ETYMOLOGY
from straddle (with the legs astride)
EXAMPLE
“…If he even seen a straddle-bug start to go anywheres, he would bet you how long it would take him to get wherever he was going to, and if you took him up, he would foller that straddle-bug to Mexico but what he would find out where he was bound for and how long he was on the road. …”
From: The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,
By S. L. Clemens (Mark Twain), 1867
ETYMOLOGY
– from onycho- (relating to the nails) + –phagist (denoting people or animals who eat a particular food)
EXAMPLE
“…My eldest daughter had finished her Latin lessons, and my son had finished his Greek; and I was sitting at my desk, pen in hand and in mouth at the same time, (a substitute for biting the nails which I recommend to all onygophagists)…”
From: The Doctor &c.
By Robert Southey, 1834
“The Utility of Pockets. A Compliment Properly Received”
also Scottish and dialect form ROW-DE-DOW
ETYMOLOGY
– originally a variant of row dow dow ( a series of sounds as produced by beating a drum)
– later possibly influenced by rowdy dowdy (characterized by noisy roughness)
EXAMPLE
“…There has been a terrible rowdydow in the operatic green-room…”
From: Dashes at Life with a Free Pencil
By Nathaniel Parker Willis, 1845
ETYMOLOGY
from marine (adj.) + –orama, after panorama
EXAMPLE
“…the sea fell bravely upon the the reef with a low and soothing moan; a passion-vine that half veiled the tranquil marinorama bathed its splendid blossoms in the afterglow…”
From: South-sea Idyls
– Charles Warren Stoddard, 1873
ETYMOLOGY
– ? from bumfuddled,
? from bamboozle
EXAMPLE
“…Well, father, I thought he’d a fainted too, he was so struck up all of a heap, he was completely bung fungered; dear, dear, said he, I didn’t think it would come to pass so soon, but I knew it would come; I foretold it…”
From: The Clockmaker
or The Sayings and Doings of Samuel Slick,
Thomas Chandler Haliburton, 1836
Lexicophilia 