Tag: 1840 – 1849

Word of the Day: CRAB-STICK

ETYMOLOGY
from crab (the common name of the wild apple) + stick

EXAMPLE (for n. 2.)
“… Yes, I remember. I was remarking that sangaree and calipash, mangoes and guava jelly, dispose the heart to love, and so they do. I was not more than six weeks in Jamaica when I felt it myself. Now, it was a very dangerous symptom, if you had it strong in you, for this reason. Our colonel, the most cross-grained old crabstick that ever breathed, happened himself to be taken in when young, and resolving, like the fox who lost his tail and said it was not the fashion to wear one, to pretend he did the thing for fun, determined to make every fellow marry upon the slightest provocation. …”

From: Charles O’Malley
The Irish Dragoon
By Charles Lever, 1840

Word of the Day: WROX

ETYMOLOGY
of obscure origin

EXAMPLE
“… be sure to give it a second plowing, just overthwart all the lands, and so cut the Turfe, that the Soard may have all the Winters frost to wroxe, and moulder it, which towards March thou mayst plow again, and so cast it, or raise it, as thy Land requireth …”

From: The English Improver, or a New Survey of Husbandry discovering to the kingdome that some land, both arrable and pasture, may be advanced double or treble
By Walter Blith, 1649
Reducement of Land to Pristine Fertility

Word of the Day: GRIMGRIBBER

ETYMOLOGY
from Grimgribber, an imaginary estate subject of a legal discussion in the play Conscious Lovers (1722) by Sir Richard Steele, British essayist and dramatist

EXAMPLE
“… Mankind in general are not sufficiently aware that words without meaning, or of equivocal meaning, are the everlasting engines of fraud and injustice; and that the grimgribber of Westminster Hall is a more fertile, and a much more formidable, source of imposture than the abracadabra of magicians. …”

From: Epea pteroenta, or, The diversions of Purley
By John Horne Tooke, 1786

Word of the Day: BEDOOZLE

ETYMOLOGY
perhaps from  bedazzle + bamboozle 

EXAMPLE
“… O Shadrack, my Shadrack! Prissilla did speak,
While the rosy red blushes surmantled her cheek,
And the tears of affection bedoozled her eye,
Shadrack, my Shadrack! I ‘m yourn till I die! …”

From: The Gazette of the Union, Golden Rule, and Odd-Fellow’s Family Companion
A Saturday Family Journal of General Literature, Odd-Fellowship and Amusement.
Volume X – From January to June Inclusive, 1849
From the Scrabble Hill Luminary

Word of the Day: HUMGRUFFIN

ETYMOLOGY
A made-up word, from hum, gruff, griffin.

EXAMPLE
“… The Demoniac crowd
In an instant seem’d cowed;
Not one of the crew volunteer’d a reply,
All shrunk from the glance of that keen-flashing eye,
Save one horrid Humgruffin, who seem’d by his talk,
And the airs he assumed, to be Cock of the walk,
He quailed not before it, but saucily met it,
And as saucily said, “Don’t you wish you may get it?”…”

From: The Ingoldsby Legends
The Lay of St. Cuthbert, or, The Devil’s Dinner-Party
By Richard Harris Barham (Thomas Ingoldsby), 1842

Word of the Day: TIB

ETYMOLOGY
perhaps the same as Tib, a shortened hypocoristic form of the female name Isabel; now rather rude or slighting (except playfully);
also with dim. -y or -ie, Tibbie, a common female name in the north

EXAMPLE
“… .Trupeny. Mary then prickmedaintie come toste me a fig,
Who shall then know our Tib Talke apace trow ye?

An. Alyface. And why not Annot Alyface as fyne as she?

Trupeny. And what had Tom Trupeny, a father or none?

An. Alyface. Then our prety newe come man will looke to be one …”

From: Ralph Roister Doister 
By Nicholas Udall, a1556

Word of the Day: PEEPY

ETYMOLOGY
from peep + -y

EXAMPLE (for adj. 1)
“…An individual of the latter kind is distinguished in his earliest petticoats – even before he has well left the nursery. He is then a poor, peepy wretch, with blear eyes, and one everlasting dingy night-cap. constantly sitting by the fire, to the great annoyance of the nurse, who frequently declares him to be more of an infant than even his younger brother the baby…”

From: Chambers Edinburgh Journal
Conducted by William Chambers, and Robert Chambers,
Volume I No. 49, Saturday, January 5, 1833,
‘The Domestic Man’

Word of the Day: EXFLUNCTICATE

ETYMOLOGY
quasi-Latin elaboration of flunk (to fail)

EXAMPLE
“…Though at my old Kenawa home,
They named me there afore I come,
For short, and caze it was my natur,
‘Half hoss and half an alligator’;
But that is nuther here nor there;
But I’m resolved, and now declare,
I’ll go along with you and fight,
As long as I can see the light;
If not, may I be regulated, —
Tee-totally exfluncticated…”

From: The Forest Rangers:
A Poetic Tale of the Western Wilderness in 1794
By Andrew Coffinberry, 1842

Word of the Day: STULTITIOUS

ETYMOLOGY
for adj. 1: from Latin stultitia (folly),
from stultus (foolish)

EXAMPLE
“…In Wales in diuers places is vsed these two stulticious matters, the fyrste is, that they wyl sell their lams, and theyr calues, and theyr corne the whyche is not sowen, and all other newynges, a yere before that they be sure of any newynge; and men wyl bye it, trustynge vppon hope of suche thynges that wyl come…”

From:
The Fyrst Boke of the Introduction of Knowledge
By Andrew Boorde, 1549