The Plaid Pladd

Yay! I finally finished the C section in Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. At 127 pages, it’s the longest letter. I’m still only about 23% of the way to completion, but that’s pretty good for February! Here are some interesting things I encountered in C:

Candidate: … Those who solicited a high office among the Romans, such as that of consul, dressed themselves in a loose white robe. It was loose so that they could show the people their scars…

Elections would be a whole lot more exciting if it was all about comparing scars! Although I guess they’re already like that, metaphorically.

That’s right! This hot fashion item was named after a dude!

Cardigan: A knitted jacket or sweater with buttons up the front, named after the 7th Earl of Cardigan (1797-1868), who led the Light Brigade in the charge of Balaclava.

What a way to be remembered.

Brewer’s sometimes likes to tell you etymology, although it’s not the OED. I assume the editors only include word origins when they think they’re poetic and interesting, like:

Cemetery: The proper name of the word is “sleeping place” from the Greek Koimeterion, “dormitory.” The Persians call their cemeteries “the cities of the silent.”

“Sleeping Place” makes it less creepy, “city of the silent” makes it more

Cento: (Latin, ‘patchwork’) Poetry made up of lines borrowed from established authors, an art freely practiced in the decadent days of Greece and Rome… An example of a stanza from a modern cento, with lines taken from 19th-century poets, is the following:

I only knew she came and went (Lowell)
Like troutlets in a pool; (Hood)
She was a phantom of delight (Wordsworth)
And I was like a fool. (Eastman)

Basically, I’ve discovered ancient sampling.

Chamberisms: Such may be called the idiosyncratic definitions that have regularly appeared in the various editions of Chambers Dictionary… the following remain in the 1998 edition:

he-man: a man of exaggerated virility, or what some women consider to be virility
jaywalker: a careless pedestrian whom motorists are expected to avoid running down
middle-aged: between youth and old age, variously reckoned to suit the reckoner

Judgmental reference sources are the best! Brewers can be pretty judgey itself sometimes.

Charivari: A French term for an uproar caused by banging pans and kettles and accompanied by hissing, shouting, and the like to express disapproval, especially at an unpopular wedding

The emphasis is mine because what??

I’m picturing bored villagers going to weddings to heckle

Also, there’s this list, of everything bad that’s ever happened to a king named Charles. Thanks, Brewers.

Charles: Many rulers bearing this name have been afflicted with misfortune:

England:
Charles I was beheaded
Charles II lived long in exile
Charles Edward Stuart, the Young Pretender, died in poverty

France:
Charles II, the Fat, reigned wretchedly, was deposed, and died in poverty
Charles III, the Simple, died a prisoner
Charles IV, the Fair, reigned six years, married three times, and outlived all his children except one daughter, who was forbidden by the Salic Law to succeed to the crown
Charles VI, the Foolish, went mad
Charles VII starved himself to death, partly through fear of being poisoned and partly because of a painful and incurable abscess in the mouth
Charles VIII, the Affable, accidentally smashed his head against the lintel of a doorway and died in agony at the age of 28, leaving no issue
Charles IX died at the age of 24, stricken with remorse for the part he had taken in the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre
Charles X spent a quarter of a century in exile, and after less than six years on the throne, fled for his life and died in exile
Charles the Bold of Burgundy lost his life at Nancy when he was routed by the Swiss

Naples:
Charles I lost Sicily and experienced many disasters
Charles II, the Lame, was in captivity at the time of his father’s death
Charles III, his great-grandson, was assassinated at the age of 41

I guess it’s the price you pay to look this fabulous

Also, apparently 18th-century Italy decided that husbands were necessary but so not fashionable.

Cicisbeo: The escort or lover of a married woman, especially in 18th-century Italy. At that time, it was unfashionable for a husband to associate with his wife in society or in public, and she was therefore accompanied by her cicisbeo.

I knew about the claque, which is basically the theater version of a laugh track, but I didn’t know there were so many specialties within it:

Claque: A body of hired applauders, as at a theater… The manager ordered the required number of claqueurs and divided them into groups. There were the commissaires, who committed the play to memory and noisily pointed out its merits, the rieurs, who laughed uproariously at the jokes, the pleureurs, mainly women, who held their handkerchiefs to their eyes during the emotional scenes, the chatouilleurs, who kept the audience in good humor with their quips and gestures, and the bisseurs, who cried bis (encore).

How great a job would this be? Anyone wanting to pay me to attend their show and react dramatically, just give me a call.

Plus, it turns out, everyone afraid of clowns is completely justified:

Clown: … [the standard appearance] is probably a relic of the Devil as he appeared in medieval miracle plays.

I always suspected this was the true face of evil

Also, very occasionally, Brewer’s will have illustrations:

Here’s one for the entry on different kinds of crosses

I’ve already made a start on D! It’s only the 10th longest letter, with 63 pages, so I’m hoping it won’t take me as long!

Previously: B
Next: D

The 79 pages of A in Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable went even faster than I thought. As promised, I took notes of the most interesting things I read about, and here they are:

Adamites: One of a number of small Christian sects, which aimed to revert to man’s primitive state in the Garden of Eden by adopting nudity.

Give me some of that olde tyme religion!

My favorite history is the kind that’s just ridiculous stories, and Brewer’s actually has a lot of that, so get pumped. Another thing I enjoy are explanations for common phrases or sometimes names for things I didn’t know had names:

Addisonian termination: The name given by Richard Hurd, bishop of Worcester (1720-1808), to the construction, frequently employed by the essayist Joseph Addison (1672-1719), which closes a sentence with a preposition, e.g. ‘which the prophet took a distinct view of.’

How many of these have I corrected at work without knowing they had a name? Look out, Korea, I’m about to get even more pretentious about grammar, and it’s all thanks to Brewer’s.

AEIOU: The device adopted by Frederick V, Archduke of Austria, on becoming the Emperor Frederick III in 1440. The letters, used by his predecessor, Albert II, stood for:

Albertus Electus Imperator Optimus Vivat. (Long live Albert, the best elected emperor.)

Frederick interpreted them thus:

Archidux Electus Imperator Optime Vivat. (Long live the Archduke, elected emperor for the best.)

Among other versions are:

Austriae Est Imperare Orbi Universo (It is given to Austria to rule the whole world)
Alles Erdreich Ist Oesterreich Unterthan. (All earth is subject to Austria)

To which wags added after the defeat of Prussia in 1866:

Austria’s Empire Is Ousted Utterly.

I have to start thinking up some Latin phrases to acronym after my name like that! Speaking of really good role models in Brewer’s:

Aetherius: In 1954 His Eminence Sir George King (b.1919) claimed to have been contacted by the Master Aetherius, a power from the planet Venus, who told him to become the Voice of Interplanetary Parliament. The result was the formation of the Aetherius Society, which now has branches worldwide. King, whose titles have not been verified, maintains he has met Jesus Christ, the Buddha, and St. Peter, who all now speak to him and through him. The Society teaches that a race of wise fish on the distant planet Garouche are trying to suck the air away from Earth, so killing all terrestrial life except marine creatures, which supposedly obtain their oxygen from the water. Members of the Society charge up devices known as spiritual batteries by spending a fixed number of hours in prayer.

So there that is

Pretty much every sentence of this entry alone would be cause for inclusion in my “Best of Brewer’s” list, and, with them all there together, it’s going to be hard for any further entry to top this one. I know I have a long way to go (25 more letters!), but this is the standard I’m holding you up to now, Brewer’s, so bring your A-game.

Alexandra limp: In the 1860s Queen Alexandra (then Princess of Wales), after a painful attack of rheumatism in the knee, developed a limp, which was imitated in sycophantic fashion by many women about the court. Hence the ‘Alexandra limp’.

“Stop limping!” “But Mom! All the cool courtiers are doing it!” I love that this is the world I live in.

Brewer’s can also be oddly judgmental for a reference book, but that’s just part of its charm:

Aloha: [a real definition was here]… the spirit of the word can also be visually, if vulgarly, expressed in an ‘aloha shirt’, a loose and brightly colored sports shirt

Vulgar? This guy?

I guess I won’t be getting Brewer’s a Hawaiian shirt for its birthday. Other times, it just gets weirdly specific. For instance, at the end of the April Fool’s definition:

April Fool’s:… Children generally accept that their licence to play tricks expires at noon, but adults take the whole day and may mark the occasion by arranging the delivery of a kissogram or some similar embarrassment.

Have any of you ever once arranged for the delivery of a kissogram? We’ve all been doing April Fool’s wrong and 2014 is the year we have to shape up. Thanks, Brewer’s!

After the word “As” was a four and a half page list of all the common similes that start with the word, such as “as deaf as a post” or:

As deaf as a white cat: It is said that white cats are deaf and stupid.

Pictured: a deaf idiot

As drunk as Davy’s sow: According to Francis Grose’s Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (1785), one David Lloyd, a Welshman who kept an alehouse at Hereford, had a sow with six legs, which was an object of great curiosity. One day David’s wife, having indulged too freely, lay down in the sty to sleep, and a group came to see the sow. David led them to the sty saying as usual, “There is a sow for you! Did you ever see the like?” One of the visitors replied: “Well, it is the drunkenest sow I ever beheld.” The woman was ever after called “Davy’s sow”.

God bless you, random drunk woman, preserved through time for all to behold. Thank you, Brewer’s, for being the keeper of such vital information for ages to come.

Looking forward to B!

Next: B
Previously: Intro