This is the sort of stuff I was talking about the other week! Of course, who do we have to thank for it, but Dr Johnson. In fact, the Beinecke Library at Yale is posting up a word a day from the Dictionary for the whole of 2009.
Now, I’m not saying the Dictionary doesn’t have plenty of long Latinate words in it; but anybody who knows their word roots can out two bits together and make a rather official-sounding compound. When I issued my original appeal I specifically meant good old colourful English words we’d hate to see drop away completely. Words like:
Pickapack, pickthank, pignut, pigsney. Jack Pudding, jadish, finglefangle. Demure (as a verb), denizen (as a verb), peach (as a verb), peal (as a verb). Fripperer.
10 Comments
September 26, 2009 at 3:11 pm
I love that “pigwidgeon” there!
September 26, 2009 at 5:24 pm
I like “heebie jeebie.”
September 27, 2009 at 10:19 am
flibbertigibbet – used frequently by my grandmother and mother about any young woman who was considered flighty and frivolous
Tatterdemalion – one of my favourite words
September 27, 2009 at 10:40 am
All great!
Angela, I say flibbertigibbet. And conniption fit. And discombobulated.
September 27, 2009 at 10:49 am
I use “discombobulated” all the time. My kids probably think it’s a totally normal word. Well, actually, I do, too!
September 27, 2009 at 11:04 am
Yeah, but your kids probably also think it’s normal to listen to the Grateful Dead.
September 27, 2009 at 12:18 pm
Or to grow up bilingual!
September 27, 2009 at 12:24 pm
pernicketty
September 27, 2009 at 12:52 pm
Angela, I always say persnickety. Well, these are folk forms. See, this is more like it.
Andrew, excellent! Though I have seen you in that tie-dyed T shirt – I’m surprised they let you do that in Switzerland. I always think you should meet my friend Allen from Cincinatti, who has a half-Italian 6-year-old boy, who says, “Daddy, music is louder than talking. And rock & roll is louder than music.”
September 27, 2009 at 1:07 pm
Every few years, tie-dyes are briefly fashionable again. Then they aren’t for a while, and then they are again. Me, I just where ‘em all the time. (Got to make some more!)