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#78953 08/25/02 05:40 PM
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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.

#78954 08/25/02 08:11 PM
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evidently this area is to be considered a blemish, or worse, an excrescence on the cityscape.


#78955 08/26/02 01:29 AM
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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".



#78956 08/26/02 05:08 PM
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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......."


#78957 08/26/02 05:51 PM
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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............."


#78958 08/26/02 05:56 PM
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>If the bequiling eroticisms...

is that typo in the original?! if so, it brings unknown twists to acupuncture...


#78959 08/26/02 05:57 PM
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literally, vade mecum means 'go with me', it now is used to mean 'a ready reference'.


#78960 08/26/02 06:41 PM
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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.

(


#78961 08/26/02 06:50 PM
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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.


#78962 08/26/02 06:57 PM
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#78963 08/26/02 07:03 PM
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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.


#78964 08/26/02 07:09 PM
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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


#78965 08/26/02 07:48 PM
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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?


#78966 08/26/02 10:31 PM
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>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...)


#78967 08/26/02 11:41 PM
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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".



#78968 08/27/02 05:06 PM
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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'."


#78969 08/27/02 06:06 PM
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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


#78970 08/27/02 06:42 PM
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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.



#78971 08/27/02 07:49 PM
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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!"


#78972 08/27/02 09:19 PM
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- 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



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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 no, I didn't know that until you asked me, expecting I would know, and looked it up so as not to disappoint!


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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?


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>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.



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Dear TEd: your spelling is atrocious. Scotch is the stuff dreams are made of.


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