I'm reading "The Professor and t;he Madman" by Simon Winchester. On p. 7:
"Lambeth Marsh was also as it happened, just beyond the
legal jurisdiction of both the Cities of London and Westminster.
It belonged administratively - at least until 1888 - to the
County of Surrey - meaning that the relatively strict laws that
applied to the capital's citizens did not apply to anyone who
ventured, via one of the new bridges,like Waterloo, Blackfriars,
Westminster, of Hungerford, into the wen of Lambeth.
None of the usual meanings of wen seem to fit this passage.
If it were meant in the ususal sense of blemish, it seems too weak.
A wen in the sense of a wart or sebaceous cyst does not suggest
an ugly blemish. Lambeth is described as "lubricious" with illicit sex and
veneral disease rampant pollution from primitive industrial enterprises,
including tanneries dependent on collection of dog feces as tanning agent.
It sounds more like a carbuncle than a wen. Unless Winchester has some special
definition of "wen" more loathesome than any in my dictionary.
evidently this area is to be considered a blemish, or worse, an excrescence on the cityscape.
p.52 "......the appearance of pus in a wound was said by doctors to be "laudable."
the sign of healing."
Here, Winchester is guilty of having only half done his homework. He did not
learn enough about "laudable pus". Nobody had yet seen the bacteria that caused
wound infections. But clinically, the ones with creamy pus did not die so quickly or
in such great numbers as those with thin watery pus. So creamy pus was "laudable".
Winchester did it again. Have fun searching for it. And wallowing in it.
p.72: "If the bequiling eroticisms of Ceylon, his tragic family circumstances,
his obsessive cravings for whores, his nostalgie de la boue......."
I knew what it ;meant. Do you?
"Despite all the intellectual activity of the time, there was in print no guide to the tongue,
no linguistic vade mecum , no single book............."
>If the bequiling eroticisms...
is that typo in the original?! if so, it brings unknown twists to acupuncture...
literally, vade mecum means 'go with me', it now is used to mean 'a ready reference'.
None of the definitions of "crib" that I can find fit this on p.83:
"It is perhaps difficult to imagine so creative a mind working without a single work
of lexicographical reference beside him other than Mr. Cooper;s crib (which Mrs.
Cooper once threw into the fire, prompting the great man to begin all over again)......"
(On previous page there was mention of a "Thesaurus" compiled by a man named
Thomas Cooper) If the "crib" referred to his incomplete manuscript, the word
"prompted" seems a poor choice - he was "obliged" to start over.
I recall some other English author having his wife "accidentally" destroying his
manuscript - can you remember who it was? Basis for justifiable homicide.
(
... was one of the first non-technical books I'd read in a long time where I had to look up at *least one word per chapter.
Dear Faldage: Go way back and sit down. None of the previous citations of "crib"
fit this usage. Dear ASp, tell him to stop making 'gratuitous' posts. Yuk, yuk.
without a single work of lexicographical reference beside him other than Mr. Cooper's crib
Today, of course, "crib" is used more broadly to mean anything containing answers that one ought to know without such an aid.
Doesn't seem like a real big jump to me.
GRATuitIS
p.90 In quotation from Sam Johnson's Dictionary about the Elephant, Johnson refers
to the beast's "pudicity". Not in my dictionary, nor in American Heritage Dictionary.
Of course, from anatomical word "pudendal" I know what it means. Do you?
>Of course, from anatomical word "pudendal" I know what it means. Do you?
well then, dr. bill, tell us what it means. (careful, this could be a trick...)
Dear tsuwm: I am shedding great big tears that you should suggest I might be guilty
of trickery.I can get out of this easiery than I thought. My dictionary does not
have "pudicity" , but, oh happy day, it does have "impudicity"
impudicity
n.
5Fr impudicit= < LL *impudicitas, for L impudicitia < impudicus < in3, not + pudicus, modest6 immodesty; shamelessness
So "pudicity" means modesty
Sam Johnson's quote said the elephants would not have sex while humans were watching.
It also said something that surprised me. The female lies on her back when receptive.
The missionaries got to them, and encouraged their "pudicity".
We had posts about variety of lava called "aa". But on p.148 appears:
"The first part's first word - once the four pages devoted to the simple
letter "a" had been accounted for - was the obsolete noun aa meaning
'a stream' or ' a watercourse'."
aa
Forgive me for jumping on without reading this whole thread, but I've only got a second. aa is indubitably listed as a bona fide word in my American Heritage dictionary, 1992. I haven't checked the 2001 edition, but I'll bet it's there, too.
If I've missed Bill's point, then I'll just delete this when I have more time to read what's gone on...
DubDub
Dear WW: Please comment in any way you wish. I like obsolete words almost better
than current ones. I just thought it mentioning.
Now I got one for Fiberbabe: I have read about "retting" flax, "hetchelling" it, but what
in the world is "scutching" it? p.1155 "as a flax plant might stand when divided by the
scutcher."
I can't find a definition, but machinery for the purpose is still made:
"/ Manufacturing :
- Heat-setting, Soft-setting , steam-setting, drying machine for tubular knitted fabrics.
- Inspecting, auto-edge control winding machine, scutcher, slitter, releasing machine, auto double-breadth folding machine.
bottom of page 177 - describing similar facial adornments of Dr. Minor and Sir James Murray:
".....with thick mustaches, sideburns, and ample buggers' grips
Surely, not as in "let go my ears, I know my business!"
- autopeotomy
In his book The Surgeon of Crowthorne, Simon Winchester supplies medical background
to the character Dr Minor's act of autopeotomy, and offers a warning : beware' the
renowned bloodsucking Brazilian fishlet known as candiru, which likes to
swim up a man's urine stream and lodge in the urethra, with a ring of retrorse spines
preventing its removal, one of the very rare circumstances in which doctors will
perform the operation known as a peotomy.
Dear consuelo: here's your old friend "candiru" again.Read material in URL below:
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/000519.html
Thanks, Fiberbabe. Now can you answer this? I have read that at Valley Forge one of
the most disagreeable things the troops suffered from, was a horrible irritation from
their home-made linen underwear. At which step was their mom's processing of the
flax inadequate?
>Scutching is beating the useful parts of the fiber from the woody parts. Sorta like separating the wheat from the chaff, but a little more violent.
And the fiber is then used for making high-quality paper.
Scutch is the stuff that reams are made on.
Dear TEd: your spelling is atrocious. Scotch is the stuff dreams are made of.
