The Horologicon: A Day's Jaunt through the Lost Words of the English Language (19 page)

Fondlesome
adj. Addicted to fondling.

It beats heroin. But it should be remembered that recidivist fondlers often need treatment much more than they need punishment. If you object, you should never have given them a
fleshment
in the first place.

Once upon a time you trained animals for the hunt by
fleshing
them. If they did what they were supposed to do, you gave them a little morsel of meat to encourage them; if they did not do what they were meant to do, they were denied their fleshment. Exactly the same principle and the same word may be applied to the actions now under consideration. After all, the OED merely defines fleshment as ‘the excitement resulting from a first success’. A fleshment may therefore have the unfortunate result of making people go too far too fast. In the current circumstances this could mean one of two things.

Mariturient
means ‘eager to marry’ and is derived from the same sort of desiderative verb that gave us
visuriency
and
tacturiency
in the previous section. Maturiency is a relatively common and benign condition that leads to the most blessed state of matrimony and mutual comfort. But in extreme cases it can manifest itself as
gamomania
(‘a form of insanity characterised by strange and extravagant proposals for marriage’) and it is with the gamomaniacs that we are now concerned.

Every man is occasionally and honourably seized with the desire to make a woman what was called in the seventeenth century his
comfortable importance
, in the eighteenth century his
lawful blanket
and in these fallen and unimaginative days his
wife
. But gamomania goes beyond this.

The first signs may be detectable if he starts mumbling something about your being
fangast
. Fangast is an obsolete Norfolk dialect term meaning ‘fit to marry’ whose origins are chronically befogged. Few people know the word any more, and for that reason it could be terribly useful. Suppose that your insignificant other were to discover that you had drawn up a table of all your female acquaintances and next to each name had written ‘marriage material’ or ‘not marriage material’. She’d flip her proverbial lid. But ‘fangast’ and ‘not fangast’ – unless she’s a time-traveller from ancient Norfolk you’re in the clear.

If just one other friend knows the word then the two of you can discuss whether somebody is fangast in front of their face with no danger of discovery: ‘Have you met my new girlfriend? She’s so pretty, and not at all fangast.’

‘What?’

‘Nothing,
darling, nothing.’

But that’s not how the gamomaniac thinks. To him (or her) all are fangast. To all will he bring his
subarrhations
(or gifts for a prospective wife). But you have to remember that though gamo, he’s still a maniac and must be refused, however osculable. But of course he isn’t necessarily a gamomaniac; he may have a title even less honourable, helpfully defined by Dr Johnson:

Fribbler
One who professes rapture for a woman, but fears her consent.

The other possible result of fondlesome cataglottism is
fanfreluching
, which is another way of saying
swiving
,
meddling
,
melling
,
mollocking
,
wapping
,
flesh-company
,
quaffing
,
carnal confederacy
,
jelly-roll
,
jazz
,
jig-a-jig
,
jockumcloying
,
hot cockles
,
subagitation
,
interunion
,
the
Venus exercise
,
the last favour
,
old hat
,
pom-pom
,
poop-noddy
,
Moll Peatley
,
Sir Berkeley
, or in a word:
sex
.

But here we reach something of a crux. First, this is a serious reference work and I am loath to add anything that may subject it to suggestions of levity. Second, there are as many carnal words as there are carnal actions, and one could get horribly bogged down in explaining exactly what is meant by
changing at Baker Street
– added to which my publishers have insisted that they will not stretch to illustrations. But thirdly and most importantly, this is a reference work that must maintain its relevance and usefulness. So the question that must be asked is whether
you, dear reader, are going to pull tonight. And as you, dear reader, are the sort of person who reads books on obscure words, I fear that the answer is No.

It could be worse – you could be the sort of person who writes books on obscure words.

So let us sadly and sorrowfully assume that your
supersaliency
is met with an
imparlibidinous
response (that is, your attempting to initiate coitus by leaping upon the beloved is rebuffed by somebody who finds you less desirable than you find them). The course of true love never did leap smooth. There is a reason that you have never heard the word
equinecessary
, and that is that we so rarely are.

It is important at this point to scrabble for whatever motes of dignity the situation affords. You could pretend, as you ruefully put your socks back on, that it was a mere
passiuncle
or insignificant passion. It may not be true, but none of the best things are. And as your beloved hurries off to obtain a restraining order, you can console yourself that you did at least have a
Pisgah sight
.

When Moses had led the Children of Israel through the wilderness he asked God to allow him to cross the Jordan into the Promised Land. But God would not let him set foot there, only have a glimpse.

And Moses went up from the plains of Moab unto the mountain of Nebo, to the top of Pisgah, that is over against Jericho. And
the LORD shewed him all the land of Gilead, unto Dan, And all Naphtali, and the land of Ephraim, and Manasseh, and all the land of Judah, unto the utmost sea, And the south, and the plain of the valley of Jericho, the city of palm trees, unto Zoar. And the LORD said unto him, This is the land which I sware unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, saying, I will give it unto thy seed: I have caused thee to see it with thine eyes, but thou shalt not go over thither.

So Moses the servant of the LORD died there in the land of Moab, according to the word of the LORD. And he buried him in a valley in the land of Moab, over against Bethpeor: but no man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day.

And from that sad passage English gained the term ‘a Pisgah sight’, for something glimpsed but never obtained and never obtainable. By a rather extraordinary feat of self-reference, the OED’s entry for Pisgah sight mentions its own first editor, Sir James Murray, who ‘led to within a Pisgah sight of completion a larger and more scientifically organized work of linguistic reference than Dr Johnson could have produced’, but died before he could see his life’s labours in print.

All you are left with is a case of
nympholepsy
, which is a longing for the unobtainable that afflicts any shepherd who happens to come across a wood nymph in the course of his work. Such shepherds are never happy again. They pine away. They neglect their sheep and search the woods for the nymph whom they will never find.

So turn for home. It’s late anyway, and you have to get up tomorrow I suppose. We generally do. Button yourself up, pretend it never happened and set off, still perhaps humming to
yourself that miserable song in which all human sadness is contained:

I’m looking for the Ogo-Pogo

The funny little Ogo-Pogo

His mother was an earwig, his father was a whale

I’m going to put a little bit of salt on his tail,

I want to find the Ogo-Pogo.

The
nymphs are departed, last orders have been called, and it is time to go home. Even Cab Calloway, a committed seeker of nocturnal amusements, went home in the end. His
Hepsters Dictionary
has a couple of helpful entries for things to say at
late bright
or the end of the evening:

Final
(v.): to leave, to go home. Ex., ‘I finaled to my pad’ (went to bed); ‘We copped a final’ (went home).

And:

Trilly
(v.): to leave, to depart. Ex., ‘Well, I guess I’ll trilly.’

But how will you get home? You could share a taxi. The OED insists that a shared taxi is called a
dolmus
, from the Turkish for ‘filled’. But where are your
ale-knights
of the Round Table now, your boon companions in the night’s struggle? Gone and bloody departed, that’s where. Camelot is derelict, and you’ll probably have to go home on foot.

If
you are extremely lucky, a
white sergeant
may appear:

A man fetched from the tavern or ale-house by his wife, is said to be arrested by the white sergeant.

But given your behaviour in the last chapter, I think that’s unlikely.

In the
Canterbury Tales
, Chaucer explains the whole human condition and search for happiness in terms of a drunk person trying to walk home. The general theme of his musing is that though we all seek after happiness, we don’t always know where it is, and end up wandering hither and thither pursuing the things we thought we wanted.

We faren [fare] as he that drunk is as a mouse.

A drunk man woot [knows] well he hath an house,

But he noot [doesn’t know] which the right way is thither

And to a drunk man the way is slidder [slippery].

And certes in this world so faren we;

We seeken fast after felicity

But we goon wrong full often, trewely.

If the way is particularly
slidder
, perhaps you can persuade somebody to go
agatewards
with you. This charming old piece of politeness is now confined to dictionaries of obsolete English:

Agate-Wards,
adv. To go
agatewards
with any one, to accompany him part of his way home, which 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
.

Gate
here is an old term for the public highway. So if you walked somebody agatewards you would accompany them along the dark, narrow, unfrequented lanes where robbers lurked, and then part with them at the wide open highway, where highwaymen lurked. Highwaymen were an altogether better class of thief. There were even

ROYAL SCAMPS. Highwaymen who never rob any but rich persons, and that without ill treating them.

There was also a
royal footpad
, who was just like a royal scamp except that he didn’t have a horse. It is unfortunate that modern muggers seem to be universally republican.

Once you could hire a
moon-curser
, a boy who would walk beside you carrying a torch and lighting your way. Obviously, they were in permanent economic competition with moonlight, hence the name. They were not as honourable as royal scamps:

MOONCURSER. A link-boy: link-boys are said to curse the moon, because it renders their assistance unnecessary; these gentry frequently, under colour of lighting passengers over kennels, or through dark passages, assist in robbing them.

So
perhaps it is best to be
solivagant
, to wander alone towards your far-off felicity.
Vagari
was Latin for ‘wander’, and solivagant is only one of the wonderful
vagant
words in the English language. If you wander outside – or
extra
– the bounds of your budget you are being
extravagant
. Indeed, originally extravagant had no financial connotations at all and simply meant ‘wandering around too much’. So when Othello was described as ‘an extravagant and wheeling stranger/Of here and everywhere’, it just meant that he hadn’t settled down. You can also be
mundivagant
(wandering the world),
multivagant
(wandering hither and thither),
montivagant
(wandering the mountains),
nemorivagant
(‘wandering in the woods and groves’),
nubivagant
(wandering the clouds), and
omnivagant
(wandering absolutely everywhere).

These words are much more useful than they might appear. Aircraft are all nubivagant, gorillas are all nemorivagant, and a holiday in Snowdonia could be described as a montivagant weekend. In fact, one could be simultaneously montivagant, nubivagant, nemorivagant and extravagant simply by taking an expensive holiday in the Lake District.

The word that we need now, however, is
noctivagant
: wandering around at night. You must stumble like a
gyrovague
(or wandering monk), up blind alleys,
twitchels
, and
diverticulums
. You may well find yourself in a trance, but only because a
trance
is an old Scots term for a passage between two buildings. You will wander,
vagulate
and
wharve
; and it’s as likely as not that you will end up a
night-foundered vicambulist
, or ‘street-walker who has got lost in the darkness’.

At this point, you may wish to ponder the high-flown concept
of
nullibiety
, or state of being nowhere. It’s usually used in theology, but can happily be transferred to trying to find your way home after a couple of drinks too many. It’s also got a useful sister-word,
nullibiquitous
, which is the exact opposite of ubiquitous and means ‘existing nowhere’. Thus you can search your house for your nullibiquitous car keys or whatnot.

Alternatively, you could look around you at the dark and unfamiliar streets and conclude that you had been
pixilated
, a splendid word and the cause of an awful lot of amusing typos in newspapers, if only you can spot them. Pixilated is completely different to
pixelated
. The latter, with an E, is something that happens to people’s faces when they appear on television. But pixilated, with an I, means ‘led astray by pixies’. It’s astonishing, if you read the newspapers carefully, how many criminals have had their faces led astray by the Little Folk.

Pixies are a pest, and the cause of much wild wandering, or
skimbleskamble oberration
as Dr Johnson would have put it, leaving you
dog-weary
and
upon the wheady mile
.

The wheady mile is a very useful concept, defined in Nathan Bailey’s
Universal Etymological Dictionary
of 1721 as ‘A Mile beyond Expectation, a tedious one.
Shropshire
’. It’s that last bit of a journey that goes on much longer than you had planned. Another dictionary calls it ‘A mile of an extraordinary length’. This doesn’t make much sense if you take it literally, as miles are, ordinarily, a mile long. But in your current state – drunk, weary and heartbroken – it is an utterly comprehensible idea and I wouldn’t blame you if you sank to your knees in night-foundered despair.

When
Diocletian entered Alexandria in 298 AD he was in a foul temper. The city had risen up in revolt against him and it had taken several months of siege before they finally gave in and opened the gates to the emperor, who was by now furious. He immediately ordered his legionaries to start killing the citizens and not to stop until his horse was up to its knees in the blood of the Alexandrians. The population of Alexandria was a little under a million at the time. The average human contains about a gallon of blood. This means that the resources available to the Roman soldiers would have been enough for – to use the standard Journalistic Unit of Measurement – an Olympic swimming pool and a half. Diocletian’s plan was therefore thoroughly practicable.

Diocletian’s horse had other ideas, though, for just as the soldiers were sharpening their swords and getting ready for the fun, the horse went down on its knees and refused to get up. Diocletian took this as an omen from the gods and immediately called off the massacre, thus saving the town. The Alexandrians erected a statue of the horse.
1

The Victorians had a term for horses that fell to their knees all the time: they were said to have acquired
devotional habits
, on the basis that it looked as though they were kneeling down to pray. It’s rather pleasant to imagine that a horse can’t go twenty yards without kneeling to thank its creator. Pleasant for humans at least, not so for the horse, who is probably just old and tired and
ready for the knacker’s yard. Nor will anyone blame you if you acquire devotional habits of your own on your pixilated way.

To Seel
a Ship is said to
Seel
, when she tumbles suddenly and violent, sometimes to one side, and sometimes to another, when a Wave passes from under her Sides faster than she can drive away with it.

Universal Etymological Dictionary
, 1721

Towards midnight a person is said to
seel
when they tumble suddenly and violent, sometimes to one side, and sometimes to another, when the pavement passes under their feet faster than they can stumble away with it, too exhausted and too well-refreshed to continue with this wheady mile.

Mischievous Reality notices you seeling and takes the opportunity to turn upside down and back to front. You totter, and before you have a chance even to cry out ‘I
labascate
!’, which means ‘I begin to fall’, you’re actually falling in a terrible Newtonian
degringolade
onto your face.

Now is the time of
humicubation
: the act of lying on the ground, especially as a form of repentance. As a seventeenth-century bishop sternly observed:

Fasting and Sackcloth, and Ashes, and Tears, and Humicubations, used to be companions of Repentance. Joy may be a Consequent of it, not a Part of it.

Another
useful word here may be
spartle
, to wave the limbs around vainly. Spartling is a common companion of evening humicubations, especially when the midnight creatures come curiously closer.

The moon-cursers and the
bug hunters
gather around. You catch a glimpse of the approaching
vespilone
, ‘he that carries forth dead bodies in the night to be buried, as they use in time of plague and great sickness’, with his
uncuses
, his
corpse-hooks
, his
eternity box
and his
danna-drag
on which the waste of the city is carried out. The Black Ox licks your cheek. The
barguest
, the ghost of broken walls, is watching with Old Split-Foot. The
hircocervus
blows a
mort
. The
donestres
call for you! The
whangdoodle
wails in the Yggdrasil! The skinless
écorchés
cavort! And Aboaddon, the Angel of the Bottomless Pit, beats time while the four hundred drunken rabbits dance an obscene can-can around you.

Now may be the time to indulge in a spot of
xenodocheionology
, which is the study of hotels and places to stay the night. There is the possibility of a
sheep bed
, i.e. the grass. But that won’t keep away the
sooterkins
(strange, dark creatures said to grow inside Dutch women). Also, there is the question of warmth. If you are lucky enough to live in California all you will need to do is cover yourself with a newspaper, or
California blanket
. Those in chillier climes could knock on a few doors to see if anybody is feeling
xenodochial
– a slightly shorter relative of xenodocheionology that means ‘given to putting strangers up for the night’.

Somebody who goes from house to house, even at this time of night, is
circumforaneous
, whether they’re an encyclopedia salesman,
a burglar or simply have something important to tell you about salvation.

But what is this? Is this
your
mascaron
? Is this your own front door?