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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
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If you could use pus (bitterness/corrupt matter) as an adjective (bitter/corrupt), then you could have pusissimus - most bitter/corrupt.
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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.
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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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)
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this mean anything to youHadn'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.]
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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thank you! ~ there it is, poisonous, which only leaves us with the mystery: where did Kacirk come up with his connection from *that?!? edit: from the English Dialect Society, Glossaries of Words.. 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
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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".]
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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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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