Words from the BBC Magazine--First Essay

Last night the BBC posted a story on its online Magazine regarding readers' response to the NY man, Ammon Shea, who wrote a book about reading the OED. They responded with their favorite words, and the editors of the Magazine culled this list and published 60 of the most memorable. My friend Henry, who is not only attentive to my financial fortunes but is especially interested in furthering my intellectual explorations, sent the article along to me.

Whenever I receive an article giving me words that others have tried to spell or others love, I am overjoyed. It means that I can actually, for a moment, "live" off the desires and insights of others rather than having to "invent" myself and my ideas each day. It is, for me, like writing essays on Supreme Court cases. Even though many have remarkable complexities to them, almost all the cases yield up their inner workings with just a little patient effort. And, all the information is provided for me--and in English, no less. All I have to do is to make sense of the stuff and explain it clearly. Love it.

Getting to the BBC List of Words

I was delighted to discover two things about the list: first, that I had written on at least half of them in this web site (just do a search if you want...) and, second, of the 30 or so I haven't explored, I learned about 20 new words. Some of the 30 I haven't written on are easy enough for me that I just haven't felt the need to explore them (such as metanoia or ideation). So, the purpose of this and the next essay is to define and use about 20 words which I haven't written on and that are useful or even funny. They are, in order of the list, poodle-faker, spanghew, scrimshanker, zareba, cryptomnesia, oxter, frippet, kakistocracy, maieutic, slubberdegullion, fug, estivate and erythrismal. Then, the last entry (person # 50) lists eight rare words which I will mention: dyspathy, goving, hansardize, philodoxical, happify, natiform, tripudiate and pejorist. What a joyful feast--especially now that someone else has made it...

1. A poodle-faker is a man who spends entirely too much time trying to cultivate female friendships, especially for the purpose of professional advancement [I don't see that the term has a sexual connotation, but can that be far behind?]; The verb "fake" is slang, in "thieves' or vagrants' language" for "to perform any operation upon; to 'do,' 'do for'; plunder, wound, kill" or "to tamper with, for the purpose of deception." Poodle, in one of its definitions, is "a person who is obsequiously or unquestionably willing to follow another; a lackey." David Lloyd George first used poodle in this fashion in 1907 to describe the House of Lords in a demeaning fashion: "The House of Lords consented...It is the right hon. Gentleman's poodle. It fetches and carries for him. It barks for him. It bites anybody that he sets it on to." Today we would call it a "lap dog," I think. "FOX TV is the lapdog of the Republican Party..."

Thus, a poodle-faker is a lackey who is always trying to deceive women. Note that the poodle here is not an affectionate name for a vulnerable or decked-out woman. Poodle-faker was first used in 1902 to describe such a[n] (effeminate?) man. "The 'poodle-faker' is just as much a social necessity as tea-cakes." A 2003 usage shows that poodle-faker is still in vogue. From the Belfast News: "How dare this mincing poodle-faker stand up and start confiding to the nation about his emotional journey." By the way, the word mincing is a wonderful one; it means "speaking affectedly or affectedly elegant and nice; simpering." Ah, simpering is also a very fine word. The verb simper means to "smile in an affected manner." I first ran into the word in John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress:

"Mr. Legality is a cheat; and for his son Civility, not withstanding his simpering looks, he is but a hypocrite, and cannot help thee."

2. With a start like that it may take me quite a while to work through the 20 "new words" for me. Let's move on to spanghew. It is a transitive verb meaning "to throw or jerk violently" with a specialized meaning "to cause (a toad or frog) to fly into the air." You kind of wonder how such a specialized meaning would not only have developed but also won over the editors of the OED... It is rooted in the verb spang, of obscure origin, which means "to spring, leap, bound; move rapidly" or "to throw, jerk, bang." If you see it as a sort of portmanteau word, combinging "spring" and "bang," you have the notion. From 1833: "The trout slipped off, spanged down the bank, and in an instant..was lost." We might use the word spanghew as follows: "I love Popeye cartoons, especially after he eats his spinach and spanghews Brutus and others over buildings and obstacles."

3 and 4. Let's finish with two deprecatory terms: scrimshanker and slubberdegullion. The OED says that the verb scrimshank, meaning "to shirk duty" is "of obscure origin," but I bet there is some connection with the evolution of the term scrimshaw to scrimshander, one who works in scrimshaw. In any case, a scrimshanker is a "shirker." Kipling used the term in 1893: "If Mulvaney stops scrimshanking..I lay your lives with be trouble to you." Evelyn Waugh used the term in Brideshead Revisited: "Brigade expects us to clean up the house for them. I should have thought some of those half-shaven scrim-shankers I see lounging round Headquarters might have saved us the trouble." Then, let's finish with slubberdegullion. It is a "slobbering or dirty fellow; a worthless sloven." To slubber means "to stain, smear" or to "sully." Jeremy Taylor was one of the first to use the term in 1630: "Contaminous, pestiferous...slubberdegullions." By the way, contaminous is a rare adjective meaning "infectious." One might have a "contaminous odor" or, in Taylor's words, "breath contaminous."

Well, this gets us started on the BBC list. Maybe the next essay will move more rapidly..

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