Previse

    I came across a word that was new to me the other day - prevised. So I did what I usually do and looked it up.

 

To previse means to know in advance; foresee; notify in advance; or forewarn.

 

Prevised therefore means known in advance, imagined beforehnad, or forewarned. 

Prelapsarian

 

Prelapsarian is an adjective. Strictly speaking it means of or relating to the period before the fall of Adam and Eve; characteristic of the time before the Fall of Man.  It is, however, also used in a broader context to mean innocent and unspoiled; or simply ancient.

In a Ruth Rendell novel, for example, a young girl who drives an automatic car describes her mother's car with gears as prelapsarian.

It appears to be pronounced prlps-ARE-ian but don't quote me on that - I'm no good at working with the phoentic alphabet.

Tracklements

   Tracklements are savoury jellies, served with meat or savoury condiments (for example mustards, relishes or chutneys), especially ones served with meat.

 The word first appeared in the 1950s and is of unknown origion.

Pothooks

A pothook is an S-shaped hook for hanging pots and kettles over an open fire.  But in a meaning almost fallen out of use nowdays it came to mean a written character resembling a pothook and, later, simply a scrawled written  character or a fancy one with extra squiggles on it. 

I have my own theory as to why the word came to be related to writing. Pothooks would have been made by the local blacksmith - each of whom would have had his own design.  So much as one person's writing varied from another so did pothooks.

"The pothooks straggled a little wildly across the page, as if written too hurriedly, on a pad balanced on someone’s knee." (Mary Stewart - "Touch not the Cat" 1976)

Hanged or hung?

   Did you know that in British English inanimate or dead objects are hung but people are hanged. In other words the past tense of hang is 'hung' if referring to things like hanging game to enrich the flavour but 'hanged' if referring to capital punishment for people.

(I don't think I'll bother illustrating this post!)

Smithereens

I love the word smithereens . Smithereens means small fragments or tiny bits, and is usually found in the phrases  the alliterative phrase "smashed to smithereens."   I thinbk it is so evocative of small pieces - a fine example of onomatopoeia.

A typical use of the word can be found in a Time magazine story about cosmology from 1976: "The result is another kind of supernova, a fantastic explosion that blows the star to smithereens, dispersing into space most of the remaining elements that it had manufactured during its lifetime." 

Smithereens first appeared in English in 1829 in the form "smiddereens," and most likely was borrowed from the Irish Gaelic smidirîn, a diminutive of smiodar, small fragment.

Demonym

   A demonym (a word not used until coined by Paul Dickson, an editor at Merriam-Webster, in his 1997 book 'Labels for Locals'), also referred to as a gentilic, is a name for a resident of a locality.

A demonym is usually – though not always – derived from the name of the locality;  thus, the demonym for the people of Britain is British, and the demonym for the people of Italy is Italian, yet the one used in the English language for the people of the Netherlands is Dutch (in Dutch Nederland/Nederlander).  In some cases the demonym is said to have preceded the place being named - hence Germany was the place from which Germans came rather then the other way round.

Diss

   To diss is to disrespect;  to treat, mention, or speak to rudely. It is a slang word, chiefly US, that came from, and therefore shares the same definition as "to disrepect";  to treat (someone) with contempt. 

The City of Dis - sketch by Boticelli

Dis with one ‘s’ refers to the city of Dis, from Dante's levels of hell. The city of Dis is the level of hell to which all non-believers, who have not otherwise sinned greatly, will go.

Midden

A midden is a a dunghill or refuse heap; this is also an archeological term for a mound or deposit containing shells, animal bones, and other refuse that indicates the site of a human settlement.

Velocipedes and Quadricycles

  

A velocipede was an early form of bicycle propelled by working pedals on cranks fitted to the front axle; now used as an archaic term for a bicycle.

 An American Sawyer velocipipede from 1855

 The term was coined by Frenchman Nicéphore Niépcee in 1818 to describe his version of the Laufmqschine, which was invented by the German Karl Drais in 1817. The term "velocipede" is today, however, mainly used as a collective term for the different forerunners of the monowheel, unicycle, bicycle, tricucle, and quadricycle developed between 1817 and 1880.

                                           http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Quadricycle
In 1896 Henry Ford introduced his Ford Quadricycle - and engine driven vehicle, no longer requiring the driver to pedal.