I'm feeling sloomy. Let's pull out some lubber-wort!
thinking about Joules and her comments about languages... rat sent this to me and I am sharing it with you.
The weird world of lost words
06/01/2003
By PAULA LAROCQUE / The Dallas Morning News
I recently consulted several dictionaries to check on the spelling of "spondulicks," which is slang for money or cash, and was surprised not to find it. Sure, it's an antique word, maybe even moribund. But dead and gone? From the dictionary untimely ripped?
Like all living things, the language is in constant flux, changing slightly daily, gaining new words and losing old. At 600,000 recorded words and counting, English has a huge lexicon – hundreds of thousands more than any other language. And as the lexicon grows, some words are lost, forgotten, or unneeded. They may be housed elsewhere for a while – in the many volumes of the Oxford English Dictionary, say, or in a collection of lost words.
In any case, it's easier to discover a word's birthday than its obituary. In a foreword to Poplollies and Bellibones: A Celebration of Lost Words, wordsmith Willard Espy writes that it's best to consider words merely missing or presumed dead: "Even after being embalmed by linguists and formally laid out in their coffins for interment, words have a way of sitting up, calling for a sip of water to restore their strength and returning as lively as ten-year-old children to their verbal rounds."
Poplollies and Bellibones, by Susan Sperling, lists many of the "presumed dead." Thrip, brangle, or murfle once led perfectly respectable lives, for example, and it would be nice if they were resurrected.
Thrip was especially useful – it meant to snap one's fingers. The expressive brangle named what we now less suggestively call an argument. Murfle? A pimple or a zit. Paggle meant to bulge or hang loosely. Would you rather have a murfle and a paggle, or a pimple and a potgut?
Too bad we lost snertle, meaning to snicker. Or brool, a low, deep murmuring. Blutter was a good word for blurting something out. A hufty-tufty was a boorish braggart. Sloomy was how we felt when we were lazy and drowsy. Pash was a nice emphatic word for forehead. Ribble meant wrinkle or furrow – as in ribbling your pash.
Some antique words make so much sense that it's a wonder we lost them. One such is downsteepy, meaning precipitous or steep. Fellowfeeling was an expressive word for empathy. Turngiddy meant dizzy, and kew-kaw meant upside down. Wink-a-peeps were eyes. Flesh-spades were fingernails. Chinkers were coins. Kill-priest was port wine.
We could still use blob-tale, a gossip. Same goes for the crush-room, a theater hall or lobby where the audience went between acts. A fearbabe was something designed to scare the baby. Chair day was gentle idiom for old age – that time of life spent largely in rest and inactivity.
Do we have so many words for infidelity that we no longer have room for the evocative bedswerver or spousebreak? Have we a substitute for smellsmock, an errant clergyman or, more broadly, a licentious man?
Where's our common word for feeling happy and sad at the same time? One considers nostalgic, poignant, sentimental, melancholy, but they fall short. Once, however, we had merry-go-sorry – or chantpleure, which means to sing and weep at the same time.
Some lost words should stay lost, however. What we call junk food, ugly enough in its own right, once was called lubber-wort. Belly-timber was food, and to glop was to swallow greedily. A muckender was a bib. A kiss was the unromantic lipclap. Pleasure was far less pleasant when it was adlubescence (accent on bes ). And I guess we can do without snotter-clout, a handkerchief, or sparrow-fart, which meant daybreak. The cosmetic we call eyeshadow once was calliblephary (accent on bleph), and rouge or blusher was called fucus.
I'm not making this up, you know.
Back to that old word spondulicks: I found it. It was at rest in the commodious Oxford English Dictionary, with a proverbial robe over its knees. Its chair day, presumably. "Aha!" I bluttered in adlubescence when I cast my wink-a-peeps on it, slapping my pash and thripping my fingers. "There you are!"
I could have chantpleured.
Paula LaRocque is the retired writing coach of The Dallas Morning News.
Thanks: --> to Lia, my sensei, who has inspired me to draw again. I
wouldn't be doing this without your support, Domo Arigato!
--> to Talon, for sending me her fabulous fics, inspiring me with her writing to draw my first
illustration for a story and actually liking what I drew.
--> to Dasia, for her words of encouragement when drawing her original chara.
--> to Joules, a wonderful epic fic writer, for liking my art enough to want to post them with Talon's
and her own stories.
--> to Lutra, the other half of the epic team, for being so supportive.
--> to Jacque' & Becca Raddittzu, we met on eBay as bidder and sellers and now we are face-to-face
friends. You showed us the real DBZ with your fansubs. It's all your fault the house is full of
doujinshi! *LOL*
:: welcome to bakayaro onna's mindless ramblings, rants & raves :: 
