Antiquarian Hebdomadal - Index Edition

AKA Word-Nerd Weekly # 8

Jan 14, 2024

Glorious, voluminous and stupendous news, fellow word-nerds. Thanks to

and

, we now have access to a new and overflowing reservoir of old and strange words from the English language. (Many of you may have already known, but it's new to me!)

BEHOLD THE GLORY THAT IS SAMUEL JOHNSON'S DICTIONARY.

https://johnsonsdictionaryonline.com/views/letter.php

To celebrate this new resource, I decided to make an index article so I could keep all the nerd-word weekly posts in one place and be able to pin it to the top of KTAWK's page. In honor of the late, great Alex Trebek, this article will choose six words to ~~poke fun at~~ hightlight. One from each of the most common letters, R S T L N E.

This article will be edited post-emailing, to include all past and future “Antiquarian Hebdomadal”s.

Without further ado, I present to you,

The Index.

E- Earsh. n.s. [from ear, to plow.] A plowed field.

Fires oft are good on barren earshes made,

With crackling flames to burn the stubble blade.

A proper way to start fresh, plow the field to clear the way for new planting. (Check out how the letter ‘s’ was written pre-1800.)

There are 2 entries for earsh(1755 and 1773- the years of each edition) the only difference is “not now in use" in the 1773 edition. I wonder what happened in the preceding 18 years to cause earsh to stop being used?

L- La'chrymatory. n.s. [lachrimatoire, Fr.] A vessel in which tears are gathered to the honour of the dead.

I picked lachrymatory because I think the meme-lords will find some way to use this. The other forms of this word could be similarly useful; lachrymal- generating tears, lachrymary- containing tears, and lachrymation- the act of weeping, or shedding tears. Let the antiquated QQing commence!

N- Na'rrable. adj. [from narro, Lat.] Capable to be told or related.

So far, narrable, amongst the words I've perused so far, is the most likely to make a comeback IMO. For example, my dream last night was so strange, it’s barely narrable.

R- RU'STICAL. adj. [rusticus, Lat. rustique, Fr.] Rough; savage; boisterous; brutal; rude.

On he brought me unto so bare a house, that it was the picture of miserable happiness and rich beggary, served only by a company of rustical villains, full of sweat and dust, not one of them other than a labourer.

This is by a rustical severity to banish all urbanity, whose harmless and confined condition is consistent with religion.

He confounds the singing and dancing of the satires with the rustical entertainment of the first Romans.

(Notice in the last example, a second, different way that the letter ‘s’ used to be written. Singing and satires. My guess is the long tail S was used after a vowel, the no tail f/S was used at the beginning of a word or after a consonant, and the modern S was used at the end of a word.)

S- To Snudge. v.n. [sniger, Danish.] To lie idle, close, or snug.

Now he will fight it out, and to the wars; Now eat his bread in peace, and snudge in quiet; now he scorns increase; now all day spares.

I like the mouth-feel of saying snudge. Cats exemplify this word all the time.

(It took me a bit longer to pick an S word than the rest. 119 pages of S words compared to 30 to 50 pages on average.)

T- Theri'acal. adj. [ϑηϱιαϰὰ; from theriaca, Lat.] Medicinal; physical.

The virtuous bezoar is taken from the beast that feedeth upon the mountains, where there are theriacal herbs. Bacon.

Theriacal is a word that could be used when discussing health benefits of whatever, and get around the bots and algorithms searching for terms like medicinal. (Stupid censors, get bent!)

B- (Bonus word thanks to the example text from theriacal.)

Bezoar