Forgotten English: An Entertaining Collection of Obsolete Words and Literary Excerpts from Shakespeare to Dickens - Softcover

Kacirk, Jeffrey

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0688166369 ISBN 13: 9780688166366

Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks, 1999

Synopsis

Have you ever sent a message via scandaroon, needed a nimgimmer, or fallen victim to bowelhive? Never heard of these terms? That's because they are a thing of the past. These words are alive and well, however, in Forgotten English, a charming collection of hundreds of archaic words, their definitions, and old-fashioned line drawings.

For readers of Bill Bryson, Henry Beard, and Richard Lederer, Forgotten English is an eye-opening trip down a delightful etymological path. Readers learn that an ale connor sat in a puddle of ale to judge its quality, that a beemaster informed bees of any important household events, and that our ancestors had a saint for hangover sufferers, St. Bibiana, a fact pertinent to the word bibulous. Each selection is accompanied by literary excerpts demonstrating the word's usage, from sources such as Shakespeare, Dickens, Chaucer, and Benjamin Franklin. Entertaining as well as educational, Forgotten English is a fascinating addition to word lovers' books.

About this title

About the Author

Jeffrey Kacirk is a research aficionado with a special love for antique dictionaries. He lives in Marin County, California.

For readers of Bill Bryson, Henry Beard, and Richard Lederer, Forgotten English is an eye-opening trip down a delightful etymological path. Readers learn that an ale connor sat in a puddle of ale to judge its quality, that a beemaster informed bees of any important household events, and that our ancestors had a saint for hangover sufferers, St. Bibiana, a fact pertinent to the word bibulous. Each selection is accompanied by literary excerpts demonstrating the word's usage, from sources such as Shakespeare, Dickens, Chaucer, and Benjamin Franklin. Entertaining as well as educational, Forgotten English is a fascinating addition to word lovers' books.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Excerpt

Crapandina

Early sixteenth-century name for a mineral, also known as a toad-stoneor bufonite, to which extraordinary, if perhaps ironic, healingproperties were attributed. The stone was supposed to be a "natural concretion"found in the head of the common toad that acted as an antidote to poison. ThomasLupton, in his 1579 A Thousand Notable Things, described how

A toad-stone called crapandina, touching any part envenomed, hurt or stung, with rat, spider, waspe or any other venomous beast, ceases the paine or swelling thereof.

He kindly informed his readers how to acquire this valuable stone:

Put a great or overgrowne tode into an earthen potte, and put the same into an antes hyllocke, & cover the same with earth, which tode at length antes wyll eate, so that the bones of the toad and stone wyll be left in the potte.

Dried toads were once found in home medicine cabinets in Devonshire, to be usedfor such purposes as making the following dropsy recipe from Elizabeth Wright's1914 Rustic Speech and Folk-Lore:

Take several large, fully-grown toads, place them in a vessel in which they can be burned without their ashes becoming mixed with any foreign matter.

The odd belief in the efficacy of the crapandina is evident in the famous linesfrom Shakespeare's As You Like It:

Sweet are the uses of adversity
Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head.

Excerpted from Forgotten English by Jeffrey Kacirk. Copyright © 1999 by Jeffrey Kacirk. Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Copyright © 1999 Jeffrey Kacirk. All rights reserved.
ISBN: 0-688-16636-9

Edition details

• Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0688166369
• ISBN 13: 9780688166366
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256