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Posted By: tsuwm puzzumous - 10/02/07 03:29 PM
here's another word mystery..

some olde online resources have puzzumous meaning poisonous; Jeffrey Kacirk (The Word Museum) gives this juicy definition: Disgustingly obsequious. I can't come up with any possible derivation other than L. possumus, we are able – which leads me to neither of these definitions.

-joe (puzzlepated) friday
Posted By: Myridon Re: puzzumous - 10/02/07 04:02 PM
If you could use pus (bitterness/corrupt matter) as an adjective (bitter/corrupt), then you could have pusissimus - most bitter/corrupt.
Posted By: zmjezhd Re: puzzumous - 10/02/07 04:23 PM
It's just a guess, but one of the older spellings of poison in the OED1 is puzzen (given as a northern or Scots dialect). Might be the origin. Latin pūs has a stem in the oblique cases of pūr-, so the superlative form of the putative adjective would have to be something like *pūrissimus.
Posted By: tsuwm Re: puzzumous - 10/02/07 04:31 PM
zmj, Kacirk gives his authority for "disgustingly obsequious" as Francis Robinson's A Glossary of Words Used in the Neighborhood of Whitby. London, 1876. – this mean anything to you? (sounds awfully rarefied)
Posted By: zmjezhd Re: puzzumous - 10/02/07 04:42 PM
this mean anything to you

Hadn't heard of it, but I see my local university library has it.

Author: Robinson, Francis Kildale, 1809-1882.

Title: A glossary of Yorkshire words and phrases, collected in Whitby and the neighbourhood, with examples of their colloquial use, and allusions to local customs and traditions.

Publisher: London, J. R. Smith, 1855.

I'll stop by, if I have the time, later today and take a look at it.

[Addendum: "On a vacation trip at Whitby, Yorkshire in 1890 - during which the first notes concerning a supernatural tale about an 'Undead Man' were taken - Bram Stoker had numerous conversations with the local population, and later consulted a book entitled A Glossary of Words Used in the Neighbourhood of Whitby, by Francis Kildale Robinson in Whitby's Library. The Philadelphia notes contain a list of 164 words taken from that book, 64 of which have been used in the novel, among which 'kirkgarth'(churchyard) and 'boh-ghosts'(terrifying apparition) (16)." from this site on Bram Soker's Dracula.]

[Post-Addendum: Better yet: Google books has digitized it. Pp. 135f. give: puzzom 'poison', puzzomful 'poisonous', and puzzomous 'poisonous'. "I want summat to puzzam rattens wi'." As Whitby is in North Yorkshire, I think it falls under the OED1 variant spelling above.]
Posted By: tsuwm Re: puzzumous - 10/02/07 05:05 PM
thank you! ~ there it is, poisonous, which only leaves us with the mystery: where did Kacirk come up with his
Quote:
obsequious
connection from *that?!?

edit:
from the English Dialect Society, Glossaries of Words..
Quote:
Puzzomful, or Puzzomous, adj.
poisonous. Extremely filthy. 'Puzzomful winds,' those from the east so destructive to our vegetation. Also, disgustingly obsequious.


go figure.

edit² - there is also this now obsolete sense of obsequious: dutiful in regard to the dead and in the proper and appropriate performance of obsequies
Posted By: zmjezhd Re: puzzumous - 10/02/07 05:54 PM
Looked at The Glossaries of Words Used in Swaledale, Cleveland, Kent, Surrey, Oxford, Warwickshire, and Whitby English Dialect Society, volume iv, 1873, 1876. I see that F K Robinson is the authority for Whitby. As this book dates after his other Whitby glossary, it may be that Mr Robinson had gathered further information.

[Addendum: The book cited by Kacirk may be a later, augmented edition. The OED1, on more careful inspection, has an entry for poisonful which cites Robinson's Whitby book: "The house was parfitly puzzomful".]
Posted By: tsuwm Re: puzzumous - 10/02/07 06:45 PM
now we're getting there:

poison 3b. derogatory. a person who exerts a harmful influence or who is detested. 1876 F. K. ROBINSON Gloss. Words Whitby, ‘A parfit puzzom’, morally, a thoroughly pernicious individual. [OED2]
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