I'm going to be talking at the Lichfield Literature Festival on Wednesday at 3:45 -
lots more details here. Also, by a strange quirk of chronology it will be the first place in Britain that you'll be able to buy
The Horologicon, my lovely new book about strange words and phrases hidden in the dictionary. The rest of the nation will have to wait another four weeks, but in the home town of Dr Johnson time runs faster.
I shall do my best in my hour-long talk to cause
oscitancy, which Johnson defined as "yawning or unusual sleepiness". There'll be lots of other words from
The Horologicon including micher which Johnson called "A lazy loiterer, who skulks about in corners and by-places, and keeps out of sight; a hedge creeper", and describes me perfectly.
Click here for more details.
A harmless drudge.
Posts
You can't search 'zwoddery -uhtceare' on the Google. The only search-engine-able pages online with 'zwoddery' in them are related to the Horologicon.
ReplyDeletecamostar, try zwodder (no y) - you could start with this:
ReplyDeletehttp://blog.inkyfool.com/2010/06/zwodder.html
In school we used to call skiving (playing triang) 'mitching', and a skiver was a 'mitcher'. I always wondered where the word came from, perhaps it's from 'micher'?!
ReplyDeleteErrr...that should read playing truant. Predictive text *sigh*
ReplyDelete