The Word Museum

The Most Remarkable English Words Ever Forgotten

Jeffrey Kacirk

• Publisher: Touchstone
• Year: 2001
• eBook ISBN: 9780743214940
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Linguistics

ENTER A GALLERY OF WIT AND WHIMSY
As the largest and most dynamic collection of words ever assembled, the English language continues to expand. But as hundreds of new words are added annually, older ones are sacrificed. Now from the author of Forgotten English comes a collection of fascinating archaic words and phrases, providing an enticing glimpse into the past. With beguiling period illustrations, The Word Museum offers up the marvelous oddities and peculiar enchantments of old and unusual words.

S

sad bread

Heavy bread, ill-made bread. Shakespeare calls it “distressful bread”—not the bread of distress, but the panis gravis, or ill-made bread eaten by the poor. [Brewer]

sailors’ home

A house built by subscription, for accomodation of seamen on moderate [incomes], and to rescue them from swindlers, crimps, &c. Sailors’ homes are a great boon also to shipwrecked mariners. [Smyth] SEE dower-house

St. Patrick’s needle

In the phrase, to have gone through St. Patrick’s needle, to have been in bankruptcy court. [Darlington]

sale-caller

Within the present century, it was customary for the parish clerk to announce to the congregation in the churchyard, at the service, the sales to be held shortly, and also to offer rewards for the recovery of stolen goods or stray cattle, and other notices. [Dickinson]

sale-drink

The gratuitous liquor handed round at a sale. [J. Wright] It is considered mean to go only for the drinking and neither to bid nor buy. [Dickinson]

saloop

A greasy-looking beverage, formerly sold on stalls at early morning, prepared from a powder made of the root of the Orchis mascula . . . Charles Lamb, in one of his papers, has left some account of this drinkable which he says was, of all preparations, the most grateful to the stomachs of young chimney-sweeps. The present generation has no knowledge of this drink, except that derived from books. The word “slops,” as applied to weak, warm drink, is very likely derived from the Cockney pronunciation of saloop. [Hotten] SEE ninny-broth, purl, scandal-broth

salvatella

A vein in the arm terminating in the fingers, formerly regarded as having peculiar influence on the health when opened; from Latin salvus, safe. [Stormonth] The ancients recommended this vein [also called the vena amoris] to be opened in certain diseases, as in melancholic and hypochondriacal affections, and they attribute to such abstraction of blood considerable efficacy in the cure of disease; hence its name. [Dunglison] SEE wedding finger

sandillions

Numbers like the sand on the seashore. [Davies]

sand-knocker

A man who grinds sandstone into grit, and sells it from door to door for sanding floors. [Taylor]

satyriasis

An irresistible desire in man to have frequent connexion with females, accompanied with the power of doing so without exhaustion. The causes are commonly obscure. Sometimes the abuse of aphrodisiacs has occasioned it. The principal symptoms are: almost constant erection, irresistible and almost constant desire for venery, [and] frequent nocturnal pollutions. Cold lotions, the cold bath, a mild diet, active exercise, &c., are the only means that can be adopted for its removal. [Dunglison] As it occurs in females, it is the nymphomania furibunda. [Hoblyn]

say-shot

An opportunity in a game to regain, by one stroke, all that one had previously lost. [Warrack]

scalch

A morning drink. Scotland [J. Wright] Some excellent brandy was served round immediately, according to the custom of the Highlands, where a dram is generally taken every day. They call it a scalch. SEE dew-drink, purl, saloop

scalds

The scalds were the poets and the musicians of the ancient northern nations. They resembled the bards of the Britons, and were held in equal veneration by their countrymen. The scalds were considered as necessary appendages to royalty, and even inferior chieftains had their poets to record their actions and indulge their vanity. [Strutt] SEE rhyming-ware

scandal-broth

Tea. The reference is to the gossip held by some of the womenkind over their cups, which cheer but not inebriate. Also called chatter-broth. [Halliwell] SEE spermologer

scart

To scratch; [whence] scart-free, without a scratch or the slightest injury. [Mackay] To scart one’s buttons, to draw one’s hand down the breast of another so as to touch the buttons with one’s nails; a mode of challenging to battle among boys; perhaps a relique of some ancient mode of hostile defiance. [Jamieson]

scaum

Insincere talk; banter. One listening to a letter being read will, at a characteristic passage, say of the writer, “That’s like his scaum,” like his trick of talk, being more humourous than sincere. The term is also applied to scornfully abusive language. [Robinson, GMY]

sclent-bean

A fragrant bean carried in snuff-boxes to perfume the snuff. [Warrack]

scleroticks

Medicines which harden and consolidate the parts they are applied to. [Quincy] SEE colleticks

scotale

Scotale is an extortion prohibited by the statute of Charta de Foresta, and it is where any officer of the forest keepes an ale-house, to the intent that he may have the custome of the inhabitants within the forest to come and spend their money with him, and for that he shall winke at their offences committed within the forest. [Rastell] It is compounded of scot and ale, which by transposition of the words is otherwise called an aleshot, and by the Welshmen cymmhorth. [Blount, LD] SEE tineman

screever

A man who draws with coloured chalks on the pavement figures of our Savior crowned with thorns, specimens of elaborate writing, thunderstorms, ships on fire, &c. The men who attend these pavement chalkings, and receive halfpence and sixpences from the admirers of street art, are not always the draughtsmen. The artist, or screever, draws, perhaps, in half-a-dozen plac...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• ACKNOWLEDGENMENTS
• INTRODUCTION
• A
• B
• C
• D
• E
• F
• G
• H
• I
• J
• K
• L
• M
• N
• O
• P
• Q
• R
• S
• T
• U
• V
• W
• X
• Y
• Z
• BIBLIOGRAPHY