From: Body Toxic, An Environmental Memoir By SUSANNE ANTONETTA
In the twenties slappedup buildings held balls and the Astors came, in fox fur (those rich enough to wear eternity around their necks, uroboros, head eating tail) and their own beautiful rich skin.
the meaning of uroboros, is somewhat evident from the passage– I remember my mother had a fox stole of the same style – but from where the word?
Uro- I found was a greek root for "tail" but I could find a listing for the word, or the boros part.
From what I've read recently, in mythology (Greek?) the Ocean surrounding the only known continent on Earth was represented by a serpent that eats its own tail named Ouroboros.
You might want to check out this thread:
http://wordsmith.org/board/showflat.pl?Cat=&Board=miscellany&Number=23065although i'd read it before, i still laughed out loud at some of the posts (eg: Hyla's comment to the effect of "but what if tsuwm was *also* thinking about autophagy??" and Jackie's "I can go anywhere and read smut"
.).
I can remember many years ago seeing ladies wearing a fox pelt around the neck with fox's tail in its mouth.
me? thinking about autophagy? I still can't get the image of coprophagy out of my head. but I digress.
Also ouroboros, uroborus. [ad. Gr. oÌqob¾qo|, also oÌqg-, devouring its tail (freq. connected with dq0jxm).]
The symbol, usu. in the form of a circle, of a snake (or dragon) eating its tail.
1940 H. G. Baynes Mythol. of Soul vi. 221 Thus the uroborus symbol represents our psychic continuity with the immemorial past. Ibid., Geber, or Jabir, the most famous of the Arabian alchemists, who lived in Kufa about a.d. 776, used the uroborus to represent a closed system or magic ring, denoting the idea of an eternal process. 1953 R. F. C. Hull tr. Jung's Psychol. & Alchemy in Coll. Wks. XII. iii. v. 357 The alchemical parallel+is the double nature of Mercurius, which shows itself most clearly in the Uroboros, the dragon that devours, fertilizes, begets, and slays itself and brings itself to life again. 1957 N. Frye Anat. Criticism 157 Alchemical symbolism takes the ouroborus and the hermaphrodite+in this redemptive context. 1975 Hughes & Brecht Vicious Circles & Infinity Fig. 11 The ouroboros, the snake with his tail in his mouth, is the prototype of the vicious circle.+ The ‘Endless Snake’ depicts an ouroboros who has become one with himself. It has fallen into the mathematical sign for infinity.
Various of my female relatives had these stoles made from fox or other anumals rigged up so the jaws of one grabbed onto another, often with the legs haning down, sometimes 3 or 4 pelts in the thing. This was called a kolinski (sp.?)
Indeed, a kolinsky is a kind of mink fur. Say kolinsky mink fur real fast twelve times.