bog-oranges

Potatoes. A phrase perhaps derived from the term 'Irish fruit,' which by some peculiarity has been applied to potatoes, for even the most ignorant Cockney could hardly believe that potatoes grow in a bog. As, however, the majority of the lower classes of London do believe that potatoes were indigenous to, and were first brought from the soil of Ireland....they may even believe that potatoes are actually bog-oranges.
- John Camden Hotten's Slang Dictionary, 1887

nullifidian

This is someone who has no faith and no religion.

orphanotrophy

A hospital for orphans.
- Noah Webster's American Dictionary of the English Language, 1828

peristerophobia

The fear of pigeons.

What would fear of albatross be? Goonyphobia.

Yorking

To stare or look at any person in an impertinent manner is termed yorking; to york anything, in a common sense, is to view, look at, or examine. A flash-cove [thief] observing another person who appears to notice or scrutinize him, his proceedings, or the company he is with, will say to his pals, "That cove is yorking as strong as a horse. "
- James Hardy Vaux's Vocabulary of the Flash Language, 1812

[Flash is the slang of thieves and prostitutes.]

To come Yorkshire over any one, to cheat him.
- Capt. Francis Grose's A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, 1796


Fun fact! St. Alkelda was an 8th-century Saxon princess who, as legend has it, might have also been a nun and was strangled by some pagan Viking women during a Danish raid. She is honored with a church in Giggleswick, Yorkshire; and also with a nearby holy well that is dedicated to those with visual impairments and those suffering from the effects of the "evil eye".

give no quarter

The origin of this phrase goes back to 1629 when the Spaniards and the Dutch ended their Thirty Years' War. In the peace treaty that they both signed, there was a provision for the release of prisoners. The agreement was that all officers and soldiers on both sides would be ransomed by their government for one quarter of their pay.

This disposition was very popular among the people. Two phrases came into being. To give quarter is to extend mercy. To give no quarter is to be merciless.

rhetoricate

To play the actor.
- Rev. John Boag's Imperial Lexicon, 1850

mother-midnight

Mother-midnight is a midwife.

Roman holiday

Let's have a phrase origin today! This one is not to be confused with the 1953 romantic comedy starring Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn.

A Roman holiday is a violent public spectacle in which physical harm, degradation, and/or humiliation is inflicted for sadistic enjoyment. A destructive disturbance.

Before the rise of Rome, the nation of Etruria flourished in central Italy. The Etruscans and many of their practices were transplanted to Rome when the Romans conquered Etruria. One of the customs taken up by the Romans was that of honoring dead war heroes by sacrificing the lives of captives taken in battle. These human sacrifices were lavish social events for the Etruscans. For the Romans, they weren't quite exciting enough, so they converted them to the gory public gladitorial contests we read about in history books.

The gladitorial bouts were enjoyed so much by the Romans that the days set aside for them were called Roman holidays.

square dinkham

True, straightforward, correct.
- Edward Fraser and John Gibbon's Soldier and Sailor Glossary, 1925

On this date in history: 1839- O.K. makes its first appearance in print. It was facetiously used in the Boston Morning Post to mean "all correct" in a report on the Anti-Bell-Ringing Society, whose mission was to stop the clanging of dinner bells. In 1840, O.K. was a catchword used during President Martin Van Buren's reelection campaign. Van Buren's nickname was "Old Kinderhook" after his hometown in the Hudson River Valley of New York. He was not reelected. Woodrow Wilson, yet another president, was convinced that O.K. came from the Choctaw word okeh, meaning "it is so". So convinced, apparently, that he wrote the word in that manner. As we all know, O.K. eventually made its way officially into the lexicon as both a noun and a verb. This Americanism has also found its way into many other languages.

Okay?

Okay.

box harry

To live in a poor manner, or on credit.
- Francis Taylor's Folk-Speech of South Lancashire, 1901

To go without food. "I had no money, I could get nothing to eat, so I had to box-harry til I reached Liverpool." Lancashire. To make a poor or coarse meal; to rough it; to take things as they are. "You must box Harry for your dinner today." Warwickshire. ...Hence, Boxharry-week, the blank week between pay-weeks when the workmen lived on credit or starved; East Lancashire. To hurry. "You'll miss the train if you don't box Harry and be off." Worcestershire.
- Joseph Wright's English Dialect Dictionary, 1896-1905

toad-stone

A popular name for bufonite, from the fact that it was formerly supposed to be a natural concretion found in the head of the common toad. Extraordinary virtues were attributed to it, [such as] protection against poison, and [it] was often set in rings. That this belief was rife in Shakespeare's day is proved by the lines [from] 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."
- Robert Hunter's Encyclopaedic Dictionary, 1894

Bufonite is an old name for a fossil containing petrified teeth and palatal bones of fishes in the family Pycnodonts (thick teeth) whose remains are found in oolite and chalk formations.

curglaff

The shock felt in bathing when one first plunges into the cold water.
- John Jamieson's Etymological Scottish Dictionary, 1808

Must come from the exclamation the Scots let out in such and event, "Curglaff, that's cold!"

agatewards

To go agatewards with anyone is to accompany him part of his way home, and was formerly the last office of hospitality towards a guest, frequently necessary even now for guidance and protection in some parts of the country. In Lincolnshire it is pronounced agatehouse, and in the North generally agaterds.... To get agate is to make a beginning of any work; to "be agate" is to be on the road, on the way, approaching towards the end.
- James Halliwell's Dictionary of the Archaic and Provincial Words, 1855

"Will you go with me gattards?" Will you accompany me on my way home? Evans, in his Leicestershire Words, explains this to mean, gate-wards, toward the gate, but it is probably, as in the Craven dialect, gaitwards, to accompany.
- Thomas Sternberg's Dialect and Folk-lore of Northamptonshire, 1851

p.s. Craven is in northern England.

preantepenultimate

Fourth from last.

Come on!

Really, what's the point? Isn't it just as easy to say fourth from last? No wonder it's obsolete.

best man

Here's something related to yesterday's word, what it means to be the best man.

Nowadays, the best man serves primarily as the keeper of the ring and the arranger of the bachelor party. In the days of the knights [hey, that's funny "days of the knights"], a wedding could be quite the dangerous affair. Weddings were often arranged much as business transactions, and the groom was not the bride's first choice. The rival to the groom would, if he were the gallant type, try to carry off the bride before or during the wedding. Most ceremonies took place under the cover of night to avoid such an event. The groom would choose a best man who was a worthy warrior to defend him against any rivals that might discover and try to "crash" the wedding.

The best man, if he was smart, would enlist a group of ushers who were expert lancers to join him. Apparently, many of the old feudal style churches would store lances with torch sockets behind the altar. The lances were used for defense and for light during a getaway. Only the bravest of the brave would volunteer to attend a groom at his wedding, and the best man was the best among them. If he failed to fight down any rivals, the groom would lose his bride and perhaps his life.

honeymoon

Not an obsolete word, but did you ever wonder where it came from?

According to Common Phrases by John Mordock and Myron Korach, the first recorded data concerning the "honeymoon" is from the early writings of the Northern European countries. Newlyweds were required to drink a wine made from fermented honey and water called metheglin [also known as spiced mead]. They were required to drink metheglin for an entire moon [from one full moon to the next, about 30 days] after their wedding in order to furnish them with "sufficient sweetness to carry out their marriage vows in perpetuity."

Apparently some newlyweds overdid it. The story goes that is how Attila the Hun died. Not in glorious battle, but by drinking himself to death at his wedding feast.

fluxionist

One skilled in fluxions...[I should just stop right there and keep you guessing.]

One skilled in fluxions...the analysis of infinitely small variable quantities, or a method of finding an infinitely small quantity which, being taken an infinite number of times, becomes equal to a quantity given.
- Noah Webster's American Dictionary of the English Language, 1828

I say to Noah, "Aroo?"

Maybe this will clear it up, from Edward Lloyd's Encyclopaedic Dictionary, 1895:
A method of calculation resulting from the operation of fluents, or flowing numbers....The first elementary treatise on fluxions published in England was by John Harris in 1702. A description of the process by Newton himself followed in 1704 in his Quadrature of Curves....While the term fluxions is now scarcely ever used, that of differential calculus is in common use.

AHA!

I find many (not all) of my daily words from a desktop calendar of Forgotten English compiled by Jeffrey Kacirk. Today, he reminds us of the birthday of Albert Einstein (1879-1955). Einstein's wife was asked if she understood her husband's Theory of Relativity. Her response: "No, but I know Albert, and I know he can be trusted." Perfect.

E=mc2

tailard

One with a tail. An opprobrious epithet found on a legend told first of St. Augustine at Dorchester, and later of Thomas a Becket in Kent, in which the people of these places were said to be cursed with tails for indignities done by attaching a tail to these holy men. On the continent, tails used to be ascribed to Englishmen generally.
- Sir James Murray's New English Dictionary, 1919

TALLIE DAY!! In Deeside, Scotland, it was once customary to mock one's betters on this day by quietly attaching a tail to the seat of their pants.

Those kooky Scots.

raining cats and dogs

In Teutonic myth, the wind was a huge dog that was the chief attendant to Odin, the Norse god responsible for all the cosmos. The Teutons believed that when it rained very hard, Odin's dog, in the form of wind, was chasing a cat in the form of rain. Therefore, a very hard downpour was Odin dropping cats and dogs from the heavens.

apple-John

A sort of apple, called in French deux-annees, or deux-ans, because it will keep two years, and considered to be in perfection when shrivelled and withered. We retain the name, but whether we mean the same variety of fruit which was so called in Shakespeare's time, it is not possible to ascertain. Probably we do not.
- Rev. Robert Forby's Vocabulary of East Anglia, 1830

Today is the "probable birthday" of John Chapman (1774-1845), America's unofficial patron of apple orchardists. Chapman, better known as Johnny Appleseed, began planting and tending his apple trees along the Ohio River in 1806.

erubescency

A blushing for shame; an uneasiness of mind...for fear of loss of reputation.
-Nathaniel Bailey's Etymological English Dictionary, 1749

Did you know that in the mid-1600's during Oliver Cromwell's Puritan-dominated government, a new "holiday" was instituted. The Day of Public Humiliation was a day for the Puritans to engage in all sorts of humiliating activities.

Those kooky Puritans!

I tried (briefly) to find more information on The Day, but didn't find anything about a specific date. However, the Congress of the Confederate States also instituted their own Day of Public Humiliation, which was first "celebrated" on April 8, 1864.

I say every day is just fine for humiliating oneself publicly. Why not?

Stepney wheel

This Stepney wheel is an ordinary [automobile] wheel, fitted with flanges to fix on to the existing wheel, and carries a tyre already pumped up, and can be affixed to your car in less than ten minutes....[It] should have the place of honour on a woman's car.
-Dorothy Levitt's The Woman and the Car, 1909

Oh, NO she di'int!

Dorothy also offered tips to the female motorist for maintaining appearance amid mechanical troubles. She suggested non-legged, skirt-style overalls. They should "be made of butcher-blue or brown linen, to fasten at the back - the same shape as the artist's overall....You can always slip off your coat and put on the overall in a moment, and it is necessary if you have anything to do in the car. Remember, it is better to get grease spots on your washable overall than on your coat."

Wow. Fortunately, we've come a long way since Dorothy's day. Thank goodness! I wouldn't be caught dead in a butcher blue skirt overall. And I can change a tire in less than 5 minutes. With no fancy flanges or nothin'!

be blowed

You be blowed, or you go and be blowed, a vulgar form of refusal or dismissal, probably has a still allusion underlying it, that of being "fly-blown," or rotting - that is, dying.
-A. Wallace's Popular Sayings Dissected, 1895

I don't know. I don't think this saying is as obsolete as some may think it is. Although the current phraseology has changed just a little bit.

I'm just sayin'...

vertebratist

An authority upon the spine or back-bone.
-William Craigie's New English Dictionary, 1928

beef-witted

Oh, I like this one!

Having an inactive brain, thought to be from eating too much beef.
-John Phin's Shakespeare Cyclopaedia and Glossary, 1902

buckle down to work

Phrase origin today! This phrase means to do a job seriously and well. Sometimes it can imply a heroic effort. It comes from the days of the knights.

Before a battle, a knight would have his squire get his suit of armor prepared. The squire would oil up the armor and then attach it to his master's body using buckles. The buckling was an extremely important task because the effectiveness of the armor could mean the difference between life and death for the knight.

quaker's bargain

A yea-or-nay bargain; a take-it-or-leave-it transaction.
-John Farmer and W.E. Henley's Slang and Its Analogues, 1890-1904

go to the dickens

The origin of this phrase has nothing to do with Charles Dickens, but rather the early Scots. One of the common beliefs in those days was in evil spirits. The Scots believed in big devils and little devils. The little devils were known as daikins. When aroused to anger, an old Scot might curse his enemy with "Go to the daikins!" Over time, daikins turned into dickens.

Englishable

That may be rendered into English.
-John Ogilvie's Comprehensive English Dictionary, 1865

We are amused by this word. I guess you really can just slap an -able on just about any word... no matter how crazy it sounds. How amuseable English can be!

toesmithing

This is theater slang for dancing.

This put me in mind of another slang word, fingersmith, meaning pickpocket.

I'm going to become a slangsmith.