5 posts tagged “words”
Some time ago I wrote about the use of "smurfy" as a pejorative meaning dinky, lame, embarrasing, stupid, or perhaps some flavor of jackassical. I couldn't find any attested examples, and you all said, "I don't know what you're talking about, crazy person," so I thought I should make note of the following, from a Television Without Pity recap of Jericho. I haven't ever watched the show or read any other recaps about it, so I don't have the foggiest idea what's going on, nor who Jake or Emily is, but it seems pretty clear that the meaning is along the lines of what I had in mind:
My guess is that Jake is protecting someone other than himself. That it's not just his secret to keep. Either that or he has amnesia. Or has an evil twin, Jack, who actually was the one involved in the incident. Hey, that would explain that it wasn't just abject smurfiness that kept him from remembering his and Emily's song.
It's time for Clews You Can Use, or A Walk Through the OED. Previously I have had an excellent time traipsing about in the environs of "numps" (a nickname for Humphrey, as if you didn't know, and also a fine word for a stupid person). Today, I was in the vicinity of "wot", as in "A garden is a lovesome thing, God wot," when I happened across a word very much like one I'd encountered on my previous num- outing: "wortle."
A wortle is an implement used in the drawing of wire or lead-pipe, that is, in spinning it out to the length and thickness you desire. It is also an exceedingly Cold Comfort Farm sort of word, in that it seems just that side of plausible earthy British dialect -- except that, unlike "capsy" or "cletter", it is genuine. But I defy anyone who has read Cold Comfort Farm and thus been expxosed to its brand of parodic country dialect (or indeed any of the rest of you) to read any of these examples soberly:
- Your Wire-drawers know, that if they take a short piece of Wire,..and drill it through, that then though they draw it out to the smalness of a hair, yet will it still remain hollow quite through in despite of their Wurdle.
- Wire, breaking into short lengths when being pulled through the wortles.
- It is also probable that the earliest wortles were hard stones.
Or how about "whortle", which was the word I'd come across last time? It's actually a bilberry, but for funny-talking eighteenth-century rustics, apparently.
- Our whortle-gatherers... sit down for their ‘nummock’ of bread and whortleberries, washed down by water.
- The bog-whortle, whose white flowers, pink-tipped, stuff the ptarmigan's crop.
- I see her swift foot dash the dew from the whortle.
Pure poetry, isn't it?
While I was at it, I learned that "wotcher" is descended from "what cheer" (I should have guessed), and also that a "wortling" is a young vine plant and that "wouldingness" is the quality of feeling some yearning or other.
S. and I are happy to have identified a phenomenon we call "overly fine-grained following". To illustrate: the cat does this a great deal, when he is trotting along close at your heels. You go walking off towards the kitchen, say, and realize you wanted to grab a coffee cup on your way in. As you backtrack a single step, he whips around in order to follow you in this new direction, only, of course, to have to do it all over again when you return to your original path, when if he'd been a mere half-second slower to respond, he would have been just as well off.
Although first observed in this particular cat-human configuration, I think you will find that this terminology is more widely applicable than you might expect, and that the concept is a useful thing to have a name for. Try it and see.
"Pussybaby". We like to use it both as an insult and as a term of affection. You should use it too. Don't be such a pussybaby!
- moist
- crotch
- hubby
- dead tree (adj.)
- mom, mommy
- boob
