Category: Word of the Day – B

Word of the Day: BAMBLUSTERCATE

ETYMOLOGY
from bam (to hoax, to make fun of to impose upon the credulous) + bluster

EXAMPLE
“…”In course,” continued Joe, more soothed: “none but a Jolly would go to say anything again it, or doubt the woracity o’ the thing. Well, shipmates, to heave ahead, I’m saying I was reg’larly bamblustercated when one of the genelmen up in the niches squeaks out, ‘King Herod, I’ll just thank your for a thimble-full of the stuff.'” …”

From: Bentley’s Miscellany, Volume II, 1837
‘Nights at Sea’

Word of the Day: BOKO

ETYMOLOGY
of unknown origin

EXAMPLE
“…I fell down, and they all capsized, turned turtle – heels up, nose down – every man Jack, one after the other, over each other’s legs. Never saw such a mix, A common-keeper, one of the lot, got a heavy oner on the boko for his share.’
‘Boys,’ said Mr. Hamblin, ‘who use slang come to the gallows. Boko is …’
‘Conk or boko,.’ said Nicolas the vulgar. ‘It’s all the same. Took it home in a bag made out of a picket-handkerchief.’…”

From: Time
A Monthly Miscellany of Interesting and Amusing Literature
Edited by Edmund Yates, Volume I, 1879
‘The Seamy Side’
By Walter Besant, and James Rice

Word of the Day: BILINGUOUS

ETYMOLOGY
from Latin bilinguis (speaking two languages)
from bi- (two) + lingua (tongue, language) + -ous

EXAMPLE
“…Besides this, we having a Greek translation of this history and that of Manetho, by Eusebius and others, this manuscript, like the Rosetta stone, affords a bilinguous inscription, and serves, by its considerable number of proper names, more than any other, to decide upon Champollion’s hieroglyphical system…”

From: The Literary Gazette,
and Journal of the Belles Lettres, Art, Sciences, Etc. for the year 1828.
Saturday, July 19, 1828.
Literary and Learned.
Remarks upon an Egyptian History, in Egyptian Characters, 
in the Royal Museum at Turin….
By Dr. G. Seyffarth

Word of the Day: BEBLUBBERED

ETYMOLOGY
from be- + blubber (to weep effusively) + -ed

EXAMPLE
“…Thee seas, thee regions and eeche place worldlye beholding,
On Lybye land lastly fixt his celestial eyesight.
And thus as he mused, with tears Venus heauye beblubberd
Prest foorth in presence, and whimpring framed her errand…”

From: The First Booke of Virgil His Aeneis
Translated by Richard Stanyhurst, 1582

Word of the Day: BAJULATE

ETYMOLOGY
from bajulat-, participial stem of bajulare (to carry), from bajulus (porter);

BADGER – a person who buys corn and other commodities and carries them elsewhere to sell; an itinerant dealer who acts as a middleman between producer (farmer, fisherman, etc.) and consumer; a cadger, hawker, or huckster

EXAMPLE
“…Hence it is, that in the late Order for regulating the wages of Coach-men, at such a price a day and distance from London, Sussex alone was excepted, as wherein shorter way or better pay was allowed. Yet, the Gentry of this County well content themselves in the very badness of passage therein, as which secureth their provisions at reasonable prices; which, if mended, Higglers would mount, as bajulating them to London.…”

From: The History of the Worthies of England
By Thomas Fuller, 1662

Word of the Day: BLUNDERKIN

ETYMOLOGY
from blunder, taken in sense of ‘blunderer’ + -kin

EXAMPLE
“…I vtterly despaire of them, or not so much despaire of them, as count them a paire of poore ideots, being not only but also two brothers, two blockheads, two blunderkins, hauing their braines stuft with nought but balder-dash, but that they are the verie botts & the glanders to the gentle Readers…”

From: Haue with you to Saffron-Walden; or, Gabriell Harueys Hunt is Vp
By Thomas Nashe, 1596

Word of the Day: BEFLUM

ETYMOLOGY
from be- + flum;
perhaps influenced by Scots blaflum, bleflum (to cajole)

EXAMPLE
“…that are but ill settled yet, till they durst na on ony errand whatsoever gang ower the door-stane after gloaming, for fear John Heatherblutter, or some siccan dare-the diel, should tak a baff at them: then, on the hand, I beflum’d them wi’ Colonel Talbot – wad they offer to keep up the price again the Duke’s friend? did na they ken wha was master?…”

From: Waverley; or, ‘Tis Sixty Years Since,
By Walter Scott, 1814