This week, we go about as archaic as we can go….
ancilia (Latin). Twelve archaic bronze shields kept in the sanctuary of MARS in the Roman Forum. Tradition remembered that one shield had fallen from the sky on 1 March and a divinely instructed blacksmith had made the further eleven. An aristocratic group, the Salii, used the shields in the yearly OCTOBER HORSE festival, which is probably one of the oldest in the Roman calendar.
– Continuum Dictionary of Religion
mageira /muh JY ruh/ n • A woman’s sublimation of sexual desire through cooking.
–Depraved and Insulting English
ho’iden. An ill-taught awkward country girl.
to ho’iden. To romp indecently.
– Johnson’s Dictionary: A Modern Selection
Cat Wagons. These were mobile bordellos that traveled to mining towns, construction jobs and groups of cowboys on the range. A madam would load up her girls and take them to a site where they would ply their trade.
– Prostitute Dictionary of the Old West
fallow1 [Old English] In Old English the verb fealgian meant ‘to break up land for sowing’. Of Germanic origin, the word is related to Low German falgen. The sense now is ‘leave unsown’ referring to land which has been ploughed and harrowed.
fallow2 [Old English] Germanic in origin, Old English falu, fealu is related to Dutch vaal and German fahl, falb. Describing the colour pale brown or reddish yellow, it is now most commonly found in the word fallow deer, a Eurasian deer which has a reddish-brown coat in the summer.
– The Oxford Dictionary of Word Histories
simoleon American slang, since c. 1830 A dollar. [ < British slang (since XVII but obsolete by late XIX) simon, a sixpence. There is no explanation of the British usage. Simon Magus sought to buy sacramental powers for money, and simony, named after him, is the sin of selling the services of the church for money. The money nexus is apparent, but no proper priest will sell out his office for a mere sixpence. Nor is there an explanation of the American variation. What is certain is that British simon passed into American simoleon, the monetary exchange rate shifting from British 6 p. to American $1.]
– Dictionary & Native’s Guide to the Unknown American Language
nicker. In Kingsley’s HYPATIA (1853) we find: “What is a nicor, Agilmund?” “A sea-devil who eats sailors.” Various other meanings have been attached to this form: a cheater; an 18th century hoodlum…
– Dictionary of Early English
This week, a double gift for Christmas!
HORSE … a thick rope, extended in a perpendicular direction near the fore or after-side of a mast, for the purpose of hoisting or extending some sail thereon. When it is fixed before a mast, it is calculated for the use of a sail called the square-sail … When the horse is placed abaft or behind a mast, it is intended for the try-sail of a snow, and is accordingly very rarely fixed in this position, except in those sloops of war which occasionally assume the form of snows, in order to deceive the enemy.
SNOW, (senau, Fr.) is generally the largest of all two-masted vessels employed by Europeans, and the most convenient for navigation … When the sloops of war are rigged as snows, they are furnished with a horse, which answers the purpose of the try-sail-mast, the fore-part of the sail being attached by rings to the said horse, in different parts of its heighth.
– Wm. Falconer’s Dictionary of the Marine (1780).
ZAD. Crooked like the letter Z. He is a mere zad, or perhaps zed; a description of a very crooked or deformed person.
– 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue
froward _ Perverse, hard to deal with, ungovernable. Also, in a wider sense, bad or naughty.
– A Sea of Words : A Lexicon and Companion for Patrick O’Brian’s Seafaring Tales
