Monday 18 January 2010

Felch


The other day as I flicked through The Dictionary of Obsolete and Provincial English (I was going to meet some obsolete and provincial relatives and was desperate to make a good impression) I came across the word felch, which was defined as "A tame animal. Lincolnshire dialect". So I typed the words felch tame animal into google and got a nasty shock.

Only those with an iron constitution and/or a fascination for bizarre sexual practices should click on this link to an alternative definition of felch. But somebody lied.



Alpheus Felch, fifth Governor of Michigan
(So far as I know he was not a tame animal. As to the other definition, history is mute.)

2 comments:

  1. The Antipodean14 June 2010 at 16:38

    Heh... this made me laugh out loud and gives me flashbacks to a camp in the West Australian bush. Takes me straight back to year 12 camp (possibly retreat, even) when the way cool 'alternative' kids (when it was actually, like, alternative to be alternative) explained this word to me - they were so alternative they spoke to people who weren't cool. It was just way too many concepts introduced to a naive 17 year old all at once, and I have never really been shocked again since.

    Of course we then proceeded to use this word all week, and for the rest of the year, and our teachers thought it was just some odd bonding thing. I think it may have ended up in our yearbook - this was before Google, after all.

    A disturbing thought: how did the other kids know this? Without Google? Hmmm...

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  2. I heard about it pre-google as well. We had better developed sense of passing on information before wikipedia ruined it all.

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