The Horologicon: A Day's Jaunt through the Lost Words of the English Language by Mark Forsyth Page B
Authors: Mark Forsyth
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interlaced like two combs (the Latin for comb was
pectin
). Well-pectinated fingers and a head like a rocking horse should be enough to get you through the meeting unscathed, especially if you are also wise enough to keep your mouth shut and play at
mumbudget
, a lovely old phrase for keeping quiet.
I should warn you that Sir Thomas Browne observed in his
Pseudodoxia Epidemica
(1646) that:
To set cross leg’d, or with our fingers pectinated or shut together is accounted bad, and friends will perswade us from it.
It’s at times like this that you know who your real friends are.
Argument
There are times, though, when good people have to take a stand, even at the morning meeting. Sometimes you can no longer sit there in silent
longanimity
, but must stand up and speak out for what you believe in, such as comfier chairs and a new printer. At such times you should remember Cicero before the Senate, Socrates before the Athenians, Jesus before Pilate, and that they all ended up dead. So it’s probably better to follow the example of Lord Copper’s underling in Evelyn Waugh’s
Scoop
:
When Lord Copper was right he said ‘Definitely, Lord Copper’; when he was wrong, ‘Up to a point.’
Youmust not simply
ding
people, ding being an eighteenth-century term for telling a chap what he really doesn’t want to hear. If you tell your opponent that they’re an idiot and that you’d no more take their advice on innovative teamwork than you would ask a rabbi whether to go for streaky or back, it may cause a scene. Far better to start off with the words: ‘Permit me to
discept
.’ And then, before anybody has a chance to grab a dictionary and discover that
discepting
means ‘disagreeing utterly’, you can continue with: ‘I see what you’re saying and it’s
ultracrepidarian
.’ Be careful here to put the stress on
ultra
, as words with
ultra
always sound cool.
Ultracrepidarianism
is ‘giving opinions on subjects that you know nothing about’, and is thus a terribly useful word. Ultracrepidarian was introduced into English by the essayist William Hazlitt, but it goes back to a story about the great ancient Greek painter Apelles.
The story goes that Apelles used to leave his new paintings out on public display and then hide behind a pillar to hear people’s reactions. One day he overheard a cobbler pointing out that Apelles had painted a shoe all wrong. So he took the painting away, corrected the shoe and put it out on display again the next day.
The cobbler came back, saw that Apelles had taken his advice and was so proud and puffed up with conceit that he started talking loudly about what was wrong with the leg; at which point Apelles jumped out from his hiding place and shouted: ‘
Ne sutor ultra crepidam
’, 2 which approximately translates as ‘the cobblershould go no further than the shoe’. Thus
ultracrepidarian
literally means ‘beyond-the-shoe’.
Providing that nobody else at the table knows that little story, you can use
ultracrepidarian
with impish impunity.
Though this may not provide a
sockdolager
, or winning point in an argument, it will nonetheless give you a certain gravitas and mystery that will unsettle any dictionaryless meeting. Nor should your attack end here; it should be pressed home with all the ferocity of a Vandal sacking Rome. In fact, this may be the moment to get all Cab Calloway on your colleagues’ sorry bottoms.
Yes, No, Who cares?
Cabell Calloway was one of the great big-band leaders of the 1930s and 40s. He succeeded Duke Ellington at the Cotton Club, made ‘Minnie the Moocher’ a hit, travelled around America in a private train in which he kept his green Lincoln car, and, when not drinking and womanising his way around New York, he wrote a dictionary.
Cab Calloway’s Hepsters Dictionary: Language of Jive
went through six editions between 1938 and 1944, and even includes a test section and translation essays. The idea was that the lonely American, exiled in the
pectin
). Well-pectinated fingers and a head like a rocking horse should be enough to get you through the meeting unscathed, especially if you are also wise enough to keep your mouth shut and play at
mumbudget
, a lovely old phrase for keeping quiet.
I should warn you that Sir Thomas Browne observed in his
Pseudodoxia Epidemica
(1646) that:
To set cross leg’d, or with our fingers pectinated or shut together is accounted bad, and friends will perswade us from it.
It’s at times like this that you know who your real friends are.
Argument
There are times, though, when good people have to take a stand, even at the morning meeting. Sometimes you can no longer sit there in silent
longanimity
, but must stand up and speak out for what you believe in, such as comfier chairs and a new printer. At such times you should remember Cicero before the Senate, Socrates before the Athenians, Jesus before Pilate, and that they all ended up dead. So it’s probably better to follow the example of Lord Copper’s underling in Evelyn Waugh’s
Scoop
:
When Lord Copper was right he said ‘Definitely, Lord Copper’; when he was wrong, ‘Up to a point.’
Youmust not simply
ding
people, ding being an eighteenth-century term for telling a chap what he really doesn’t want to hear. If you tell your opponent that they’re an idiot and that you’d no more take their advice on innovative teamwork than you would ask a rabbi whether to go for streaky or back, it may cause a scene. Far better to start off with the words: ‘Permit me to
discept
.’ And then, before anybody has a chance to grab a dictionary and discover that
discepting
means ‘disagreeing utterly’, you can continue with: ‘I see what you’re saying and it’s
ultracrepidarian
.’ Be careful here to put the stress on
ultra
, as words with
ultra
always sound cool.
Ultracrepidarianism
is ‘giving opinions on subjects that you know nothing about’, and is thus a terribly useful word. Ultracrepidarian was introduced into English by the essayist William Hazlitt, but it goes back to a story about the great ancient Greek painter Apelles.
The story goes that Apelles used to leave his new paintings out on public display and then hide behind a pillar to hear people’s reactions. One day he overheard a cobbler pointing out that Apelles had painted a shoe all wrong. So he took the painting away, corrected the shoe and put it out on display again the next day.
The cobbler came back, saw that Apelles had taken his advice and was so proud and puffed up with conceit that he started talking loudly about what was wrong with the leg; at which point Apelles jumped out from his hiding place and shouted: ‘
Ne sutor ultra crepidam
’, 2 which approximately translates as ‘the cobblershould go no further than the shoe’. Thus
ultracrepidarian
literally means ‘beyond-the-shoe’.
Providing that nobody else at the table knows that little story, you can use
ultracrepidarian
with impish impunity.
Though this may not provide a
sockdolager
, or winning point in an argument, it will nonetheless give you a certain gravitas and mystery that will unsettle any dictionaryless meeting. Nor should your attack end here; it should be pressed home with all the ferocity of a Vandal sacking Rome. In fact, this may be the moment to get all Cab Calloway on your colleagues’ sorry bottoms.
Yes, No, Who cares?
Cabell Calloway was one of the great big-band leaders of the 1930s and 40s. He succeeded Duke Ellington at the Cotton Club, made ‘Minnie the Moocher’ a hit, travelled around America in a private train in which he kept his green Lincoln car, and, when not drinking and womanising his way around New York, he wrote a dictionary.
Cab Calloway’s Hepsters Dictionary: Language of Jive
went through six editions between 1938 and 1944, and even includes a test section and translation essays. The idea was that the lonely American, exiled in the
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