Category: Word of the Day – S

ETYMOLOGY
from Latin sesquihora (an hour and a half)

EXAMPLE
“…but the greater part of those that were commissionated with the Scot-Ecclesiastical approbation) their rancour and spleen being still more and more sharpned against the English Nation, they in their tedious pharisaical prayers before Supper, and Sesquihoral Graces upon a dish of Skink, and leg of Mutton, would so imbue the mindes of the poor swains (on whose charge they were) with vaticinations of help from heaven…”

From: Εκσκυβαλαυρον (Ekskybalauron) (The Jewel)
By Thomas Urquhart, 1652

ETYMOLOGY
from spatter (to scatter or disperse in fragments)

EXAMPLE
“...Or when the court removes, or what’s a clock,
Or where’s the wind (or some such windy mock)
With such fine scimble, scemble, spitter-spatter,
As puts me clean besides the money-matter?
Thus with poor mongrel shifts, with what, where when?…”

From: A Kicksey Winsey: Or, A Lerry Come-Twang
By John Taylor, 1619

ETYMOLOGY
from spill (to lose waste in a wasteful or accidental manner) + good

EXAMPLE
She was by no means a spill-good, but somehow all their money disappeared anyway.

ETYMOLOGY
of fanciful formation

EXAMPLE
“…Curious enough, there is a Lady Erskine, wife of Lord E, her husband’s eldest brother living at Bollington, who tipples & ‘gets squiffy‘ just like this Mrs E. …”

From: The Letters of Mrs. Gaskell
By Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell, 1855
Edited by J. A. V. Chapple, ‎Arthur Pollard, 1966

ETYMOLOGY
from sarcasm + -ous

EXAMPLE
“…Like th’ Hebrew-calf, and down before it
The Saints fell prostrate, to adore it.
So say the Wicked—and will you
Make that Sarcasmous Scandal true.
By running after Dogs and Bears,
Beasts more unclean than Calves or Steers?…”

From: Hudibras: in three parts, the first part
By Samuel Butler, 1663

ETYMOLOGY
from sleuth (sloth, laziness obs.) + -ful

EXAMPLE
“…And he þat hauys greet egℏen̛ ys enuyous & witℏ-outen shame, sleuthful, and vnobeyssant. He þat hauys lityƚƚ eghen̛, lyk to heuenly colour, or blake, ys of sharpe vnderstondynge, curteys, and leel…”

From: Secreta Secretorum,
(a treatise which purports to be a letter from Aristotle to his student Alexander the Great on an encyclopedic range of topics, including statecraft, ethics, physiognomy, astrology, alchemy, magic, and medicine)

ETYMOLOGY
from Latin scrīpt-, past participial stem of scribere (to write) + -itious 

EXAMPLE
“…DIDACTIC OPERATION,  Delivery, oral or scriptitious, of these same portions of discourse…”

From: Chrestomathia
By Jeremy Bentham, 1815
‘Chrestomathic Tables. Table II’

ETYMOLOGY
from smart (sharp physical pain) + -ful

EXAMPLE
“…What kind harted husband: can se his kind wife,
In like carefull case, without wo at his hart.
What naturall father can se: for his life,
His naturall childerne, in dread quake and start.
Without his hart smarting, in most smartfull smart.
I thinke, ye thinke none: and euin so thinke I.
Meruell not then: though the spider be toucht nie…”

From: The Spider and the Flie 
By John Heywood, 1556

ETYMOLOGY
from slow (adj.) + back (n.)

EXAMPLE
“…For God doth not assiste slouthfull persons and idle slowbackes. Now I call those needelesse occupations, whiche idle and ill disposed people do vse, thereby to be troublesome to their neighbours and to deceiue other men, exercising, I confesse, an occupation, but such an one as is vtterly vnlawfull & vnprofitable to all men…”

From: Fiftie Godlie and Learned Sermons Diuided into Fiue Decades
By Heinrich Bullinger, 1577

ETYMOLOGY
from Samson (in reference to his enormous strength) + -istic

EXAMPLE
“…The new Governor-General seemed to be impressed with the idea that all political officers, small and great, were in fault. Forthwith he commenced dealing out upon them the most ferocious and Samsonistic blows. The shower unfortunately fell, like Don Quixote’s strokes on a certain occasion, upon an innocent race of puppets…”

From: Dry Leaves from Young Egypt
Being a Glance at Sindh Before the Arrival of Sir Charles Napier,
By An Ex-Political (Edward Backhouse Eastwick), 1849
Chapter XII. A Flea