It’s always rather pleasant to watch a word shift in meanings until it means the opposite of itself. Such a word is manufactured, which is Latin for handmade. Manus is hand, as in manual, and facture is making as in, well, a factory, where things are made. But the difference between a factory and a manufactory is the handiwork. …
G.H Tyrwhitt-Wilson (1883-1950) Gerald Hugh Tyrwhitt-Wilson, the 14th Baron Berners, was a gifted composer , novelist, painter and devisor of practical jokes.. When he was a young boy, he learned that birds learn to fly when they are pushed from the nest. So he attempted to “teach” his mother’s dog …
William North, the 11th Baron North Lord North was a rather peculiar fellow. He married in September and spent his honeymoon in the Caribbean. When he returned with his new American wife to Burgholt House in England in October, he announced to his wife that he was going to bed. …
A fainéant is an idler and a sluggard. Somehow you can guess that without bothering to dig out your dictionary. Fainéants sound lazy. Why? Why, dear inactive reader, did you suspect immediately that a fainéant was a lazybones, a lie-a-bed, and a lotus eater Perhaps it was the suggestion of faint, with the éan slumbering …
According to the Guardian a dirty poem has been discovered with John Milton’s name attached. The poem runs: Have you not in a Chimney seen A Faggot which is moist and green How coyly it receives the Heat And at both ends do’s weep and sweat? So fares it with a …
Bashful is one of those wonderful words without an opposite. Try as you might, nobody will ever call you bashless. Which poses the question: what the devil is bash and how did you get so full of it? To answer that question one can turn to the Old Curiosity Shop where Dickens mentions …
Once upon a time there was a truly terribly Victorian poet called T.E. Brown. His verse is filled with the three Victorian vices: unnecessary piety, unnecessary children, and unnecessary medievalisms. His most famous work is probably the following: A GARDEN is a lovesome thing, God wot! Rose plot, Fringed pool, Ferned …
‘What moved thee’, quoth she, ‘hither to come?’ ‘For sooth, quoth I, to buy some of your ware.’ And with that word on me she gave a glum With brows bent and ‘gan on me to stare. – Skelton The Barge of Court (1499) Before glum became an adjective it did steady trade as a …
There’s a Chinese poem called Shi Shi Shi Shi Shi. The reason for the title should be obvious if you read the poem in Westernised script: Shíshì shīshì Shī Shì, shì shī, shì shí shí shī. Shì shíshí shì shì shì shī. Shí shí, shì shí shī shì shì. Shì shí, …
If the sight of a jogger jogging in the park jogs your memory, that is thorougly appropriate. To jog originally meant to jerk. So if your memory receives a jolt, it is jogged, as in the tract of 1778: An Antidote to Popery; or, the Protestant’s Memory jogg’d in Season. However, …
