Sam’s Reviews > The Cabinet of Linguistic Curiosities: A Yearbook of Forgotten Words > Status Update

lawrence (n.) - a shimmering heat haze

"As well as being a boy's name, a lawrence is also a heat haze - the shimmering, undulating appearance of the air above a hot surface."

I always thought this phenomenon deserved a name. I did not realize it already has a human one (named after an archdeacon who Romans might have roasted to death?! Jeez. 👀)

"Paw-paw first emerged in the English language in the unpredictable slang of the early eighteenth century, when it was originally used to mean 'nasty,' 'improper,' or, stronger still, 'obscene'...etymologically, the word is thought to derive from a reduplication of pah! or paw!, which has been recorded as an expression of scorn or disgust since the late sixteenth century."

...do my southern friends know this?

"According to the Oxford English Dictionary...twarvle is a Yorkshire dialect word meaning 'to walk with an unsteady tottering gait,' or else 'to twist,' 'to twirl,' or 'to sway.' In the extended sense of a meandering, torturous route, the word twarvlement refers to what the dictionary defines as 'circumlocution in narration' - or, put another way, long-winded, rambling talk."

backronym (n.) - an acroynmic explanation invented for a word that is not an acronym

"So the idea that golf is an acronym of 'gentlemen only, ladies forbidden,' or that posh stands for 'port out, starboard home,' (a reference to wealthy cruise-ship passengers paying for the best views on both legs of a journey), would both qualify."

polymicrian (adj.) - extremely cramped, containing a great deal in a small space

"Combining Greek roots meaning 'many' or 'much,' polys, and 'small,' mikros, the word literally implies 'much in a small space.'"

Ah, as in that high school I attended for a year where they crammed 5,000 students into one building every day was polymicrian. 🙃

"On 17 June 1939, before a small crowd outside the Prison Saint-Pierre in Paris, [Eugen] Weidmann was placed in the guillotine and promptly executed. The behavior of the crowd...was so unruly that the French president immediately banned all future public executions. Nevertheless, the guillotine was still used as a method of capital punishment in France right through to 1977."

WTF!!!

mrkgnao (n.) - the meow of a cat

"Perhaps one of [James] Joyce's most peculiar inventions...a word he uses several times (with several different spellings) in Ulysses to describe the meow of a cat."

"When Alaska and Hawaii joined the Union...President Eisenhower received thousands of submissions for an updated flag - including one from Robert G. Heft...whose design was created for a school project. From all those submitted, Heft’s design - which added 2 new stars, rearranging all 50 into alternating rows of 6 and 5 stars each - was chosen and remains in use nationwide to this day. He received a B- for his work.”

"singultus (n.) - a hiccup

On 13 June 1922...Charles Osborne in Anthon, Iowa, started hiccuping while straining himself attempting to weigh a hog. He didn’t stop hiccuping for the next sixty-eight years. According to the Guinness Book of Records, Osborne's bout of hiccups - which totalled an estimated 430 million hiccups, at anywhere from twenty to forty a minute - is the longest in recorded history."

MY NIGHTMARE.