Thursday 14 April 2011

Word-pecking Bibliomancy

I opened an old dictionary today, just to find a funny word. And the first thing that my lazy eye dropped on was this:

Word-pecker, one that play's with Words

And, yes, the apostrophe is in the original. But I was perturbed, perturbed and frightened. Have dictionaries turned against me as the fleas in a flea circus sometimes turn upon their trainer and, driving him into an itching frenzy, pursue him into the sea? I don't want to be a variant wood-pecker.

The Romans used to practice the Sortes Virgilianae, where they would open a copy of the Aeneid at random, stick in a pin and read the verse, which they would interpret as being about them or their future. Others do the same with the Bible or Jilly Cooper novels. I do it with dictionaries. That's how I know the practice is called bibliomancy. But if dictionaries turn against Inky Fool, then whither my desiderata and ambitions? Whither my megalomaniac whimsies?

So I glanced tearfully across at the facing page and found:

Wind-mills in the Head, empty Projects

The brain-scan results were unexpected

7 comments:

  1. So that's the answer- I've windmills in my head!

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  2. Keep your pecker up! No crying.

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  3. Um, did you mean 'whither'?

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  4. I might have done, but, purely for the sake of variety, I'll change it.

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  5. Well, changing it to 'whither' works, but, for the record, simply replacing the ?s for !s would also have been correct...

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  6. O what is man? Wherefore does he why? Whence did he whence? And whither is he withering?

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  7. Precisely. Wither my hubris!

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