If your uncle marries a very conservative woman, would she be your status quo auntie?
gimp (n.) Silk, wool, or cotton tape used for edging. In 1774 Alexander Bartram advertised in a Philadephia newspaper, “pinchbeck, hand stilliards, gimp, and glover’s needles.”
– Colonial American English: A Glossary
_
And, in case you were wondering:
pinchbeck (n.) An alloy of four parts of copper to one part of zinc, used to imitate gold in cheap watchcases, invented by Christopher Pinchbeck, a London watchmaker (1670-1732). A 1754 South Carolina newspaper advertised: “An assortment of gold, silver and Pinchbeck watches.”
REDINGOTE _ A woman’s coatdress modeled on the man’s greatcoat, especially fashionable in the 1780s.
– What People Wore When: A Complete Illustrated History of Costume from Ancient Times to the Nineteenth Century for Every Level of Society
Darth Seder finds your lack of plates disturbing.
From The Intellectual Life of Colonial New England
Am I the only one who wants to see a cross-over between these two period soap operas about archaic aristocracies? Let’s see an HBO-PBS team-up please!
Hey, we just set out;
Our captain’s crazy.
This is the Pequod;
__ we’ll all die, maybe.
None of the other ships
would chase the White Whale.
But it’s the Pequod,
__ so call me Ishmael.
x-chaser. ‘A naval officer with high theoretical qualifications’ [Royal Navy] : from early C. 20 … The x is that x which figures so disturbingly in mathematics. Also [Royal Air Force] : ‘Damned if I know. Chasing X has never been my strong suit.’
– Partidge’s Concise Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English
When I read the news that scientists had captured and separated wild dolphins to investigate their use of “signature whistles” to call out to each other, the sounds that earlier research had concluded was a sort of name that individual dolphins used to identify themselves, I was touched. After all, it was clearly evidence of a deep and emotional connection between these very intelligent animals.
But, then I realized there was so much more going on. Continue reading
A few days after I proposed an expansive design to reform US rail travel, Bloomberg proposed some smaller scale reforms to help get Amtrak back on the rails. Continue reading