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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.
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evidently this area is to be considered a blemish, or worse, an excrescence on the cityscape.
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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".
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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......."
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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............."
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>If the bequiling eroticisms...
is that typo in the original?! if so, it brings unknown twists to acupuncture...
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literally, vade mecum means 'go with me', it now is used to mean 'a ready reference'.
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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.
(
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... 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.
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