He came in at the window

I think most people will be familiar with the euphemism "He was born on the wrong side of the blanket" meaning to be born out of wedlock. The phrase was most commonly used when the mistress of a married man gave birth. A slight variation was to be "Born on the wrong side of the sheets".

Recently I came across two more euphemisms for the same situation - "He came in at the window" and "He came in through the side door".

I wonder if anyone knows any other euphemisms for being born of wedlock?

Oneironaut

An oneironaut is a person who explores dream worlds, usually associated with lucid dreaming. (The term comes from the Greek oneiros which means dream.)

Oneirology is the scientific study of dreams.

Antsy

Marc, a blogger from Vancouver, says in his profile - "Why do I write? Because not writing isn't an option. I get antsy if I get close to the end of a day without having written something."

I thought the meaning of antsy was fairly obvious and sure enough, upon checking, it turns out to be a slang term for "restless, apprehensive and fidgety". But I wondered where it came from?


Heather Swofford in The Mavens' Word of the Day wrote the following interesting passage.
"Antsy, which means 'restless; uneasy; impatient; anxious; fidgety', has a somewhat questionable origin. Without doubt, it eventually refers to the constant activity of ants, but the real question is whether or not it's the original expression or not."

"The familar phrase to have ant's (sic) in one's pants 'to be restless or irritable' dates from the 1930s. The word antsy became common in the 1950s, which suggests that antsy is derived from the earlier phrase. But there is one example from the nineteenth century that makes the issue murky. In an 1838 journal is the sentence: "Minard's talking & Peake's scribbling were enough to drive anyone ancey [sic]." Now, on the one hand this would seem to be the earliest example of our word. However, this is over 100 years before its next known use. If antsy--in whatever spelling--were really in use in the 1830s, it's rather unusual that there's no other example for such a long time."

"This could mean that the 1838 example is a coincidence, that it's not the same word as our antsy. Or it could be the same word, but for whatever reason, scholars haven't found any other early examples, in which case the "ants in one's pants" phrase would itself be an elaboration of antsy. "

(Someone needs to read "Eats, shoots and leaves" by Lynne Truss!)

Lipogram

A lipogram (from Greek lipagrammatos, "missing letter") is a kind of constrained writing or word game consisting of writing, poems, paragraphs or longer works in which a particular letter or group of letters is missing, usually a common vowel.

Spitstickers and Scorpers

Engraving tools have wonderful names. I came across two in Simon Garfield's book 'The Error World' - "..a nice chunk of English boxwood to be engraved with spitstickers and scorpers."


The spitsticker is one of the engravers main tools and is used for curved lines and making small round marks for stippling.

The scorper is for straight lines and cutting out large areas.

Other wonderful terms include Tint Tool, Lozenge Graver, Chisel and Bullsticker.


I thought this great example of a wood engraving was by the incomparable Andy English but it does not appear on his website or blog so perhaps I am mistaken.

Petrichor

Petrichor is the pleasant smell that accompanies the first rain after a dry spell.

"Petrichor, the name for the smell of rain on dry ground, is from oils given off by vegetation, absorbed onto neighboring surfaces, and released into the air after a first rain." Matthew Bettelheim, Mt Shasta, California, Jan 2002.

Neologisms and Retronyms

A neologism is a word, term, or phrase that has been recently created (or "coined"), often to apply to new concepts, to synthesize pre-existing concepts, or to make older terminology sound more contemporary. It may also be an old word used in a new sense.

A retronym is a form of neologism coined for an old object or concept whose original name has come to be used for something else or is no longer adequate. The term clock, for example, was quite adequate to describe a type of timepiece until digital clocks came along. It was then necessary to introduce the word analogue to describe clocks that were not digital.

Snood

Sometimes you come across a word that you know the meaning of, only to find your meaning doesn't fit the context. So when I read in 'Good Evening, Mrs Craven' that all the girls wore their hair in snoods, I thought, strange!


A snood, I knew, was the flap of skin that wobbles about over the beak of certain bird species, most noticeably the turkey.


I couldn't see girls wrapping their hair in those, even in wartime, so I checked and discovered a snood, in those days, was an ornamental net in the shape of a bag that confined a woman's hair.


Nowadays, it seems, the snood has had a makeover and in the most common modern form it resembles a close-fitting hood worn over the back of the head. The band covers the forehead or crown of the head, goes behind the ears and under the nape of the neck.


Just to complete our examination of the word snood it is also a puzzle video game created in 1996 by David M. Dobson.

Biscuits

The other day I read a book in which a female porter on a march was given the nickname ‘Biscuits’ because she unashamedly lifted her skirts to go to the toilet at the side of the track.

I was at a loss as to why this should lead to her being called biscuits but upon checking found it was American slang for faeces (presumably a form of rhyming slang – biscuits / shits).

Biscuits are quite popular in rhyming slang, giving us
Knees (Biscuits and Cheese);
Rookie (Biscuit and Cookie);
Bookie (Biscuit and Cookie) ; and
Tits (Biscuits)

It seems that a biscuit is also slang for the drug ecstasy.

A friend (from the Scottish islands) also uses the word in the expressions ‘scary biscuits’ to describe a bad situation and ‘mad as a box of biscuits’ to describe a person.

What a useful word!

A Loo Table

The other day I came across a reference to a loo table. At first I imagined it was a table to be found in a loo (English slang for a toilet) but the context didn’t seem quite right.


In fact, a loo table was a large round or oval table for playing loo on.


It was hinged so that it could be stored flat against a wall when not in use.

Loo was a trick-taking card game for five or more players. It was equally popular as a disreputable gambling game, when it could get quite vicious, or as a mild domestic pastime, such as appeared in the novels of Jane Austen. There were two forms - one played with three cards and the other with five. Both reached England from France probably with the restoration of the monarchy in 1660. Loo is short for Lanterloo which in turn is from the French lenturlu, a meaningless refrain used in lullabies.
(For more about the game of Loo se David Parlett’s site)