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2002-12-05 - 5:39 a.m.

While visiting a Web site the other day I read: “…I just forget to send to it when I add new features and whatnot to the site.” Whatnot? It had been a long time since I'd seen the word in print. Naturally, my mercurial mind went from there to heretofore and woebegone and bethink and whippersnapper. Legitimate words, but not often used.

The other day I used the word malarkey when referring to some foolishness in progress at the workplace. My grandmother spoke of malarkey, but I can't recall the word being active in my vocabulary. It just slipped out, and I wondered what cranny it had been hiding in all these years. There are hundreds of thousands of words available to us, but rather than being adventurous we seem to stay within safe confines and use the tried and true few we know. Possibly we ignore some words because we're not sure of their meaning. Maybe it's because we question their origin. Actually, some of the fun with words is answering the much-asked question: Who came up with that one?

Consider:

Scallywag: rascal or rogue or amusingly mischievous child. The word first appeared in the U.S. to describe undersized or deformed cattle, and then to characterize disreputable person. Following the Civil War it became an abusive term applied to Southerners who benefited from Reconstruction. Later it shifted to mean any politician.

A wonderful expletive, but rarely heard these days, is Poppycock! It has the sound of a British Army colonel, and rarely does it substitute for the more contemporary and popular "Oh, shit!" The word is really American, circa 1865, although Dutch settlers supposedly brought it to us. The interpretation is closely related to excrement, so Poppycock isn't really all that different from today's profanity!

Henpeck, used today to refer to the verbal attacks females put to males, originated to explain the pecking order of hens, and the female habit of using her beak as a weapon against other hens. In truth, hens never peck roosters, only us homo sapien females peck our male roosters!

When was the last time you cast your vote for a snollygoster? Another fanciful word from 19th century America describing a shrewd, unprincipled politician, it was last used--incorrectly--by Truman in 1952 and has been replaced by the term shyster--just as several shysters succeeded Truman!

Although this essay site is often full of gobbledygook, I rarely use the word in my writing. It's a maverick word (maybe I should use it more often) since it was coined by Maury Maverick, a Texas lawyer who was also a one-time mayor of San Antonio. Maverick claimed his inspiration was a turkey, "always gobbledy gobbling and strutting with ludicrous pomposity."

Plutocrat was one of my Dad's favorite words. Well, maybe not of of his favorite words (I heard him say "Son-of-a-bitch seven times" far more often than plutocrat), but it was certainly his favorite way of defining those people he also called "nickel millionaires." His incorrigible daughter refers to those folks as hoity-toity.

When was the last time you did something with honorificabilitudinitatibus? You wouldn't have a clue, would you, if I've misspelled the word! This is obviously one of those foot and a half long words (sesquipedalian) with more length than sense. Shakespeare used it in Act 5, Scene 1 of Love's Labour Lost. For all its yardage, it simply means with honor.

For the first four years of my life I lived next door to my grandmother, so I spent endless hours at her house. After a full afternoon of my running, both my little legs and my big mouth, she’d call to me, “C’mere, you little blatherskite, and let’s rest a while.” I didn’t know then she was referring to me as a noisy talker of blatant rubbish! Whew, she should see me now, I’ve become a big blatherskite!

Finally, this is a lot of balderdash scribbled by a jobbernowl. Nonsense written by a blockhead to fill space so today's page wasn't woefully empty.

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