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Seldom-Used Words

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Before exiting the Qs, I decided to add this one for fun;

Q fever - noun a mild disease characterized by high fever, chills, and muscular pains, caused by a rickettsia and transmitted by raw milk, by contact, or by ticks

Now, wasn't that fun?
 

rusticle • 1 n., A rusticle is a formation of rust similar to an icicle or stalactite in appearance that occurs underwater when wrought iron oxidizes. They may be familiar from underwater photographs of shipwrecks.






http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rusticle


 

aliquot • 1. n., a portion of a larger whole, esp. a sample taken for chemical analysis or other treatment;
2. n., a quantity that can be divided into another an integral number of times.


 
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pung noun. A sleigh with a box shaped body.

pungle verb. To make a payment or contribution of money, usually used with up.
 
Tio_Narratore said:
pung noun. A sleigh with a box shaped body...
Click to expand...

...which brings to mind:

pungy • n., a pungy is a type of schooner developed in and peculiar to the Chesapeake Bay region. The name is believed to derive from the Pungoteague region of Accomack County, Virginia, where the design was developed in the 1840s and 50s. In form, the pungy is a two-masted gaff-rigged schooner with a main topsail but no square-rigged sails (as found on the related Baltimore clipper). The masts are tall and raked, and there is a bowsprit on the clipper bow. The deck is flush, with a log rail. The hull is framed and has a vee profile. One peculiar detail of the pungy is its traditional paint scheme of green and pink, the origin of which is unknown.

ladyMaryland.jpg

​
Lady Maryland​

​


The pungy, like the Baltimore clipper, evolved from the pilot schooner. Its principal usage was to haul freight, particularly perishables. It was capable of ocean travel and was used, for instance, to ship pineapples to Baltimore from Bermuda. It was also used for a time to dredge for oysters, but its excessive draft and large crew complement led to it being replaced by the bugeye. The last pungies were built in the 1880s, and its use died out in the first half of the twentieth century.

A replica, the Lady Maryland, was built in 1985-1986 and continues to serve as a floating classroom for The Living Classrooms Foundation.








http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pungy

The Lady Maryland was built next door to my house. She was the first large wooden vessel I saw being built. I recall my astonishment at the sheer volume of wood that went into her hull and the massive steam chest that was employed to bend her timbers. It's one thing to read about a keelson and a stempost in a book; it's something else entirely to see them formed with an adze and incorporated in a 104' ( L.O.A. ) vessel.

The Lady Maryland is a type of Chesapeake Bay schooner called a pungy. Pungies are descended from the Chesapeake pilot schooners of the 1700's. Pilot schooners were fast, maneuverable sailing vessels that transported bay pilot navigators to larger boats entering the unpredictable Bay channels. To attain superior speed and maneuverability, pilot schooners were built long and lean; light on the water and capable of carrying a lot of sail on their raked masts (masts that are angled back).

The speedy design of the pilot schooner was used and adapted in the late 1700's to make two types of fast, agile sailing vessels. A descendant of the pilot schooner was the famous Baltimore Clipper, built for war. The other descendant was a swift vessel built to carry perishable cargo instead of pilots and became known as the pungy.

Construction Date: 1985-1986 by the then Lady Maryland Foundation (Living Classrooms Foundation)
Cost: $650,000
Material: White Oak, Pine, Douglas Fir and Mahogany
Color: Pink and green because this is the traditional color of Pungies
Length: 104 feet overall (bowsprit to boom end), 72 feet on deck, and 64 feet 3 inches length on water
Beam Width: 22 feet
Height: Mainmast - 80 feet, with topmast - 92 feet
Draft: 7 1/2 feet
Sails: 4 sails - Jib, Foresail, Mainsail, Topsail
Sail Area: 2,994 square feet.
Crew: 20 berths for sleeping on board
Displacement weight: 82.5 tons
Ballast: 18 tons (15 tons inside the bilge and 3 tons built into the keel)
Engines: Two 80 horsepower diesel engines provided by Cummins Chesapeake Power

http://www.mysticseaport.org/index....e&page_id=2F821C49-1E4F-379B-600E68F4E97DF233
Click to expand...



 
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Definitions of couth on the Web:

* (used facetiously) refined
wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

* Social grace, sophistication; manners; refinement; known, renowned
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/couth

"Uncouth" is fairly well undertstood as the opposite of the second edition above, but I actually ran across the use of "Couth" in a novel.

Wikionary.org says "couth is a back-formation of uncouth" rather than the reverse, but I think the true etymology has been lost.
 
OK, Harold... There was an amusing little story in the New Yorker a number of years ago that played entirely on that theme. It was written by Jack Winter, and entitled "How I met My Wife." The introductory paragraphs went like this:

"It had been a tough day, so when I walked into the party I was very chalant, despite my efforts to appear gruntled and consolate.

I was furling my wieldy umbrella for the coat check when I saw her standing alone in a corner. She was a descript person, a woman in a state of total array. Her hair was kempt, her clothing shevelled, and she moved in a gainly way."
 
Hello sweet gents, I traveled 2600 miles across the US all by myself, along the Emigrant Trail from Sacramento to Council Bluffs and down to Nashville. 6 days driving and my ass is so sore! Good to be back here, though. Here are a few words from a book I am reading that I had to look up (before entering the end of the Rs, that is.)

churl - noun 1. CEORL 2. a medieval peasant 3. RUSTIC, COUNTRYMAN 4.a. a rude ill-bred person b. a stingy morose person

churlish - adj 1. of or resembling a churl: VULGAR 2. characteristic of or befitting a churl: RUDE 3. difficult to work with: INTRACTABLE
 
Trysail, I forgot to say thanks for the info on the pungy, I will use that in book two.

The book I am reading is called, Mark Twain's Other Woman about Isabel Lyon, his secretary/nurse. Several words were unfamiliar to me and I will be listing a couple here for the next several days.

hyperbole - noun extravagant exaggeration used as a figure of speech
 
Samuel Clemens daughter, Jean, had epilepsy and this term is in reference to her illness;

postictal psychotic state - noun a state of altered consciousness in which physical acts of aggression against other people can occur in epileptic patients
 
All of these words are from the before-mentioned book. I listed them without definitions simply to note the often-use of these words in days past.

maudlin

whim (from whim-wham)

propitious

euphemistically

posthaste

incendiary

consternation
 
I know what you mean, Slick Tony, my vocabulary is larger than I originally thought.

Here are a few more;

plethora

histrionics

ebullient

I had to look up this one;

vet - vt 2. to subject to expert appraisal or correction
 
SlickTony said:
I keep expecting to find more words I'm not familiar with.
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Tony, I don't think the thread is concerned with words with which you may or may not have some familiarity; it is about seldom-used words. Writers, for the most part, have a larger lexicon than the average reader, but may not make full use of it. So herein are to be found words that we seldom find used when we read. Some are anachronies, perhaps, while others have an air of pretension about them. Some are jargon and cant, while others are merely of limited application. No matter why they are seldom-used, some of us may enjoy, whether or not we know and use them, seeing these words defined and discussed here.:)
 
Thank you, Tio, for that lovely definition of this thread. Being a lover of words, I am always eager to find the hidden treasures within the English language. I never knew whim came from whim-wham, but I discovered this fact, thanks to reading almost-archaic books.

coterie - noun an intimate often exclusive group of persons with a common interest or purpose
 
AllardChardon said:
Thank you, Tio, for that lovely definition of this thread. Being a lover of words, I am always eager to find the hidden treasures within the English language. I never knew whim came from whim-wham, but I discovered this fact, thanks to reading almost-archaic books.

coterie - noun an intimate often exclusive group of persons with a common interest or purpose
Click to expand...

Much like birds of a feather flocking together in a dovecote, perhaps. Unless, of course, their common interest is in one person, in which case they may become an entourage, or, in more modern parlance, a posse.
 
Tio, that word was used to describe the people Twain surrounded himself with to distract him from his turbulent household of three younger women, two of them his daughters.

palliative vt - serving to palliate or 1. reduce the violence of : ABATE 2. to cover by excuse and apologies: EXCUSE
 
Allard,

and currently we use palliative to refer to hospice care, seeking to ease the pain of terminal illneses.

Twain, you say, and Melville's Confidence Man...shall we take our unhoneyedmoon aboard a Mississippi Paddle Boat?
 
Tio_Narratore said:
Allard,

and currently we use palliative to refer to hospice care, seeking to ease the pain of terminal illneses.

...
Click to expand...

My youngest daughter, the doctor, has post-graduate qualifications in palliative care and works in two hospices as one the resident doctors' team.

Og
 
Pedagogics - the science of teaching.

Although the word, as English, is frequently used to describe teaching training in many European countries, it is almost unknown in the UK because of the association with the derogatory term pedagogue.
 
Good on two counts, Og...The first, to hear my daughter, the doctor, and the second to hear of the valuable work she does.

...

Allard,

I couldn't help but think of Madam Gigi and her pupils when I came across this definition in Ambrose Bierce's The Devil's Dictionary...

adamant n. A mineral frequently found beneath a corset. Soluble in solicitate of gold.
 
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