What's the word I'm thinking of? Today, it's....
CANOROUS [can-OR-uss]
(adjective)
Melodious; musical
"The dull life at Oxford was varied by the occasional visit of a mesmeric
lecturer; and one youth caused peals of canorous laughter by walking
round in a pretended mesmeric sleep and kissing the pretty daughters of the
dons."
--Thomas Wright, The Life of Sir Richard Burton (1906)
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CLINQUANT [KLING-kunt] (adjective)
Glittering, but in a false or cheap way, like tinsel
"No, there are too many of these fine sparks you talk of who perhaps may be very clinquant, slight, and bright and make a very pretty show at first, but the tinsel-gentlemen do so tarnish in the wearing, there’s no enduring them."
--Thomas Shadwell, The Virtuoso (1676)
I once had a cat that liked to eat the tinsel (of the “icicle” type) off the Christmas tree. Maybe he had an iron deficiency. Anyway, he always threw it up later, in a clinquant hairball, which was both pretty from a distance and disgusting close up--like many things. (TWITO, page 32)
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EJULATION [ej-yoo-LAY-shun]
(noun)
A wailing; lamentation
“‘Eleven years of solitary confinement!’ is the ejulation of Mr.
Dickens, forgetting the crime for which the man was imprisoned!”
--Joseph Adshead, Prisons and Prisoners (1845) (TWITO, page 44)
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COSMOTELLURIAN [cos-mo-tel-OO-ree-an] (adjective)
Pertaining to both heaven and earth
"So, feet on the ground, head in the stars, eh?" said Mr. Dolty. The astronomer smiled patiently and said, "I think of myself as a cosmotellurian investigator." (TWITO, page 35)
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CATAWAMPUS [kat-uh-WOM-pus] (noun or adjective)
1. Askew, crooked, diagonal (adjective)
2. An imaginary wild animal (noun)
"[T]he circle is the most beautiful shape in nature. Young gentlemen seem to be aware of this, and by means of a material called hair they contrive to manufacture faces of all forms, from a perfect circle to a catawampus ellipse. If they want an elliptical face, they create a patch of hairs on the chin...."
--North Carolina University Magazine (1852) (TWITO, page 29-30)
Try to imagine what an animal called a catawampus might look like. I picture a swamp-dwelling creature that would be a cross between a lion and an octopus. Or the Jabberwock.
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JEREMIAD [jer-uh-MY-ud] (noun)
A long lament or complaint, or an angry harangue, derived from the name of the Hebrew prophet Jeremiah
"Yes, a Jeremiad is needed. But not Mr. Noyes's kind of Jeremiad. For the whole effect of his Jeremiad is that we are going to the dogs, and that there is absolutely nothing good in free verse."
--Edmund Kemper Broadus, "The Lunatic, the Lover, and the Poet" in The Canadian Forum (1922) (TWITO, page 77)
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"Desmond’s incessant nocturnal bruxing drove his college roommate mad." (TWITO, page 24)
What's the word I'm thinking of? Today, it's...
"Last weekend, when I went to visit my vecordious Aunt Helen at the Mayfield
Psychiatric Hospital, I encountered an escaped mental patient in the parking
lot. She was wearing a dress that appeared to be stitched together from latex
gloves and a plastic bucket on her head as she crawled toward me like some kind
of human tarantula." (TWITO, page 154)
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DISTICHOUS [dis-ti-kuss] (adjective)
Divided into two parts or two rows
"His tail? Distichous, say the books. Feathers are mostly distichous, hair-partings are distichous, the moustache is distichous. So is the dormouse tail;
but the hairs along it do more than merely part. They curl, upwards from the
root, downwards to the point, and form a plume."
--Douglas English, Wee Tim’rous Beasties (1903) (TWITO, page 42)
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RANTIPOLE [RAN-ti-pohl] (noun, adjective or verb)
A wild, reckless person
"This rantipole hero had for some time singled out the blooming Katrina for the object of his uncouth gallantries, and though his amorous toyings were something like the gentle caresses and endearments of a bear, yet it was whispered that she did not altogether discourage his hopes."
--Washington Irving, "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" (1820) (TWITO, page 122)
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MUMPSIMUS [MUMP-sih-muss] (noun)
Someone who adheres to old ways that are obviously wrong
"The best of the joke is, that Johnston, who seems here to have deserted for a moment the old mumpsimus, contradicts himself in the very next page, and having laughed at ‘broken’ metaphors in one breath, attempts, in the next, to ‘reduce’ one, after a manner of surgery almost as awful as that of Warburton himself."
--T. D., "On the use of Metaphors" in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, (1825) (TWITO, page 92)
Hmm. Who might we apply this word to? I’m thinking of a certain mumpsimus from a certain political party. Maybe you are, too, even if it isn’t the same party. That’s politics.
The illustration is from the 1894 book Laughable Lyrics: A Fourth Book of Nonsense Poems, Songs, Botany, Music, etc. by Edward Lear.
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ABOULOMANIA [ay-BOO-lo-MAY-nee-uh] (noun)
Pathological indecisiveness
"Chocolate or strawberry? Cursing his aboulomania, Sylvester continued to stare at the ice-cream parlor’s menu." (TWITO, page 9)
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MAKEBATE [MAYK-bayt] (noun)
A person who creates discord or conflict
"I am no makebate,
no inciter of quarrels," said Nelson. "I simply think that a discussion of one’' religion shouldn't be taboo in polite company." (TWITO, page 86)
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TOURBILLON [toor-bee-YON] (noun)
A whirlwind or vortex
"In this state of things, had I accepted and returned home, do you think that a seat upon the bench would have removed me from the tourbillon of politics?"
--John Quincy Adams, letter (1811) (TWITO, page 148)
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FANFARONADE [FAN-fer-uh-NAID] (noun)
Empty boasting, arrogant bluster
"We laugh at the fanfaronade of the French, but never in my life did I see fanfaronade approaching in extravagance to the fanfaronade of this piece, and every burst of vapour was received by the audience with bouts of applause."
--"Diary of a Constant Reader," in The London Magazine (1826) (TWITO, page 52)
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HOOROOSH [who-ROOSH]
(noun)
An uproar, a great fuss
"What a hooroosh aloft there! I
would e’en take it for sublime, did I not know that the colic is a noisy
malady."
--Herman Melville, Moby-Dick (1851) (TWITO, page 68)
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