litfarm » mutant word monster

clepsydra

chris — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 17:00:00 +0000

A water clock or clepsydra (Greek kleptein, to steal; hydro, water) is any timekeeper operated by means of a regulated flow of liquid into (inflow type) or out from (outflow type) a vessel where the amount is then measured.

It’s cropped up twice in one-hundred pages of The Strange Nation of Rafael Mendes. It sounds like a venereal disease.

gormagon

chris — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 17:00:30 +0000

Gormagon:

This monster is known to have been described in print just twice, in each case in an improper riddle. Its sole appearance in this spelling is in the 1785 first edition of Captain Francis Grose’s Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue: “A monster with six eyes, three mouths, four arms, eight legs, five on one side and three on the other, three arses, two tarses, and a *** upon its back”.

The Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue is fascinating. Gutenberg has a free copy, but there really ought to be a dead-tree version for bathroom reading.

Tarse is almost worthy of its own post. According to World Wide Words, it’s an old Germanic term for the penis.

A free, randomly selected book from my bookshelf to anyone with the answer to the riddle (put your guesses in the comments)! The answer is on the above site, so you’re on the honor system. And if I think you cheated you’re liable to get Turkey Tracks. You’ve been warned.

Tomorrow, we climb out of the gutter with an upcoming deadline for a poetry prize.

brigadoon

chris — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 16:23:58 +0000

A musical about a Scottish village of the same name, that appears only for one night every hundred years, because of a curse (or blessing, depending on your perspective) that keeps the village from ever having to change with the times.

Two Americans stumble onto the village by chance, and threaten to destroy it by leaving, because doing so will break the enchantment.

Now you know. And knowing is half the battle. Yo JOE!

factitious

chris — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 18:12:47 +0000

factitious: not produced by natural forces. Ex:

brokers created a factitious demand for stocks

(Thanks Bookninja, Ian McEwan and Wordnet.)

I thought this was a mistype of facetious when I first read it. True story.

i was tortured by the pygmy love queen

chris — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 04:58:52 +0000

Alright, it doesn’t have a lot to do with getting published, but how can you not love the shortlist for Oddest Book Title of the Year? I won’t spoil the other five, but here’s a taste of those that barely missed the cut:

“Honourable mention should also go to two titles that were ruled out because they were published too long ago: an unlikely-sounding HR manual called Squid Recruitment Dynamics, and the fascinating anthropological tome Glory Remembered: Wooden Headgear of Alaska Sea Hunters.”

Baaa. It’s Friday. (From Quillblog.)

etymology nerds, assemble!

chris — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 16:21:42 +0000

I love etymology. Whether it’s shattering the dreams of a co-worker who named his baby “mark” in the hope his son would leave the same on the world (the name is from the latin Marcius, from Mars, the God of War) or puzzling out the mysterious “mommixity” (possibly from French mommuck, to annoy) from Birds Without Wings, I dig them words.

Here’s a recent book for fans of the weird word, The Dord, The Diglot and an Avocado or Two, by Anu Garg. (Hat tip to Boing Boing.)