ETYMOLOGY
from snuff + -y
EXAMPLE
“…I’m sure she makes a very Tarquinius Sextus of me, and all about this Serenade,—I protest and vow, incomparable Lady, I had begun the sweetest Speech to her—though I say’t, such Flowers of Rhetorick—’twou’d have been the very Nosegay of Eloquence, so it wou’d; and like an ungrateful illiterate Woman as she is, she left me in the very middle on’t, so snuffy I’ll warrant…”
From: Sir Patient Fancy
By Aphra Behn, 1678
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 Greek µονοϕάγος (monofagos) (that eats alone) + -ize
EXAMPLE
“…you who make us fight for every cabbage at the greengrocer’s, and prestige in its favour, that whereas the glutton might sometimes munch and monophagize in solitude, leading the life of a wolf or of a lion, those who drank generally drank together, and, as it was always said and supposed, to each other’s health and prosperity…”
From: Prose Halieutics
Or, Ancient and Modern Fish Tattle
By the Rev. C. David Badham, 1854
Chapter XXII. Opsophagy
ETYMOLOGY
from ornitho- (comb. form bird) + Greek ϕίλ-ος (lover)
EXAMPLE
“…Every one asked them to dinner, and they left on the 25th. As long as he was in France he never omitted this ornithophilite excursion, which was only interrupted when he was sent on a mission to Rome, where he died as penitentiary in 1688…”
From: The Handbook of Dining
Or How to Dine Theoretically Philosophically and Historically Considered,
By Leonard Francis Simpson, 1859
ETYMOLOGY
from putty (in the sense of something soft, something that can be bent any way) + head
EXAMPLE
“…The pickings must be equally divided amongst both classes of the harmonious democracie ‘putty heads’ and ‘adamantines’…”
From: The Janesville Gazette (Wisconsin), 1851
ETYMOLOGY
from Greek πᾶν, pan, (“all”, “of everything”, “involving all members” of a group)
+ from Latin ichthyophagus,
from Greek ἴχθυοϕάγος from Greek ἰχθυο- (fish-) + -ϕάγος (eating),
from ϕαγεῖν (to eat) + -ous
EXAMPLE
“…The caranx, trachurus, or bastard mackerel, probably corresponds with the individual so called by Oppian and Athenaeus. It abounds in the Mediterranean, and is a dry coarse fish, fit only for hungry boatmen and panichthyophagous puss…”
From: Fraser’s Magazine for Town and Country
Volume 47, March 1853
The Caranx
ETYMOLOGY
from cugger (to hold a confidential conversation)
EXAMPLE
“…There was a great laugh at Tim’s answer; and then there was a whispering, and a great cugger mugger and coshering; and at last a pretty little bit of a voice said, “Shut your eyes, and you’ll see, Tim…”
From: Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland.
By Thomas Crofton Croker, 1859
Treasure Legends. Dreaming Tim Jarvis
ETYMOLOGY
from Latin ostrea (oyster) + -o- connective + -phagous (combining form, feeding on a specified kind of food)
EXAMPLE
“…A great advantage to the ostreophagous part of our population…”
From: Daily News (London), February 17, 1882
ETYMOLOGY
– from ancient Greek ϕιλόκαλος (loving the beautiful);
from ϕιλο- (philo-) + καλός (beautiful) + –ist (suffix)
EXAMPLE
“…This poor, vindictive, solitary, and powerful creature, was a philocalist: he had a singular love of flowers and of beautiful women.”
From: Horae Subsecivae
Locke and Sydenham, with other occasional papers
By John Brown · 1858
ETYMOLOGY
? from jounce to bump, thump and jolt, as a vehicle in deep ruts
FIRST DOCUMENTED USE
1857 – Dictionary of Obsolete and Provincial English
– Thomas Wright, 1857
Lexicophilia 