Word of the Day: ort

ort (plural: orts) (n)

Scraps of food leftover from a meal.

"You didn't care what women your sons went with, so long as they didn't love them. What do you care really about this affair of Bertha Purdy? You don't. All you cared about was to keep your sons for yourself. You kept the solid meal, and the orts and slarts any other woman could have. But I tell you, I'm not for having orts and slarts, and your leavings from your sons. I'll have a man, or nothing, I will."
--D. H. Lawrence, The Daughter in Law

Good old D.H., author of Lady Chatterley's Lover, which wasn't legally published in the U.S. until 1959, on account of "obscenity". I've read it, and it's hardly porn -- or if it is, it has plenty of "redeeming" literary value. You could find more fornication in a lot of romance novels today. But there's nothing like watching someone's reaction when you tell them you're reading Lady Chatterley's Lover.

(Ort, by the way, is one of the words that the late David Foster Wallace circled in his dictionary.)