Seldom-Used Words

[Tio_Narratore]

Thanks Handley

Yes, nice to have a new wit and wag join the thread, Fuji....I mean, Fidji...I mean...P

 

[AllardChardon]

And I am always happy when someone gets involved and brings this thread back to life;

Here's an interesting tidbit I found in the Vanity Fair article on Liz Taylor and
Richard Burton.

"Three years earlier, the constant buzz of the photographers had inspired Federico Fellini, filming La Dolce Vida on the streets of Rome, to name his movie's intrusive photographer "Paparazzo," which means "buzzing insect." The name stuck."

 

[trysail]

I ran into two words I've never seen before ( and I am not going to tell you where I ran into 'em 'cause I'm embarassed to reveal the summer trash I'm reading ):


Pavane • n. A stately court dance of the 16th and 17th centuries.

Gavotte • n. A French dance, either in 4/4 or 2/2 time; the gavotte (also gavot or gavote) originated as a French folk dance, taking its name from the Gavot people of the Pays de Gap region of Dauphiné.

 

[AllardChardon]

No worries, Trysail, but I did know of those two dances due to my research into dances several years ago in connection with the French Cancan.

Did you know when Bram Stoker's Dracula was first published it was considered a trashy little novel with no sexual overtones? The vampire was based on Stoker's employer, the owner of the theater where he worked as a writer of three act plays, and was represented as a hungry bloodsucker.

 

[Xelebes]

Bach wrote gavottes and Ravel, Faure wrote pavanes.

 

[Tio_Narratore]

One doesn't hear the term polymath used much now-a-days, and when I described a colleague as a polymath, a student quickly corrected me: "That Professor teaches Philosophy, not Math."

It means, from the Greek having learned much, a person with expertise in a number of different areas.

 

[AllardChardon]

This word's first meaning must have been completely overshadowed by its second one.

glamour - 1. a magic spell; 2. romantic, exciting and often illusory attractiveness

 

[Tio_Narratore]

This word's first meaning must have been completely overshadowed by its second one.

glamour - 1. a magic spell; 2. romantic, exciting and often illusory attractiveness

It comes from Gaelic, where it refers to the spirit world's ability to make things seem other than what they are, making rocks appear as gold nuggets, crones as beautiful maidens, and old geezers as virile young bucks, for example.

 

[Xelebes]

It comes from Gaelic, where it refers to the spirit world's ability to make things seem other than what they are, making rocks appear as gold nuggets, crones as beautiful maidens, and old geezers as virile young bucks, for example.

Untrue, it is from Scots Leid in the late 15th century, which is from the English word "grammar" where grammar also had the meaning of "occult knowledge."

 

[AllardChardon]

grammar - late 12c., gramarye, from O.Fr. grammaire "learning," especially Latin and philology,

from L. grammatica, from Gk. grammatike tekhne "art of letters," with a sense of both philology and literature in the broadest sense,

from gramma "letter," from stem of graphein "to draw or write."

Restriction to "rules of language" is a post-classical development, but as this type of study was until 16c. limited to Latin, M.E. gramarye also came to mean "learning in general, knowledge peculiar to the learned classes" (early 14c.), which included astrology and magic; hence the secondary meaning of "occult knowledge" (late 15c.), which evolved in Scottish into glamor (q.v.).

A grammar school (late 14c.) was originally "a school in which the learned languages are grammatically taught" [Johnson, who also has grammaticaster "a mean verbal pedant"]. In U.S. (1860) the term was put to use in the graded system for "a school between primary and secondary, where English grammar is taught."

From the Online Etymology Dictionary

 

[Tio_Narratore]

Untrue, it is from Scots Leid in the late 15th century, which is from the English word "grammar" where grammar also had the meaning of "occult knowledge."

I'll hold back on my etymology, Xelebes, since I haven't researched it myself, but I'm not convinced of the standard one that you offer. It is rather roundabout, requiring, as it does, that the Scots were so illiterate they mistook "grammar" for arcane magic knowledge, and then a consonant shift on top of it all. The published etymologies seem to all copy from each other without any independent confirmation. I fear it may a case of "if enough people say it, it must be true."

 

[trysail]

Yclept is a marvelous word that I've known and used for many years. Among its many attributes is the fact that it is an extremely useful Scrabble® word. Today it appeared in the opening sentence of a diatribe written by a polymath, Willis Eschenbach.

Waxman-Malarkey

In the US House of Representatives, there is something curiously yclept the “Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming” despite the lack of connection between the energy independence and warming. They have a very professionally done website, filled with some of the most outrageous misrepresentations imaginable. It is designed to promote the “Waxman-Markey” cap and trade carbon tax bill by means of the historically tried and tested “Big Lie” method ...

yclept • n. called, named.

 

[Xelebes]

I'll hold back on my etymology, Xelebes, since I haven't researched it myself, but I'm not convinced of the standard one that you offer. It is rather roundabout, requiring, as it does, that the Scots were so illiterate they mistook "grammar" for arcane magic knowledge, and then a consonant shift on top of it all. The published etymologies seem to all copy from each other without any independent confirmation. I fear it may a case of "if enough people say it, it must be true."

It wasn't only the Scots who knew "grammar" to mean "occult knowledge" but also the English from where it comes. The only thing the Scots came up with was the consonant shift.

 

[AllardChardon]

First time I ever read yclept and would have guessed wrongly on a multiple choice definition, that is for sure. Glamour, on the other hand, I will never see the same way, although I love to play with it.

 

[colddiesel]

Darg

I had a brief conversation with an elderly man today and he referrred to what I was doing as my darg. I had not heard the word for 20 years but at least was able to ask him, when had he worked in the mines.

 

[Verdad]

I'll hold back on my etymology, Xelebes, since I haven't researched it myself, but I'm not convinced of the standard one that you offer. It is rather roundabout, requiring, as it does, that the Scots were so illiterate they mistook "grammar" for arcane magic knowledge, and then a consonant shift on top of it all. The published etymologies seem to all copy from each other without any independent confirmation. I fear it may a case of "if enough people say it, it must be true."

Glamour is not new to me (an avid reader of all sorts of fantastic tales as a kid) but its etymological connection with grammar is. Even if the connection is unconfirmed, I find it fascinating. To cast a glamour is to cast a spell is to make an incantation is to use the words in a manner regulated by a set of rules, which is grammar. Interesting implications.

 

[AllardChardon]

I wonder if they tried to disguise the use of the original word of grammar with a similar but slightly different sound and, therefore, added the 'L" in the front.

So many words were shrouded by their users. Jazz originally meant having sex among the southern black folks of America and had nothing to do with music, except that it was being played in the places where one went to find a sex partner, like a juke joint or a bonfire party in the woods.

 

[Scotsman69]

Time for some Scots from a Scot:

Houghmagandy. Fornication. Both used and much practised by Burns.

Smirr. Light extremely fine rain. Scots have about as many words for rain as Inuits have for snow. I've no idea why that is so.

Example: How's it daein ootside?

Ach, jist a smirr.

 

[AllardChardon]

I am quite fond of the word "nonny" used by Shakespeare and many others.

"Hey, nonny nonny and a ho ho ho!" from Mel Brooks' Men in Tights, it means to fornicate, of course.

 

[Handley_Page]

gramarye /gramri/ n. Long arch. ME.
[AN gramarie = OFr. gramaire GRAMMAR: cf. Fr. grimoire book of magic, earlier gramoire (dial. var. of gramaire) Latin grammar.]
1 Grammar; learning. ME-L15.
2 Occult learning; magic, necromancy. L15.

---------------------------------------------------------
Excerpted from Oxford Talking Dictionary
Copyright © 1998 The Learning Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

 

[Tio_Narratore]

gramarye /gramri/ n. Long arch. ME.
[AN gramarie = OFr. gramaire GRAMMAR: cf. Fr. grimoire book of magic, earlier gramoire (dial. var. of gramaire) Latin grammar.]
1 Grammar; learning. ME-L15.
2 Occult learning; magic, necromancy. L15.

---------------------------------------------------------
Excerpted from Oxford Talking Dictionary
Copyright © 1998 The Learning Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

An' di' ye tink I'd tak the word of an Aenglischman on sech en issue, mon? Jest 'cause it's in the OED (and the talking one ta bout!), it dinna mean it's right!

 

[Handley_Page]

An' di' ye tink I'd tak the word of an Aenglischman on sech en issue, mon? Jest 'cause it's in the OED (and the talking one ta bout!), it dinna mean it's right!

Aye, that I did.

 

[Scotsman69]

Correctly rendered in Scots, this would be:

An' di' ye tink I'd tak the word of an Aenglischman on sech en issue, mon? Jest 'cause it's in the OED (and the talking one ta bout!), it dinna mean it's right!

An dae ye speir I'd tak the word o an Englishman on sic a maitter? Jist cos it's in the OED (an the bletherin ane tae boot) disnae mean it's richt.

 

[Handley_Page]

An dae ye speir I'd tak the word o an Englishman on sic a maitter? Jist cos it's in the OED (an the bletherin ane tae boot) disnae mean it's richt.

I wish there was an OSD.

 

[Tio_Narratore]

An dae ye speir I'd tak the word o an Englishman on sic a maitter? Jist cos it's in the OED (an the bletherin ane tae boot) disnae mean it's richt.

Grazie, signore, por la traduzione!