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Countries RSS Feeds608-1: Feedback, notes and comments - Kippers and curtains As many subscribers pointed out, there’s no lack of disparaging terms for people who are thought to be trying to live above their station. John Davies mentioned one common in Coventry in his childhood: Brown boots and no breakfast. Pat Mackay recalled, “Another variation is Curtains on the windows, no sheets on the beds. It was common in Northern Ireland when I lived there 40 years ago.” Sandra Parker mentioned, “My Dad used to say Queen Anne front and Mary Anne behind”. Jake Morgan wrote, “The town of West Bridgford, lying just south of the river Trent and proudly independent of the City of Nottingham, is locally referred to as bread and lard island. This started in the late Victorian era to reflect the price of the then new houses in West Bridgford. It stemmed from a popular belief that once you had spent all your money on the house all you could afford to eat was...Feed Source: www.worldwidewords.org 608-2: Weird Words: Nympholepsy - A wild frenzy caused by desire for an unattainable ideal.
That’s one sense, which Edward Bulwer-Lytton described in Godolphin in 1833: “The most common disease to genius is nympholepsy — the saddening for a spirit that the world knows not.” It can also refer to the passion or desire aroused in men by young girls, which is, unsurprisingly, in Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita. As a result, it’s often equated with paedophilia or the Lolita complex, though it’s strictly an unappeasable longing, not one that can be acted upon.
Nympholepsy started life in English in the late eighteenth century with the idea behind it of a person in a frenzy from beholding those mythological spirits of nature the ancients imagined as beautiful maidens living in rivers or woods. It’s from the Greek numpholeptos, caught by nymphs. George Moore wrote about it in his Memoirs of My Dead Life:
... 608-3: Recently noted - Happy, happy fat Jane Steinberg tells me she was researching the residual toxicity of a termiticide (itself an interesting word, for a substance that kills termites) when she came across lipofelicity in an article. “I like to think of it as meaning happiness at being fat,” she wrote. The writer was undoubtedly in search of lipophilicity, the property of being soluble in fats, oils and other non-polar solvents. It means “fat loving”, not a million miles from the other sense, but both she and I rather prefer the mistake. More on lipo-.
Superlatives ahoy! The Guardian covered the Monte Carlo boat show recently, mentioning that “Boats built to personal specifications have grown to such vast proportions that the labels superyacht and megayacht are no longer enough. Those on the dockside now talk of the gigayacht ... 608-4: Questions and Answers: Jay-walking -
[Q] From Marty Ryerson; related questions came from Matthias Werner, Fred A Roth, Richard Hacker, Robert L Hamm and Dalia Wolfson: “When someone crosses the street in a city illegally, it’s called jay-walking. This usually means crossing at a point other than the intersection. What does the J stand for, or who is Jay? What is the origin of this term?”
[A] It has been said that people who take their lives in their hands in the big city by crossing the street anywhere dodge across in the pattern of a letter J — hence J-walking. Do not believe this.
The experts are sure the jay is the bird, one of the American jays, presumably the common bluejay. From around the last quarter of the nineteenth century, ... 608-5: Sic! - • On Wednesday, the Guardian reported the auction of a rare medieval Islamic ewer: “The bid was annulled by ‘private agreement’, prompting rumours that the vendor had agreed to sell the item along with the buyer.” But who will buy the buyer?
• Gerry Zanzalari shook his head over a Fox News online headline dated 26 September: “Jury Convicts New York Man of Killing Wife for the Second Time”. He comments, “I thought you only got to die once. Silly me.”
• Paul Birch recollects: “Some time ago a choir in which I sing was advertised here in Vancouver as having performed previously in several countries. The conductor was to be the well-known Bernard Labadie. Unfortunately, the copy was passed through a spell checker without human review before it was sent out to subscribers. Our friends were somewhat surprised to read that th... 608-6: Copyright and contact details - World Wide Words is copyright © Michael Quinion 2008. All rights reserved. You may reproduce this newsletter in whole or part in free online newsletters, newsgroups or mailing lists provided that you include this note and the copyright notice above. Reproduction in printed publications or on Web sites or blogs requires prior permission, for which you should contact the editor.
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