Chiasm

 
Chiasm (also known as chiasmus) is a figure of speech by which the order of words in the first of two parallel clauses is reversed in the second. The purpose is usually to create an additional point or emphasise something.

Perhaps an example is the easiest way of explaining a chiasm - "Weetabix: The Breakfast of Champions; The Champion of Breakfasts."

The adjective is chiastic. So the above was a chiastic sentence.
 

Argey bargey

 
How many people receive an e-mail from their brother which has the subject matter "Argey bargey" and the content "Just a thought". Translated it means - is the origin and use of the phrase argey bargey worthy of a blog entry. The answer - as you will have gathered - is yes.

An argy-bargy, argey-bargey or argie-bargie (with or without a hyphen) is an argument, spat, debate or minor quarrel. It is often used of the general rough-and-tumble and falling-out between siblings - as in the parental admonition ‘For heaven’s sake stop all that argie-bargie!’

The phrase seems to have arisen in Scotland where he word ‘argle’ - a corruption of argue - was followed by the nonsensical but rhyming ‘bargle‘. Parliament was described as having argle-barglers in it in ‘The Ayrshire Legatees’ by John Galt, published in 1821. A no more appropriate context could there be than parliament! This early version also appears in Robert Louis Stevenson’s ‘Kidnapped’ in 1886.

The later version appears as early as 1897 in ’Margaret Ogilvy’, the work of another Scot, J M Barrie, but in my 1960s version of the Concise Oxford Dictionary it still appears as argle-bargle.
 

As the Actress Said to the Bishop

 
"As the Actress Said to the Bishop" is a sexual inuendo, used as a response when someone says something that can be interpreted in a naughty way. An example might be:-
"I didn't know I had it in me."
"As the actress said to the bishop...."

The reverse (As the bishop said to the actress) is also used but less frequently. The phrase seems to have been made popular in the mess halls of the RAF during the Second World War but it probably originated in the comedy acts at the music halls in the late Victorian era when jokes about potentially scandalous liaisons betwen actresses and the nobility and clergy were popular.

In the 1950s the rather risqué radio show Educating Archie included Archie Andrews' upper class chum Monica (played by Beryl Reid) who used the riposte 'As the art mstress said to the gardener'.


Archie Andrews and Peter Brough
(Archie Andrews, for those too young to remember the glorious days of radio was a ventriloquist's dummy. Only the BBC could have made a successful radio programme using a ventriloquist's dummy as the main character!)
 

Wort

 
Wort is a sweet, viscous, and flavorful liquid produced by the careful steeping of hot water with cracked malted barley or wheat; fermenting or fermented malt. But that is not the meaning I am principally telling you about.

From My Hebridean Blog

Milkwort

...wort is a frequent ending for English plant names and anyone who read my recent blog about the flowers on the croft by GB's may have noticed Butterwort, Lousewort and Milkwort. Also on the croft - though I didn't mention them - are a couple of liverworts. Wort is simply an Anglo-Saxon word that meant weed so in oidern parlance the plants would be known as butterweed, louseweed, milkweed and so on.
 

Aa

 
A short entry today - in more ways than one. Not a word you are likely to come across everyday - unless you are a professional Scrabble player - but aa is a sort of volcanic lava.


Aa aqn be recognised by the accompanying human sounds - "Aaagh! That's my car!"
 

Nebulous

 
Nebulous means cloudy; lacking definite form or limits; hazy; vague or ill-defined.


It comes for the Greek word nebula which meant a cloud. Nowadays a nebula means an immense cloud of gas (mainly hydrogen) and dust in interstellar space. In early astronomy the word referred to almost any extended astronomical object (other than planets and comets).
 

It's All Greek to Me

 
In English we often use the phrase its 'Double Dutch' or 'It's all Greek to me' to indicate that something is incomprehensible or beyond one's ability to understand. The Romans also described things as being Greek - "Graecum est; non legitur" ("It is Greek, so it cannot be read") - presumably because the different alphabet exacerbated the difficulty of understanding it. Whilst referring to Greek was not especially derogatory the phrase Double Dutch was and this attack on the Dutch is more recent. It probably stems from the 17th century when the two countries were forever at each other's throats as they vied for supremacy at sea and to carve out Empires from foreign lands. .

But what do the Greeks and Dutch say? They say 'It's Chinese to me'. The Croatians and Czecks say it's Spanish. The Italians refer to it as Arabic, Aramaic or Ostrogoth. The Romanians call it Turkish and the Turks call it French. The Mandarin Chinese are one of the few peoples who don't refer to another language - they say it's like the Book from Heaven (referring to an unknown writing system); like the tongues of birds, or the language of Mars. But my favourite is the expression of the Cantonese Chinese who describe English as sounding like chicken intestines!
 

Phratry

 
Here's a good word for Scrabble players - phratry. A phratry is people descended from a common ancestor; kinfolk; brotherhood; in its original Greek it was an anthropological term for a kinship division consisting of two or more distinct clans which are considered a single unit,

So far as I know it's not in common usage.
 

Insouciance

 
Insouciance, (pronounced In-soosi-arnce) a delightful sounding word, refers to a carefree attitude; a cheerful lack of anxiety or concern.

"He greeted the morning with his usual insouciance; requesting his butler to bring him ham and eggs and a pot of strong coffee." (I wish!)
 

Freight

 
Until recently I had only come across the verb to freight as meaning send or carry goods for or by transport. But then, the other day I read the sentence "In retrospect my action seems freighted with significance."

So I looked it up and discovered that it also had the broader meaning to burden something or somebody; to load something or somebody with something such as feeling, significance, or emotion (literary).