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Shote's Head
SHOTE'S HEAD
Shote is the name given in the southern states to a young fat hog. . . . Take out the brains and boil the head till quite tender, cut the heart and liver from the harslet, and boil the feet with the head. Cut all the meat from the head in small pieces, mince the tongue and cut the brains small; take some of the water the head was ( Read more... ) -
A Firefly Christmas
For anyone who loves the series FireflyA Firefly Christmas ( Read more... ) -
Nabbity
NABBITY
Short in stature, but full grown; said of a diminutive female. A ludicrous derivative from nab, "to catch, as a bird catches insects in its bill," as if the little creature might be taken up between one's finger and thumb.
-Rev. Robert Forby's Vocabulary of East Anglia, 1830
Birthday of Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881),influential English ( Read more... ) -
Clack
CLACK
To clack wool, to cut off the sheep's mark.
-John Kersey's New English Dictionary, 1772
Feast Day of St. Dominic,
a patron of shepherds, John Spence's Shetland Folklore (1899) mentioned an old custom from which the verb to earmark is derived:
Everyone knew his own sheep by the marks cut in their ears. The various sheep marks had names by ( Read more... ) -
Adam's Wine
ADAM'S WINE
A cant phrase for water as a beverage, our first father being supposed to have known nothing more powerful.
-John Jamieson's Etymological Scottish Dictionary, 1808
[Variant of the still used Adam's ale,] a humorous colloquialism for water, as being Adam's only beverage at the teetotal period when he flourished, [which] occurs as far back ( Read more... ) -
Grithbruch
GRITHBRUCH
Breach of the peace; [from] Anglo-Saxon, grith, peace.
-Herbert Coleridge's Dictionary of the Oldest Words in the English Language, 1863
Halcyon-days
Halcyon is the Greek for a kingfisher, compounded of hals, the sea, and kuo, to brood on. The ancient Sicilians believed that the king fisher laid its eggs and incubated for fourteen days ( Read more... ) -
Gyle Hather
GYLE HATHER
He that will stand by his master when he is at dinner, and bid him eat no raw meat, because he would [prefer to] eat it himself. This is a . . . knave that would make his master believe that the cow is wood[en].
-John Awdeley's The Fraternitye of Vacabonds, 1565
from: Jeffrey Kacirk's Long Lost Insults: Forgotten English III Knowledge ( Read more... ) -
Acatery
ACATERY
Provisions purchased; also, the room or place allotted to the keeping of all such provisions as the purveyors purchased for the king; [related to] acater, a caterer, a purveyor.
-James Halliwell's Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words, 1855
Christmas FeastingOn December 17, 1213, one Reginald de Cornhill was ordered to give what might ( Read more... ) -
Ponny
PONNY
A sleigh-ride. "Come on out and have a ponny." Long Island.
-Harold Wentworth's American Dialect Dictionary, 1944
East Coast Sleighing
was described in James Boardman's America and the Americans (1833):
These vehicles were to be seen of all dimensions, and in every style, from the dashing and elegant four-in-hand, with its buffalo robes or ( Read more... ) -
Blague
BLAGUE
Humbug, hoax, pretence; [from] nineteenth-century French.
-C. A. M. Fennell's The Stanford Dictionary of Anglicised Words and Phrases, 1964
To tell lies.
-Sir James Murray's New English Dictionary, 1888
First Shots of the Revolution?As American schoolchildren learn, the nation's War of Independence began in earnest just after Paul Revere's ( Read more... )