Spiflicate

If you are spiflicated you are flabbergasted, flummoxed, caught or confounded. Or as the Captain's Clerk says in Lady Eureka:

"Spiflicated - spiflicated - well spiflicated - regularly spiflicated - I must confess that I ought to be right down regularly spiflicated, smothered, smashed, dished up and done for."

Or as Thomas Moore put it:

Alas, alas, our ruin's fated;
All done up, and spiflicated!

You can therefore spiflicate somebody by dumbfounding or confounding them: by, for example, using the word spiflicate.

The Inky Fool spiflicating

N.B. For any mathmos out there, the paradox on the top right only works for shapes made out of Fibonacci numbers.

The Book of Faces

Right, the Inky Fool is now on Facebook, and socially networking and all that sort of electronically-amicable jazz. If I've got this right (and the good Lord knows that I may not) you can now like the Inky Fool, and then all the latest arcana and erudition will show up in your news feed, which must be lovely.

Just go to the book of faces and search for Inky Fool, or follow this link (which may work).

In the meantime, I shall tell you that the side of a book directly opposite the spine is called, by bookbinders, the face; and that face comes from the same Latin source as superficial.

The Sentence and The Internet

There's a fantastic article on sentences and how they can be constructed over at the FT. I cannot recommend it energetically enough. Imagine, if you will, that I am there in the room with you, brandishing a harpoon and with your loved ones trussed up in a corner telling you to click on the link.

Enough for you?

The one fault that I would find with the article is that it repeats the old canard that e-mail and the Internet are killing prose, that constant reading and writing have debased the art of writing by rendering it common and workaday.

This is tripe. When I was a child, back in the 1980s, communication was by telephone and entertainment was obtained from the goggle-box. My infant fascination with prose was therefore somewhat strange. It was a useless talent because nobody wrote letters any more. The advent of e-mail changed that. A fixation on the difference between apposite and relative clauses suddenly became a social advantage; an apt colon was no longer the preserve of sodomites. I felt as a survivalist must feel when the bomb finally drops.

Absence does not make the heart grown fonder; absence makes you forget. The crappiest lounge-bar pianist will have more appreciation of a virtuoso than somebody who has never touched a piano. Nudists are not wonderful judges of haute couture. Familiarity breeds knowledge, and knowledge breeds appreciation.

The last ten years have been a decade of prose: the first really prosaic decade since the manufacture of the radio. People spend all day every day sending e-mails and each e-mail has a purpose: deal-clinching, informing, party-organising, raise-demanding, joke-telling, introduction and seduction. People want their e-mails to succeed, so they think on their words.

An e-mailed joke must be funny without the aid of a winning smile and a funny accent. It must be constructed. Philanderers can no longer trade on a wink and a leer, they must get on a dating website and work on writing an irresistible profile.You can't spend all day wondering exactly how to phrase something, without beginning to see how clever Shakespeare was.

It may change. In ten years time we may all be communicating by means of smell or sonar. But for now, the wordsmith rules and the poet prevails. This is the age of the word.

The Inky Fool begins a long sentence

Survival of the Fittest Fiddle

A little note on Darwin. When we think of the adjective fit we are inclined to think of someone in jogging shorts and other such hideousness. Fit to us means physically capable and the fittest person is the fastest runner, or something of the sort. This is not the sense in which Darwin* used the phrase.

We still use phrases like fit and proper parent or fit for purpose or not fit to hold office, and that was the original meaning of the word fit. It meant appropriate. The fittest word, is the word most appropriate to the situation.

As Stephen Jay Gould once remarked, it doesn't matter how wonderfully developed a fish is, if all the oceans dry up it will die. Similarly, Darwin couldn't have cared less whether a Galapagos turtle could run fast, only that it was well suited to its environment.

If the cap fits, it doesn't mean that it's been to gym.

How did the word get from one to the other? On horseback. Or more precisely, via horse racing. If a horse was in fit condition for a race then it was fit in the modern sense.

And fiddles? Nobody is quite sure why fiddles are fit, although it is certain that the older sense was being used. There also used to be a phrase as fine as a farthing fiddle, which makes more sense and is more fun to pronounce.

The Inky Fool contemplating the gym

*The phrase pops up in the fifth edition of On The Origin Of Species, although it was in fact invented by a chap called Herbert Spencer, who was trying to describe the ideas set out in the first edition of On The Origin Of Species. So it's Darwin adopting a paraphrase about Darwin, if you see what I mean.

Sir Richard Has Taken Off His Considering Cap

Benjamin Franklin was far more fun than you might think. Not only did he write a learned tract called Fart Proudly, he also produced, in his memoirs, a Drinker's Dictionary which contains over two hundred synonyms for being drunk. I have put my favourites in bold.

He's addled, in his airs, affected, casting up his accounts, biggy, bewitched, black and black, bowzed, boozy, been at Barbadoes, been watering the brook, drunk as a wheelbarrow, bothered, burdocked, bosky, busky, buzzy, has sold a march in the brewer, has a head full of bees, has been in the bibing plot, has drunk more than he has bled, is bungy, has been playing beggar-my-neighbour*, drunk as a beggar, sees the beams, has kissed black Betty**, has had a thump over the head with Samson's jaw-bone, has been at war with his brains, is bridgy, has been catching the cat, is cogniaid, capable, cramped, cherubimical, cherry merry, wamble croft, cracked, half way to Concord, canonized, has taken a chirping glass, got corns in his head, got a cup too much, coguay, cupsy, has heated his copper, is in crocus, catched, cuts capers, has been in the cellar, been in the sun, is in his cups, above the clouds, is non compos, cocked, curved, cut, chippered, chickenny, has loaded his cart, been too free with the creature. Sir Richard has taken off his considering cap, he's chopfallen, candid, disguised, got a dish, has killed a dog, has taken his drops. 'Tis a dark day with him. He's a dead man, has dipped his bill, sees double, is disfigured, has seen the devil, is prince Eugene, has entered, buttered both eyes, is cock-eyed, has got the pole evil, has got a brass eye, has made an example, has ate a toad and a half for breakfast, is in his element, is fishy, foxed, fuddled, soon fuddled, frozen, will have frogs for supper, is well in front, is getting forward in the world, owes no man money, fears no man, is crump fooled, has been to France, is flushed, has frozen his mouth, is fettered, has been to a funeral, has his flag out, is fuzzled, has spoken with his friend, been at an Indian feast, is glad, grabable, great-headed, glazed, generous, has boozed the gage, is as dizzy as a goose, has been before George, got the gout, got a kick in the guts, been at Geneva, is globular, has got the glanders, is on the go, a gone man, has been to see Robin Goodfellow, is half and half, half seas over, hardy, top heavy, has got by the head, makes head way, is hiddey, has got on his little hat, is hammerish, loose in the hilt, knows not the way home, is haunted by evil spirits, has taken Hippocrates grand Elixir, is intoxicated, jolly, jagged, jambled, jocular, juicy, going to Jericho, an indirect man, going to Jamaica, going to Jerusalem, is a king, clips the King's English, has seen the French king. The King is his cousin, has got kibed heels, has got knapt, his kettle's hot. He'll soon keel upward, he's in his liquor, lordly, light, lappy, limber, lopsided, makes indentures with his legs, is well to live, sees two moons, is merry, middling, muddled, moon-eyed, maudlin, mountainous, muddy, mellow, has seen a flock of moons, has raised his monuments, has eaten cacao nuts, is nimtopsical, has got the night mare, has been nonsuited, is super nonsensical, in a state of nature, nonplussed, oiled, has ate opium, has smelt an onion, is an oxycrocum***, is overset, overcome, out of sorts, on the paymaster's books, drank his last halfpenny, is as good conditioned as a puppy, is pigeon eyed, pungy, priddy, pushing on, has salt in his headban, has been among the Philistines, is in prosperity, is friends with Philip, contending with Pharaoh, has painted his nose, wasted his punch, learned politeness, eat the pudding-bag, eat too much pumpkin, is full of piety, is rocky, raddled, rich, religious, ragged, raised, has lost his rudder, has been to far with Sir Richard, is like a rat in trouble, is stitched, seafaring, in the suds, strong, as drunk as David's sow, swamped, his skin is full, steady, stiff, burnt his shoulder, has got out his top-gallant sails, seen the dog-star, is stiff as a ringbolt. The shoe pinches him. He's staggerish. It is star light with him. He carries too much sail, will soon out studding sails, is stewed, stubbed, soaked, soft, has made too free with Sir John Strawberry, right before the wind, all sails out, has pawned his senses, plays parrot, has made shift of his shirt, shines like a blanket, has been paying for a sign, is toped, tongue-tied, tanned, tipsicum grave, double tongued, tospey turvey, tipsy, thawed, trammulled, transported, has swallowed a tavern token, makes Virginia fame, has got the Indian vapours, is pot valiant, in love with varany, wise, has a wet soul, has been to the salt water, in search of eye water, is in the way to be weaned, out of the way, water soaked, wise or otherwise, can walk the line, The wind is west with him. He carries the wagon.

That last phrase can't have anything to do with being on the wagon, which only popped up in the twentieth century. I think that from now on, when I arrive in the pub, I shall buy a beer and announce: "Sir Richard has taken off his considering cap."

The Inky Fool enjoys a quiet night in

*Note spelling.
**A whiskey bottle
***A medicinal plaster made from saffron, vinegar, and various other ingredients (OED)

Welsh Rabbits and Midwifery

The wonderful things you find in dictionaries. This from Grose's Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (1811):

Welch Rabbit


[i.e. a Welch rare-bit] Bread and cheese toasted. See Rabbit.—The Welch are said to be so remarkably fond of cheese, that in cases of difficulty their midwives apply a piece of toasted cheese to the janua vita to attract and entice the young Taffy, who on smelling it makes most vigorous efforts to come forth.

Incidentally, it is, or was, Welsh rabbit before it was Welsh rare-bit. The rather unkind idea was that Welsh things were poor substitutes*. For example, a Welsh carpet was a pattern painted, or stained, onto a brick floor; a Welsh diamond is a rock crystal; and a Welsh comb is your fingers.

Do any Welsh midwives read this blog? Is this still the standard method?

Come on out

*But Ian Rush was great.

P.S. Janua vita[e] means the gate of life. Its meaning should be obvious; if it's not, consult your parents. The usual Latin phrase is Mors janua vitae, meaning Death is the gate to [everlasting] life. It's therefore the same root as January and janitor and Janus.

No Buts

Have a look at this paragraph from the opening chapter of the 1939 novel Gadsby by Ernest Vincent Wright, and see if you can tell what's odd about it.

Upon this basis I am going to show you how a bunch of bright young folks did find a champion; a man with boys and girls of his own; a man of so dominating and happy individuality that Youth is drawn to him as is a fly to a sugar bowl. It is a story about a small town. It is not a gossipy yarn; nor is it a dry, monotonous account, full of such customary “fill-ins” as “romantic moonlight casting murky shadows down a long, winding country road.” Nor will it say anything about tinklings lulling distant folds; robins carolling at twilight, nor any “warm glow of lamplight” from a cabin window. No. It is an account of up-and-doing activity; a vivid portrayal of Youth as it is today; and a practical discarding of that worn-out notion that “a child don’t know anything.”

Any guesses? I'll give you a clue. It's not about what's there, but what isn't. Still no idea? Another clue: the idea was repeated thirty years later by Georges Perec. Yes? No? All right, I'll tell you.

There are no Es. Not one. Gadsby is 50,000 words long and the fifth letter of the alphabet makes not a single, solitary appearance. He even went so far as to not allow himself Mr because it is a shortening of mistEr. You can read the introduction, and indeed the whole of Gadsby here. Its skill of composition is matched only by its insanity of purpose.

The word for such a work is, incidentally, a lipogram.

I was having a drink the other night with a girl who used to work for Bloomberg, the famous mayor manufacturer. Apparently, Bloomberg's style guide absolutely forbids the use of the word but. Nor can you replace it with however, yet, nonetheless or albeit. Each fact is an island, and they must remain in Gradgrindian lines and not use connectors to cancel each other out.

Moreover, at Bloomberg you can't use adjectives of value. Profits can be neither good nor bad, large nor minor. They certainly can't be unexpected.

It's good to know that the torch that Mr Wright lit has not gone out.

N.B. The reason the for the picture. This post is about things that aren't there, which makes illustration tricky. This picture is of Dickens' study and was painted just after his death. It is called The Empty Chair because the chair implies the man who is not sitting in it. The picture was wildly popular and thousands of copies were made. My tutor at Oxford had a copy in his study. Van Gogh, who was a big Dickens fan and moved to London a few years after the novelist's death, loved the picture. That's why Van Gogh did all those paintings of empty chairs and empty beds, because the furniture implies the absent person.