Seldom-Used Words

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Never seen or heard this one;

pilule or pillule - noun a little pill

What a useful word!

pilule / L pilula dim. of pila ball: see -ULE. Cf. PILL n.3]
A small pill.pilular a. of, pertaining to, or resembling a pill or pills E19.
pilulous a. (rare) of the size of a pill, minute L19.

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Excerpted from Oxford Talking Dictionary
Copyright © 1998 The Learning Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
 
Victorian (19th Century) Chemists used to use pill boards. They were pieces of wood with many grooves cut into them. They would roll the mixture into a thin sausage shape, place it at the top of the board and move it down.

The grooves would cut the sausage into equal sized pills. For pillules they would use a board with narrower grooves than the one for pills.

The pill board would produce a set of pills with approximately equal doses without the use of precise measuring scales.
 
Thank you Og and Handley, for the information on pills and their manufacture. I will go looking for a picture of a pill board, so I can understand it a bit better.

Piltdown man - noun a supposedly very early primitive modern man based on skull fragments uncovered in a gravel pit at Piltdown and used in combination with comparatively recent skeletal remains of various animals in the developement of an elaborate fraud
 
Thank you most kindly for posting the excellent picture, Og. I seem to learn better visually with some things.

This next word has a fond place in book two of my trilogy, as my characters visit a very elaborate one on a Mississippi riverboat during their travels.

pilothouse - noun a forward deckhouse for a ship's helmsman containing the steering wheel, compass, and navigating equipment
 
Thank you most kindly for posting the excellent picture, Og. I seem to learn better visually with some things.

This next word has a fond place in book two of my trilogy, as my characters visit a very elaborate one on a Mississippi riverboat during their travels.

pilothouse - noun a forward deckhouse for a ship's helmsman containing the steering wheel, compass, and navigating equipment

Known in the UK as a "bridge"
 
Handley, whenever I hear that word, I think of Captain Kirk and the Enterprise. I decided to look up nautical bridge and here is what Wiki said;

"Traditionally, sailing ships were commanded from the quarter deck, aft of the mainmast. With the arrival of paddle steamers, engineers required a platform from which they could inspect the paddle wheels and where the captain's view would not be obstructed by the paddle houses. A raised walkway, literally a bridge, connecting the paddle houses was therefore provided. When the screw propeller superseded the paddle wheel, the bridge was retained."
 
prattling box n. originally a pejorative term for a pulpit controlled by a long-winded preacher; revived during the 1960s by Walter Cronkite to describe campaign promises.
 
Great word, Edward, and so timely as well. I will remember that one and use it in book 2.

pilot biscuit - noun HARDTACK

pilot bread - noun HARDTACK
 
pilot biscuit - noun HARDTACK

pilot bread - noun HARDTACK

Lifeboat biscuit was a basic requirement on all British ships' lifeboats. Its recipe was mandated by the Board of Trade. It was very hard and had to be edible (although how edible depends on how hungry you were) for at least five years after manufacture. But it might remain unreplaced on a lifeboat for 10, 20 or 30 years. Breaking it up with a hammer was preferable to trying to bite it.

In the Napoleonic Era, Ship's Biscuit was stored in barrels. After several years it could become infested with maggots. The sailors used to tap the biscuit on any hard surface to shake the maggots out. In one of C S Forester's Hornblower novels, some members of the Russian Imperial Court were shocked to see Hornblower's sailors demonstrating the correct way to remove maggots...
 
Og, in Ken Burns' Civil War, he talks about the men putting hardtack into hot coffee to soften it and watching the weevils float to the top. It must have been horrible stuff, but better than starving, I suppose. Thanks for the information on how the British Navy used it.

pillion - noun 1.a. a light saddle for women consisting chiefly of a cushion b. a pad or cushion put on behind a man's saddle chiefly for a woman to ride on 2. motorcycle or bicycle riding saddle for a passenger
 
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pillion - noun 1.a. a light saddle for women consisting chiefly of a cushion b. a pad or cushion put on behind a man's saddle chiefly for a woman to ride on 2. motorcycle or bicycle riding saddle for a passenger

When I met my wife I was riding a WW2 BSA motorcycle. It had been made in 1944 and never used until I bought it with delivery mileage only.

The tyres and pillion seat were made from synthetic rubber. The tyres stripped themselves down to bare canvas in the first 50 miles and had to be replaced.

But I didn't replace the pillion seat which was a small pad mounted above the rear mudguard. The BSA did not have any rear suspension. The footrests were forged steel so any passenger had to rely on the flexibility of the pillion seat for any insulation against bumps in the road - but after nearly 30 years the fake rubber had solidified.

I gave her a ride on the back to the nearest pub for a drink. She decided to walk back, and never rode pillion on that bike again.

One of my cousins still owns that BSA. He still hasn't replaced the pillion seat. Neither his wife nor his children will ride on it.

I searched for pictures. Most owners have replaced the pillion seat, but this one is original:

http://www.midamericaauctions.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/bsa-m20-4-1-2131.jpg
 
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Og, what a great story from a word I never knew. I have ridden on the back of a Harley and a Triumph and both pillions were comfortable, but that one you posted looks scary and I would probably pass on taking a ride on it, too. LOL

pillar-box - noun a pillar-shaped mailbox
 
Og, what a great story from a word I never knew. I have ridden on the back of a Harley and a Triumph and both pillions were comfortable, but that one you posted looks scary and I would probably pass on taking a ride on it, too. LOL

pillar-box - noun a pillar-shaped mailbox

In case you ever wondered, they are still part of England's scene. Link.


With regard to the Pillion seat, motor-bikes made in the 40s and 50s were never really intended for a passenger, particularly the military ones as illustrated by Ogg.
 
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Satyriasis. The male version of nyphomania.

excessive or abnormal sexual craving in the male.

I've just finished drafting the ninth book in a series where my protagonist is a satyriasist. I always have to look that up again when I want to employ the word.
 
This word is a little out of reverse alphabetical order given that you're in the P's, but I was pleased with myself for using this word the other day and I wanted to share.

Scofflaw - One who habitually violates minor laws or fails to answer trivial court summonses (such as parking tickets).
 
Spate as in, "all the rivers of Europe were in full spate." (Heard in a BBC documentary on prehistory of Europe)

Word Origin & History

spate
early 15c., originally Scottish and northern English, "a sudden flood, especially one caused by heavy rains or a snowmelt," of unknown origin. Perhaps from O.Fr. espoit "flood," from Du. spuiten "to flow, spout;" related to spout. Figurative sense of "unusual quantity" is attested from 1610s.

Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper
Matching Quote
"The current flows fast and furious. It issues in a spate of words from the loudspeakers and the politicians. Every day they tell us that we are a free people fighting to defend freedom. That is the current that has whirled the young airman up into the sky and keeps him circulating there among the clouds. Down here, with a roof to cover us and a gasmask handy, it is our business to puncture gasbags and discover the seeds of truth."
-Virginia Woolf
 
Welcome, DrTeetho, thank you for joining us and contributing a great word.

Handley, thanks for posting the picture of the pillar box. They are much better to look at that the vanishing American version, that is for sure.

sr71plt, unfortunately that word sounds like a disease (of the skin), instead of an affliction.

Harold, we always have spate periods, where I live, near the confluence of Castle Creek and the upper Sacramento River. We are forced to carry flood insurance annually, of course. But no earthquake insurance in this part of California. Volcano insurance might be a good thing to have, but so far I am just praying Mt. Shasta doesn't blow anytime soon.

pilgaric - noun [pilled garlic] 1.a. a bald head b. a bald-headed man 2. a man looked upon with humorous contempt or mock pity
 
Who has said it's an affliction? (Did you forget you are on an erotica board?)

Probably the DSM-V - If it's fun, it must be a disease. Perhaps Allard meant to say it was an affection.

Now, if I were to suffer from Priapic Satyriasis, I'd likely head to Allard for treatment...
 
Tio noticed I omitted the second L in pilgarlic, so I am correcting it. Thanks, sweetie.

sr71plt, no offense intended. I don't think of nymphomania as a disease, like cancer or syphilis, and the dictionary concurs. Affliction, on the other hand, and its verb form afflict, seemed to describe the condition adequately. I do attempt to use words correctly, especially on this thread. If you have a better word than disease for the condition, please share it with us.

affliction - noun 1. the state of being afflicted 2. the cause of continued pain or distress; also: great suffering
 
I went looking and this is what I found from Bookrags.com. According to this, disease is a proper term and considering the breakdown of the word, dis-ease, it does make sense, sr71plt. I have changed my thinking, thanks for the nudge.

PRIAPUS was an ithyphallic deity of ancient Greece and Rome. He is known mainly as the god of Roman gardens, where images of him, usually holding up his fruit-laden garment to exhibit his outsize sexual organ, were often placed. However, from the time of his appearance at the dawn of the Hellenistic age well into the Christian Middle Ages, Priapus (Gr., Priapos) may have a basis in some very different realities. From Ptolemy II Philadelphus (Athenaeus, 5.201c), for whom Priapus occupies a mythico-political position, to the epigrams in the Greek Anthology or to the kitchen gardens of Priapea in the Corpus Priapeorum, this god—whom Horace makes into an obscene scarecrow (Satires 1.8)—finds no place among the theological definitions proposed by the ancients. Neither do they seem to have assigned him his own place in their pantheon, even though he was traditionally considered to be the son of Dionysos and Aphrodite and could have been part of the Dionysian thiaseii ("revels"). There is, however, one notorious exception: in the system of Justin the Gnostic, the ithyphallic Priapus becomes central to cosmogony; indeed, he is the supreme being, "the one who made creation, even though nothing existed before" (Elenchos 5.26.33).

The fate that history has dealt this divus minor ("minor god"; Corpus Priapeorum 53) is therefore surprising, for both ancient and modern authors have ceaselessly confused him with other figures of sexuality: Pan, the satyrs, and Hermaphroditus, as well as his own father, Dionysos. This confusion is perhaps due to the fact that Priapus's congenital feature is his oversize and perpetually erect penis, so that authors have often tended to identify everything hypersexual with him. It is as if his excessive sexuality has confused the erudite mythographers. Also, when Diodorus Siculus (4.64) and Strabo (13.1.12) try to describe Priapus, they can do so only by mentioning his "resemblance" to the Attic gods Ithyphallos, Orthnes, Konisalos, and Tychon, all ithyphallic powers about whom almost nothing is known except the priapic resemblance that defines them.

However, in spite of these frequent confusions, the ancient sources give this divinity a specific character. Unlike his phallic colleagues, Pan and the satyrs, who are hybrids, Priapus is fully anthropomorphic. He has neither horns nor hoofs nor a tail. His sole anomaly and unique pathology is the immense sexual organ that defines him from birth. Fragments of myths tell how the newborn Priapus was rejected by his mother, the beautiful Aphrodite, for no other reason than his deformed ugliness (amorphos) and his disproportionate virile member. It is this oversize organ, described by the Latin texts as "terribilis" (Columella, De re rustica 10.33), that allows Priapus to be recognized in images and that identifies him in writings by giving him the form necessary to one of his major functions, that of protecting small-scale cultivations against the evil eye or against thieves by threatening sexual violence to all who pass near the domain he guards (Planudean Anthology 241; Corpus Priapeorum 11, 28, 44, 59, 71).

In both Greek and Latin epigrams, it is the ithyphallic effigy of the god, often carved from the ordinary wood of a fig tree and daubed with red, who is the speaker pronouncing obscene threats. But Priapus is all talk and no action. In guarding his little gardens, as well as in his amorous adventures, he is often ineffectual. Ovid (Fasti 1.391-440, 6.319–348) relates how Priapus failed in his courtship of the beautiful Lotis (or Vesta in another version) and found himself empty-handed every time, his sex up in the air, derided by an assembly laughing at the obscene spectacle of the god frustrated and obliged to flee, his heart and his member heavy.

But it is perhaps the ancient physicians who, in their nosology, best illustrate certain aspects of this impotent phallocrat. Priapism is the term they use to name an incurable disease in which the male organ persistently remains painfully erect. The medical texts of Galen (8.439, 19.426) and Caelius Aurelianus (3.18.175) also insist on an important point: Priapism must not be confused with satyriasis, a comparable disease in which the pathological erection does not exclude either seminal emission or erotic pleasure, which is not the case in priapism.

This difference between the ithyphallism of Priapus and that of the satyrs may indicate still another division: Priapus, the citizen of Lampsacus, whose representations are always anthropomorphic, can be classified close to humans, whereas the satyrs, who are hybrids between men and beasts, belong with demons and the wild. It is as if immeasurable sexuality, which is impossible for a human, is viable for beasts and half-humans.

Aristotle specifies in his biological writings that nature has endowed the virile member with the capacity to be or not to be erect, and he wryly notes that "if this organ were always in the same state, it would be an annoyance" (De partibus animalium 689a). This, however, is precisely the case of Priapus, who, always ithyphallic, never knows the slightest sexual relief. The ancients considered such phallic excess to be a kind of deformity. The same kind of ugliness characterizes the functional aspects of apotropaic objects that, like Priapus, evoke laughter (Aristotle, Poetics 5.1449a) in order to distance evil. This also holds for those amulets that, as Plutarch noted, "draw the bewitcher's gaze" with their strange aspect (atopia).

Given his laughable ugliness, which turns people away, and the Dionysian milieu he belonged to, Priapus remained for a long time a vulgarized figure of ancient fertility. Yet, the appeal of this little god of gardens has endured across the centuries. In the late Middle Ages he was known even to the Cistercians (Chronique de Lanercost, 1268); he was rediscovered by the artists and craftsmen of the European Renaissance; and his image has continued in use as guardian of gardens down to the present day.
 
Tio noticed I omitted the second L in pilgarlic, so I am correcting it. Thanks, sweetie.

sr71plt, no offense intended. I don't think of nymphomania as a disease, like cancer or syphilis, and the dictionary concurs. Affliction, on the other hand, and its verb form afflict, seemed to describe the condition adequately. I do attempt to use words correctly, especially on this thread. If you have a better word than disease for the condition, please share it with us.

affliction - noun 1. the state of being afflicted 2. the cause of continued pain or distress; also: great suffering

Blessing? :D

Again, I sort of wonder if you remember what Web site you're on.
 
I suppose that I think of this thread as an intellectually safe port in a dramatically emotional storm. It is basically neutral in nature with a slant towards expanding vocabulary skills.

I missed this one earlier;

pilose - adj covered with usually soft hair - pilosity noun
 
Good day, everyone.

piker - noun [Pike County, Missouri, thought to be the original home of many shiftless farmers] 1. one who gambles or speculates with small amounts of money 2. one who does things in a small way; also: TIGHTWAD, CHEAPSKATE
 
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