Tag: Linguistics

Read Yes
Length 256
Quick Review I would love to tell you that this book is the end-all-be-all, but unless you have an obsession with words and history like me, you might find it a bit pedantic. It’s great, though.

Jeffrey Kacirk’s Forgotten English is full of interesting words, historical references, oddities, and modern influences, it’s a fun game to try and work these new words into your vocable rotation.

This book just tickled my fancy in every way. I wish it would do the same to you, but most people are not ridiculous word fanatics like me who want to know the origin, history, influence, and modern connotation. I truly found myself in this book because I found the word to describe myself BIBLIOMANIAC – see below.

Though, bibliomaniac was my favorite word, I found many other interesting words. Here are some of the standouts. Bone-fires were a summer pagan ritual for burning bones to frighten off spirits and such eventually evolving into large outdoor gatherings in the middle ages and are now known as bonfires – non spirit frightening outdoor fires. The mandragore is a bygone word for mandrake, but I just highlighted because of Harry Potter. Inkling is derived from inkhornism which was used during the 1700’s and 1800’s and connotated a literary composition was overworked and unnecessarily intellectual; back then it literally meant “smelled of the lamp,” enchanting no? Wedd used to mean to gamble or to wager; sometimes being wed really does feel like that, what say ye married folk? The saying to wear one’s heart on one’s sleeve comes from the eighteenth century custom where a man would wear his beloved’s name written upon a heart-shaped paper on his sleeve. Morning dew collected on a certain day of spring (I don’t remember) was believed to bring about longer lasting youth; this may be why we still associate dew with youth or a dewy complexion.

I’m devoting a whole paragraph to this word: fribbler. A fribbler was an “eighteenth-century word for a man who expressed profound infatuation with a woman but was unwilling to commit himself to her.” Let’s just call this what it is dating today, or, at least, it feels like dating today. Fribbling. Where one person likes another, but doesn’t want to commit, so everyone involved is stuck in the perma-who-knows! situation. Fribbling… frustrating as fuck. Bring this word back. Please and thank you.

I have quite the collection of books, but the biggest thing Kacirk has done for me is to show me I could be so much worse. Richard Heber, a bibliomaniac, had over half a million books at the time of his death. I will never be as extreme as Mr. Heber. Not for the lack of desire, but for the lack of funds because unlike him I do not come from family money. So unless I write the next Harry Potter or Fifty Shades of Grey (gross), I will never own a library to compete with that of Congress’.

Forgotten English is a great book. It’s downfall is it’s a little hard to read all at once because it bounces from word to word. It’s like a far more interesting dictionary or a very concise encyclopedia.

Memorable Quotes
“Bibliomaniac – Someone with a lunatic’s passion for acquiring books.”
“In reference to the barnacle-goose “the currently used scientific name anatifera, or “goose-bearing,” as a classification for a type of barnacle.”
“Farctate – The condition of being bloated or full following a large meal. … from the Latin Farcire, to stuff.”
“Grog-blossom – Eighteenth-century expression for the red nose of a drunkard caused by dilation of blood vessels in long-term alcohol consumption.”
“Dog-Flogger – “minor church official, from at least the sixteenth century until 1861, whose duty it was to supervise and discipline unruly canines that traditionally accompanied their owners to English church services.”
“Sinne-Eater – A poor person hired to absorb the sins of recently deceased souls and thereby spare them the discomforts of purgatory.”

Title: Forgotten English
Author: Jeffrey Kacirk
Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks
Copyright: 1999
ISBN: 9780688166366