Seldom-Used Words

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Ord

Ord, from the Celtic ord, or Ard,; a headland or promontory, as the Ord of Caithness: Ardnamurchan, &c. 'In Suffolk,' says Mr. Halliwell, 'a promontory is called an ord. The word has also the sense of a beginning, or a point.

And touched him with the spear's ord.
—Romance of Sir Oluel.

Saul drew his sword,
And ran even upon the ord.
—Cursor Mundi; Trin Coll. Cam., quoted by Halliwell.

Taken from Lost Beauties of the English Language, by Charles Mackay, LL.D.

Mackay doesn't deign to tell us who Mr. Halliwell may have been.
 
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Those are given as antonyms, yes.

Indeed. Malign and malignant both come from, through old French, from the Latin adjective malignus, meaning "unkind, ill-natured, spiteful, stingy." Benign and benignant come from benignus, "kind, friendly, favorable, liberal, lavish."
 
My father used to use Brycreem. His hair, like mine, was unmanageable.

My mother always had antimaccassars.

In the 80s and 90s and even now, hair gel is used for styling. Bring back the antimaccassar!

Some of the late 19th and early 20th Century equivalents of Brycreem were unpleasant and had to be strongly perfumed to cover up the stink. Bear grease, goose fat, and even Beef dripping were used as hair products.

Since men (and women) in those eras washed their hair very infrequently, the smell could soon be obnoxious. Brycreem was a vast improvement on the earlier 'pomades'.
 
Ooth

Ooth, raging mad; from the German wuth, and the Scottish wud.

From Mackay again. He doesn't tell us whether he's using "mad" in the sense of "angry," or in the sense of "insane," and I don't have an adequate German dictionary. (Or any Scottish one.)
 
Ord, from the Celtic ord, or Ard,; a headland or promontory, as the Ord of Caithness: Ardnamurchan, &c. 'In Suffolk,' says Mr. Halliwell, 'a promontory is called an ord. The word has also the sense of a beginning, or a point.

And touched him with the spear's ord.
—Romance of Sir Oluel.

Saul drew his sword,
And ran even upon the ord.
—Cursor Mundi; Trin Coll. Cam., quoted by Halliwell.

Taken from Lost Beauties of the English Language, by Charles Mackay, LL.D.

Mackay doesn't deign to tell us who Mr. Halliwell may have been.

Almost certainly James Orchard Halliwell whose Dictionary of Archaic words was published in 1850.
 
To alleviate server load, we're slowly closing down any threads with over 5,000 posts.

The new thread is here (clickie!).

As annoying as this may be, phasing out all or most of the active super-long/never-ending threads will increase the forum speed substantially. If you see a thread that's active with more than 5,000 posts, please feel free to PM me with the link.

Please note that these threads are not being removed - just closed to new posts.

Thank you for your patience and kind understanding! :rose:
 
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