Twonk

Twonk - n. an informal term for a stupid or foolish person.It has its origin in the 1980s: perhaps a blend of twit or twerp and plonker.

Glop

When I came across the word glop on Papercages blog I thought at first that she had invented it. But no, I discovered from Princeton University that it is:-
- treacle: writing or music that is excessively sweet and sentimental;
- any gummy shapeless matter; usually unpleasant.

Burn the candle at both ends

It is alleged that at one time it was possible to burn the candle at both ends because candles and rushlights were sometimes held horizontally in pincers or brackets that allowed both ends to be lit simultaneously. To do so was said to be a sign of extravagance. Interestingly I cannot find any pictures of such a wall bracket or pincers but the same story appears in a number of places.

Nowadays, the term is used of someone who exhausts their energy by getting up early and staying up late. I could find plenty of pictures of folk who do that!

Duh!

I've already blogged about D'Oh (twice) and the first time I did so I mentioned it was not to be confused with Duh. Duh (pronounced duhhrrr) is an American English slang exclamation that is used to express disdain for someone missing the obviousness of something. It can also be used when someone states the obvious.


I cannot think of a better example of the appropriateness of "Duh!".

Fideism

Today's word comes with special thanks to David, author of Jesus and Mo, for reasons which will become apparent....

Fideism is the doctrine that faith is the basis of all knowledge; the view that religious belief relies primarily on faith or special revelation, rather than rational inference or observation.


(Reproduced by special permission of jesusandmo.net.)

Leave some for the Duke of Rutland

When I was young it was expected that one would finish the food that was put on one’s plate. Whilst some minor concessions might be made for one’s likes and dislikes, as a rule children were expected to eat what was put before them. Fortunately our parents were not as strict as Mum’s parents had been.

By contrast, the upper classes of many earlier generations expected their children to leave some food on their plate – it was considered both good manners and Biblically correct since the good book says ‘Leave off first for manners’ sake; and be not unsatiable, lest thou offend.’

And where did the Duke of Rutland come in? The family name of the Dukes of Rutland was Manners so parents would use his name as a way of warning children to mind their manners.

Harling

All too often we are tempted to ignore words that we don't know when we read them. If the context is obvious we simply read around them. Such was nearly the case when I read "From the shared courtyard below, several cream-harled buildings, with tagged-on staircases and balconies, grew higgledy-piggledy skywards, their scale and style an odd mixture of Arts and Crafts and Scottish baronial," in a novel about Edinburgh, recently.

However, recalling my desire to edcuate myself, I checked out 'harled' (no result) then 'harling' and discovered the latter defined as "Harling or roughcasting is a process of covering stonework, using a plastering process involding a slurry of small pebbles or fine chips of stone."

Obvious really, as I had suspected, but I thought I'd share the thought and action process with you.

Tegestology

Tegestology is the collecting of beermats.


For two terms in 1971 I lived in a basement flat in Leeds. The walls were simply painted plaster and painted wooden panels so I livened the place up a bit, as students do, by adding cigarette packets and other odds and ends.

At the time I collected beermats (which made me a tegestologist) so these, of course, also went on the wall.


A beermat is a coaster used to rest glasses of beer (or other beverages) upon. Public houses in the United Kingdom usually will have them spread out across the tables. They are used not just to protect the surface of the table, but, as they are usually made out of paper, they can also be used to absorb spillages or serve as an ad-hoc notepad. Their main use, however, is as part of an alcohol advertising campaign.


Collecting beermats is an especially popular hobby in Germany, where beermats are known as Bierdeckel. There is an international collector's association called IBV in Germany which has been active since 1958. The British Beermat Collectors Society was founded shortly afterwards in 1960 and currently has around 300 members spread around the world. BeermatMania.com was founded in 2004 and boasts a gallery of over 34,000 images of British brewery beer mats based on the British Beermat Collectors Society numbering system.

Fiddlesticks

Fiddlesticks is such a lovely word. It means 'Nonsense!' and is used as an interjection which expresses disbelief, disdain or annoyance.

A fiddlestick was the bow used in playing the violin (fiddle). Shakespeare used a proverb based on it in Henry IV: “the devil rides on a fiddle-stick”, meaning that a commotion has broken out. Around Shakespeare's time it also began to be used to mean something trivial or insignificant. As a contemptuous response to a remark it sems to have been first recorded in George Farquhar's play" Sir Henry Wildair" of 1701: “Golden pleasures! golden fiddlesticks!”.

Curlicue

If ever a word was self-explanatory it is curlicue - a lovely word.


A curlicue, or alternatively curlycue, in the visual arts, is a fancy twist, or curl, composed usually from a series of concentric circles. It is a recurring motif in architecture (as decoration to the lintel/architrave above a door), in calligraphy and in general scrollwork.

"...the dust had probably seeped in to lie in the dulling mahogany curlicues of the Chippendale chairs.." Mollie Panter-Downes