in war must know the special virtues and vices of the enemy: which nation is ablest to make a sudden sally, which is stouter to entertain the shock in open field, which is subtlest of the contriving of an ambush.”

Clare Howard, English Travellers of the Renaissance

A sally is “a run or excursion; a trip or jaunt; a going out in general,” and comes from the Latin salīre, “to leap.”

Sally, the proper name, is an alteration of Sarah. Sally Ann is a nickname for the Salvation Army.

sashay

“I fell down eleven steps into your garden, knocked on the front door, knocked on the side door, talked to some one called ‘Ma,’ talked to some one called ‘Lydia,’ and learned that Miss Martha Brunhilde Monroe was out for a sashay.”

Kathleen Thompson Norris, Martie, The Unconquered

Sashay, which has the more common meaning of “to walk or proceed, especially in an easy or casual manner,” or “to strut or flounce in a showy manner,” also refers to “an excursion; an outing.” The word is what the Online Etymology Dictionary calls a “mangled Anglicization” (manglicization?) of the French chassé, “gliding step.”

schlep

“This election season, Jewish grandchildren all over the United States are schlepping to crucial swing states such as Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan to convince their grandparents to vote for Obama as part of The Great Schlep, a project of the Jewish Council for Education and Research.”

Nandini Balial, “Students ‘schlep’ To Sway Relatives To Obama,” CBS News, February 11, 2009

A schlep is “an arduous journey,” and is Yiddish in origin, coming from shlepn, “to drag, pull.” This sense of schlep entered English in the 1960s, says the OED.

walkabout

“When the royal couple arrived for a ‘walkabout‘ in some town and split up the street — Charles heading to one side, Diana to the other — people on Charles’ side of the street would groan audibly: they had wanted HER and got stuck with HIM.”

Pat Morrison, “Sarah Palin and Princess Diana,” The Huffington Post, September 12, 2008

Walkabout has multiple meanings associated with a journey: in Australia, “a temporary return to traditional Aboriginal life, taken especially between periods of work or residence in white society and usually involving a period of travel through the bush”; “a walking trip”; and, chiefly British, “a public stroll taken by an important person, such as a monarch, among a group of people for greeting and conversation.”

This last sense is the newest, originating around 1970, according to the OED, while the other senses are attested to the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

[Photo: CC BY-SA 2.0 by loresui]