Tag: 1850 – 1859

Word of the Day: HODDY-DODDY

ETYMOLOGY
the element dod is evidently the same as in dodman (a shell-snail);
hoddy-dod, hoddy-doddy, & hodman-dod, are perhaps from nursery reduplications;
but the element hoddy- appears itself to have come to be associated to mean ‘snail’ (or ? horned);
for n. 2. (a cuckold) – with reference to the ‘horns’ of a cuckold

EXAMPLE (for n. 1.)
“…My living lieth here and there, of God’s grace,
Sometime with this good man, sometime in that place;
Sometime Lewis Loiterer biddeth me come near;
Somewhiles Watkin Waster maketh us good cheer;
Sometime Davy Diceplayer, when he hath well cast,
Keepeth revel-rout, as long as it will last;
Sometime Tom Titivile keepeth us a feast;
Sometime with Sir Hugh Pie I am a bidden guest;
Sometime at Nichol Neverthrive’s I get a sop;
Sometime I am feasted with Bryan Blinkinsop;
Sometime I hang on Hankyn Hoddydoddy’s sleeve;
But this day on Ralph Roister Doister’s, by his leave…”

From: Ralph Roister Doister,
By Nicholas Udall, a1556

Word of the Day: PULCHRITUDINOUS

ETYMOLOGY
from Latin pulchritudin-,  pulchritudo (beauty) + -ous

EXAMPLE
“…Returning to the pulchritudinous Fanny Newlove, she was reclining on a settee, listening with all her ears, to the ‘out pourings’ of a personage, whose appearance at once apprehended my attention, as indicative of anything except the clean potato …”

From: The Anglo-American Magazine
From July to December, 1854
Vol V, ‘The Purser’s Cabin’

PRONUNCIATION
pul-kruh-CHOO-duh-nuhss

Word of the Day: GYNOPHAGITE

ETYMOLOGY
from gyno– (combining form denoting female, woman) + Greek -ϕαγος (eating) + -ite

EXAMPLE
“…If our Ulysses, thus rejuvenated by his Minerva, has not fully made up his mind to make
a Penelope of Miss Jemima, all I can say is, that he is worse than Polyphemus, who was only an Anthropophagos; —
He preys upon the weaker sex, and is a Gynophagite!…”

From: My Novel
By Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1853

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: SNUFFY

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

Word of the Day: SQUIFFY

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

Word of the Day: MONOPHAGIZE

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

Word of the Day: ORNITHOPHILITE

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