As, for instance, though Night is in general the time of quiet and repose, yet it is often the time too for the commission and security of crimes, such as robberies, murders and violations which generally seek the advantage of darkness, as favourable for the escape of the guilty.
In the grammar of Mrs Merdle’s verbs on this momentous subject, there was only one mood, the Imperative; and that Mood had only one Tense, the Present. Mrs Merdle’s verbs were so pressingly presented to Mr Merdle to conjugate, that his sluggish blood and his long coat-cuffs became quite agitated.
noun A name (generally Mrs. Grundy, though Mr. Grundy is sometimes facetiously used) taken as representing society at large, or the particular part of it concerned, in regard to its censorship of personal conduct: from the frequent question of Dame Ashfield, a character in Morton's play “Speed the Plough” (1798), “What will Mrs. Grundy say?”
Grundy3
(ˈgrʌndɪ)
The surname of an imaginary personage (Mrs. Grundy) who is proverbially referred to as a personification of the tyranny of social opinion in matters of conventional propriety.
2.2 (After Dickens's use in Bleak House.) A place to ‘growl’ in; jocularly applied to a person's private sitting room. (Cf. boudoir and den.)
1852 Dickens Bleak Ho. viii, ‘Sit down, my dear’, said Mr. Jarndyce; ‘this, you must know, is the Growlery. When I am out of humour I come and growl here’.
A canting unctuous hypocrite. So Chadˈbandian a.; ˈChadbandism; ˈChadbandize v. intr.
Dickens Bleak Ho. xix. 187 The Chadband style of oratory is widely received and much admired.'>1852 Dickens Bleak Ho. xix. 187 The Chadband style of oratory is widely received and much admired.
1908 Daily Chron. 4 Nov. 5/3 There is no Chadbandian caricaturing of the parson.
1913 G. B. Shaw Quint. Ibsenism 189 Any attempt to Chadbandize on the wickedness of such crimes is at once resented as‥‘moral babble’.
1920 Punch 14 Jan. 33/2 His caustic dispraise Of President Wilson's Chadbandian ways.
1923 A. G. Gardiner Cadbury 259 His dislike of narrowness of view and Chadbandism kept him free from censoriousness.
Ada and I agreed, as we talked together for a little while upstairs, that this caprice about the wind was a fiction and that he used the pretence to account for any disappointment he could not conceal, rather than he would blame the real cause of it or disparage or depreciate any one. We thought this very characteristic of his eccentric gentleness and of the difference between him and those petulant people who make the weather and the winds (particularly that unlucky wind which he had chosen for such a different purpose) the stalking-horses of their splenetic and gloomy humours.
c.3.c as the crow flies, etc.: in a direct line, without any of the détours caused by following the road.
1800 Southey Lett. (1856) I. 110 About fifteen miles, the crow's road. 1810 Sporting Mag. XXXV. 152 The distance‥is upwards of twenty-five miles as the crow flies. 1838 Dickens O. Twist xxv, We cut over the fields‥straight as the crow flies.
The good-natured locksmith was still patting her on the back and applying such gentle restoratives, when a message arrived from Mrs Varden, making known to all whom it might concern, that she felt too much indisposed to rise after her great agitation and anxiety of the previous night; and therefore desired to be immediately accommodated with the little black teapot of strong mixed tea, a couple of rounds of buttered toast, a middling-sized dish of beef and ham cut thin, and the Protestant Manual in two volumes post octavo. Like some other ladies who in remote ages flourished upon this globe, Mrs Varden was most devout when most ill-tempered. Whenever she and her husband were at unusual variance, then the Protestant Manual was in high feather.
Leaning against the door-post of this, his dwelling, the locksmith stood early on the morning after he had met with the wounded man, gazing disconsolately at a great wooden emblem of a key, painted in vivid yellow to resemble gold, which dangled from the house-front, and swung to and fro with a mournful creaking noise, as if complaining that it had nothing to unlock. Sometimes, he looked over his shoulder into the shop, which was so dark and dingy with numerous tokens of his trade, and so blackened by the smoke of a little forge, near which his ‘prentice was at work,
2.2 fig. Full of intellectual difficulties or complications of thought; hard to ‘unravel’, explain, or solve; involved, intricate, perplexing, puzzling. (Sometimes with mixture of sense 4.)
1702 Pope Jan. & May 140 The knotty point was urg'd on either side. 1874 Carpenter Ment. Phys. i. ii. §79 (1879) 83 The man who is‥in a complete reverie, unravelling some knotty subject.
These reports had scarcely died away when the wonder of every good citizen, male and female, was utterly absorbed and swallowed up by a Royal Proclamation, in which her Majesty, strongly censuring the practice of wearing long Spanish rapiers of preposterous length (as being a bullying and swaggering custom, tending to bloodshed and public disorder), commanded that on a particular day therein named, certain grave citizens should repair to the city gates, and there, in public, break all rapiers worn or carried by persons claiming admission, that exceeded, though it were only by a quarter of an inch, three standard feet in length.
Royal Proclamations usually take their course, let the public wonder never so much. On the appointed day two citizens of high repute took up their stations at each of the gates, attended by a party of the city guard, the main body to enforce the Queen’s will, and take custody of all such rebels (if any) as might have the temerity to dispute it: and a few to bear the standard measures and instruments for reducing all unlawful sword-blades to the prescribed dimensions. In pursuance of these arrangements, Master Graham and another were posted at Lud Gate, on the hill before St. Paul’s.
A term of obloquy for a surly, crusty, cross-grained old person, a ‘bear’; now, usually, a close-fisted, stingy man; a miser. (Generally with close, covetous, niggardly, or other uncomplimentary epithet.)
1681 Dryden Sp. Friar i. ii, A jealous. covetous, old hunks
1821 Lamb Elia Ser. i. Old Benchers I.T., C. was a close hunks—a hoarder rather than a miser.
Patients will not need a prescription or the signoff of a healthcare provider in order to prove they are immunocompromised and receive the additional dose, according to officials.
"It will be a patient's attestation, and there will be no requirement for proof or prescription or a recommendation from an individual's healthcare provider," CDC official Dr. Amanda Cohn said, speaking before the advisory panel.
‘Then my ears did not deceive me, and it’s not wa-a-x work,’ said his lordship. ‘How de do? I’m very happy.’ And then his lordship turned to another superlative gentleman, something older, something stouter, something redder in the face, and something longer upon town, and said in a loud whisper that the girl was ‘deyvlish pitty.’
‘Mr. Pluck,’ said Ralph. Then wheeling about again, towards a gentleman with the neck of a stork and the legs of no animal in particular, Ralph introduced him as the Honourable Mr. Snobb; and a white-headed person at the table as Colonel Chowser. The colonel was in conversation with somebody, who appeared to be a make-weight, and was not introduced at all.
1838 Dickens Nich. Nick. xix, The colonel was in conversation with somebody, who appeared to be a make-weight, and was not introduced at all.
‘Oh no,’ said Ralph; ‘come when you like, in a hackney coach—I’ll pay for it. Good-night—a—a—God bless you.’
The blessing seemed to stick in Mr. Ralph Nickleby’s throat, as if it were not used to the thoroughfare, and didn’t know the way out. But it got out somehow, though awkwardly enough; and having disposed of it, he shook hands with his two relatives, and abruptly left them.
xxxvii, He had fallen‥to the lowest depth of the most snubbed hen-peckery.
featherweight
283/1 He turned‥to observe the effect of the slightest featherweight in his favour.
half-bapˈtize, v. trans.
To baptize privately or without full rites, as a child in danger of death.
1836 Dickens Sk. Boz ii, He got out of bed‥to half-baptize a washerwoman's child in a slop-basin. 1838 ― O. Twist ii, The child that was half-baptized, Oliver Twist, is nine years old to-day.
I swore to her, if ever it crossed my path, to hunt it down; never to let it rest; to pursue it with the bitterest and most unrelenting animosity; to vent upon it the hatred that I deeply felt, and to spit upon the empty vaunt of that insulting will by draggin it, if I could, to the very gallows-foot.
hysterogenic zones : No doubt Charcot determines very well the phases of the attack, notes the nonsensical and passional attitudes, the contortionistic movements; he discovers hysterogenic zones and can, by skilfully manipulating the ovaries, arrest or accelerate the crises, but as for foreseeing them and learning the sources and the motives and curing them, that's another thing.
cod's-head n. mid 16th-19th cent. a dupe, or fool; thus the fool's head, often the 'thickness' of the cod's-head, noting mid 17th cent use of cods meaning testicles, thus cod'shead or codshead, penis
Comments by snack
snack commented on the list chester-RQ4C2kF7wLcv
As, for instance, though Night is in general the time of quiet and repose, yet it is often the time too for the commission and security of crimes, such as robberies, murders and violations which generally seek the advantage of darkness, as favourable for the escape of the guilty.
November 16, 2021
snack commented on the list ldor-PCAHav7BMBn
imperative mood:
In the grammar of Mrs Merdle’s verbs on this momentous subject, there was only one mood, the Imperative; and that Mood had only one Tense, the Present. Mrs Merdle’s verbs were so pressingly presented to Mr Merdle to conjugate, that his sluggish blood and his long coat-cuffs became quite agitated.
October 26, 2021
snack commented on the list ldor-PCAHav7BMBn
‖ dégagé, a.
(degaʒe)
fem. -ée.
F. pa. pple. of dégager to disengage, put at ease.
Easy, unconstrained (in manner or address).
1855 Dickens Dorrit (Househ. ed.) 203/2 You ought to make yourself fit for it Society by being more dégagé and less preoccupied.
October 22, 2021
snack commented on the list ht-aSo1OSSWYB7t
Mrs. Grundy
noun A name (generally Mrs. Grundy, though Mr. Grundy is sometimes facetiously used) taken as representing society at large, or the particular part of it concerned, in regard to its censorship of personal conduct: from the frequent question of Dame Ashfield, a character in Morton's play “Speed the Plough” (1798), “What will Mrs. Grundy say?”
Grundy3
(ˈgrʌndɪ)
The surname of an imaginary personage (Mrs. Grundy) who is proverbially referred to as a personification of the tyranny of social opinion in matters of conventional propriety.
October 16, 2021
snack commented on the list blouse-sKf21hW-kZsu
Growlery
2.2 (After Dickens's use in Bleak House.) A place to ‘growl’ in; jocularly applied to a person's private sitting room. (Cf. boudoir and den.)
1852 Dickens Bleak Ho. viii, ‘Sit down, my dear’, said Mr. Jarndyce; ‘this, you must know, is the Growlery. When I am out of humour I come and growl here’.
October 14, 2021
snack commented on the list blouse-sKf21hW-kZsu
Chadband
(ˈtʃædbænd)
Name of a character, ‘the Rev. Mr. Chadband’, in Dickens's Bleak House.
A canting unctuous hypocrite. So Chadˈbandian a.; ˈChadbandism; ˈChadbandize v. intr.
Dickens Bleak Ho. xix. 187 The Chadband style of oratory is widely received and much admired.'>1852 Dickens Bleak Ho. xix. 187 The Chadband style of oratory is widely received and much admired.
1908 Daily Chron. 4 Nov. 5/3 There is no Chadbandian caricaturing of the parson.
1913 G. B. Shaw Quint. Ibsenism 189 Any attempt to Chadbandize on the wickedness of such crimes is at once resented as‥‘moral babble’.
1920 Punch 14 Jan. 33/2 His caustic dispraise Of President Wilson's Chadbandian ways.
1923 A. G. Gardiner Cadbury 259 His dislike of narrowness of view and Chadbandism kept him free from censoriousness.
October 14, 2021
snack commented on the list blouse-sKf21hW-kZsu
Antipodean
2.A.2 humorously, Having everything upside down.
1852 Dickens Bleak Ho. (1853) 621 A kind of Antipodean lumber room, full of old chairs and tables, upside down.
October 14, 2021
snack commented on the list blouse-sKf21hW-kZsu
chancery
1853 Dickens Bleak Ho. ix. 60 ‘There never was such an infernal cauldron as that Chancery on the face of the earth.’
1853 Dickens Bleak Ho. Pref., A *Chancery Judge once had the kindness to inform me‥that the Court of Chancery‥was almost immaculate.
1874 Ruskin Fors Clav. IV. 244 Dickens I have heard had real effects on *Chancery practice.
1858 Ld. St. Leonards Handy Bk. Prop. Law xxi. 162 A *Chancery suit, the costs of which would undoubtedly fall on the claimants.
1830 Gen. P. Thompson Exerc. (1842) I. 258 The celebrated injunction of a noble *chancery-suitor to his son.
1851 Melville Moby Dick I. xvi. 118 Widows, fatherless children, and *chancery wards.
October 14, 2021
snack commented on the list blouse-sKf21hW-kZsu
stalking-horses:
Ada and I agreed, as we talked together for a little while upstairs, that this caprice about the wind was a fiction and that he used the pretence to account for any disappointment he could not conceal, rather than he would blame the real cause of it or disparage or depreciate any one. We thought this very characteristic of his eccentric gentleness and of the difference between him and those petulant people who make the weather and the winds (particularly that unlucky wind which he had chosen for such a different purpose) the stalking-horses of their splenetic and gloomy humours.
October 9, 2021
snack commented on the list blouse-sKf21hW-kZsu
c.3.c as the crow flies, etc.: in a direct line, without any of the détours caused by following the road.
1800 Southey Lett. (1856) I. 110 About fifteen miles, the crow's road. 1810 Sporting Mag. XXXV. 152 The distance‥is upwards of twenty-five miles as the crow flies. 1838 Dickens O. Twist xxv, We cut over the fields‥straight as the crow flies.
October 8, 2021
snack commented on the list blouse-sKf21hW-kZsu
as the crow flies
adverb idiomatic In a straight line distance between two locations, as opposed to the road distance or over land distance.
adverb by the shortest and most direct route
October 8, 2021
snack commented on the list br1780-heLkVEfW4O2s
The good-natured locksmith was still patting her on the back and applying such gentle restoratives, when a message arrived from Mrs Varden, making known to all whom it might concern, that she felt too much indisposed to rise after her great agitation and anxiety of the previous night; and therefore desired to be immediately accommodated with the little black teapot of strong mixed tea, a couple of rounds of buttered toast, a middling-sized dish of beef and ham cut thin, and the Protestant Manual in two volumes post octavo. Like some other ladies who in remote ages flourished upon this globe, Mrs Varden was most devout when most ill-tempered. Whenever she and her husband were at unusual variance, then the Protestant Manual was in high feather.
August 24, 2021
snack commented on the list br1780-heLkVEfW4O2s
Leaning against the door-post of this, his dwelling, the locksmith stood early on the morning after he had met with the wounded man, gazing disconsolately at a great wooden emblem of a key, painted in vivid yellow to resemble gold, which dangled from the house-front, and swung to and fro with a mournful creaking noise, as if complaining that it had nothing to unlock. Sometimes, he looked over his shoulder into the shop, which was so dark and dingy with numerous tokens of his trade, and so blackened by the smoke of a little forge, near which his ‘prentice was at work,
August 24, 2021
snack commented on the list tocs-8z5LsDXX32
'She was not wont to be a lie-abed; but she was well then.
August 23, 2021
snack commented on the list use-vizVf-fB3x0x
knotty
2.2 fig. Full of intellectual difficulties or complications of thought; hard to ‘unravel’, explain, or solve; involved, intricate, perplexing, puzzling. (Sometimes with mixture of sense 4.)
1702 Pope Jan. & May 140 The knotty point was urg'd on either side. 1874 Carpenter Ment. Phys. i. ii. §79 (1879) 83 The man who is‥in a complete reverie, unravelling some knotty subject.
knotty-pated (+clay-brained)
5.5 Comb., as knotty-pated adj. perh. associated with not-headed, not-pated (1 Hen. IV, ii. iv. 78), blockheaded.
1596 Shakes. 1 Hen. IV, ii. iv. 251 Thou Clay-brayn'd Guts, thou Knotty-pated Foole.
August 21, 2021
snack commented on the list mhsc-qio-7iMsEv
Royal Proclamation
These reports had scarcely died away when the wonder of every good citizen, male and female, was utterly absorbed and swallowed up by a Royal Proclamation, in which her Majesty, strongly censuring the practice of wearing long Spanish rapiers of preposterous length (as being a bullying and swaggering custom, tending to bloodshed and public disorder), commanded that on a particular day therein named, certain grave citizens should repair to the city gates, and there, in public, break all rapiers worn or carried by persons claiming admission, that exceeded, though it were only by a quarter of an inch, three standard feet in length.
Royal Proclamations usually take their course, let the public wonder never so much. On the appointed day two citizens of high repute took up their stations at each of the gates, attended by a party of the city guard, the main body to enforce the Queen’s will, and take custody of all such rebels (if any) as might have the temerity to dispute it: and a few to bear the standard measures and instruments for reducing all unlawful sword-blades to the prescribed dimensions. In pursuance of these arrangements, Master Graham and another were posted at Lud Gate, on the hill before St. Paul’s.
August 18, 2021
snack commented on the list knuckleboy-aofkCVJBm-1U
hunks / hunx
hunks, n.
(hʌŋks)
Also hunx.
Known soon after 1600; but not in Dicts. before Kersey's ed. of Phillips, 1706. Origin unknown: it has the appearance of a quasi proper name of nickname, like Old Grumbles, Bags, Boots, and the like. (An Icel. hunskur cited by Lye is imaginary.)
A term of obloquy for a surly, crusty, cross-grained old person, a ‘bear’; now, usually, a close-fisted, stingy man; a miser. (Generally with close, covetous, niggardly, or other uncomplimentary epithet.)
1681 Dryden Sp. Friar i. ii, A jealous. covetous, old hunks
1821 Lamb Elia Ser. i. Old Benchers I.T., C. was a close hunks—a hoarder rather than a miser.
August 15, 2021
snack commented on the list knuckleboy-aofkCVJBm-1U
cabalistic word
But Newman
merely uttering the monosyllable 'Noggs,' as if it were some cabalistic
word, at sound of which bolts would fly back and doors open, pushed
briskly past and gained the door of Miss La Creevy's sitting-room,
before the astonished servant could offer any opposition.
August 15, 2021
snack commented on the list current-ohyXmX9pJPB9
attestation
attestation:
Patients will not need a prescription or the signoff of a healthcare provider in order to prove they are immunocompromised and receive the additional dose, according to officials.
"It will be a patient's attestation, and there will be no requirement for proof or prescription or a recommendation from an individual's healthcare provider," CDC official Dr. Amanda Cohn said, speaking before the advisory panel.
August 14, 2021
snack commented on the list knuckleboy-aofkCVJBm-1U
waxwork
‘Then my ears did not deceive me, and it’s not wa-a-x work,’ said his lordship. ‘How de do? I’m very happy.’ And then his lordship turned to another superlative gentleman, something older, something stouter, something redder in the face, and something longer upon town, and said in a loud whisper that the girl was ‘deyvlish pitty.’
makeweight
‘Mr. Pluck,’ said Ralph. Then wheeling about again, towards a gentleman with the neck of a stork and the legs of no animal in particular, Ralph introduced him as the Honourable Mr. Snobb; and a white-headed person at the table as Colonel Chowser. The colonel was in conversation with somebody, who appeared to be a make-weight, and was not introduced at all.
1838 Dickens Nich. Nick. xix, The colonel was in conversation with somebody, who appeared to be a make-weight, and was not introduced at all.
August 13, 2021
snack commented on the list knuckleboy-aofkCVJBm-1U
stick in one's throat:
‘Oh no,’ said Ralph; ‘come when you like, in a hackney coach—I’ll pay for it. Good-night—a—a—God bless you.’
The blessing seemed to stick in Mr. Ralph Nickleby’s throat, as if it were not used to the thoroughfare, and didn’t know the way out. But it got out somehow, though awkwardly enough; and having disposed of it, he shook hands with his two relatives, and abruptly left them.
August 13, 2021
snack commented on the list ot-2mfQESYVQEFe
hen-peckery
xxxvii, He had fallen‥to the lowest depth of the most snubbed hen-peckery.
featherweight
283/1 He turned‥to observe the effect of the slightest featherweight in his favour.
half-bapˈtize, v. trans.
To baptize privately or without full rites, as a child in danger of death.
1836 Dickens Sk. Boz ii, He got out of bed‥to half-baptize a washerwoman's child in a slop-basin. 1838 ― O. Twist ii, The child that was half-baptized, Oliver Twist, is nine years old to-day.
July 27, 2021
snack commented on the list ot-2mfQESYVQEFe
vaunt & gallows-foot
I swore to her, if ever it crossed my path, to hunt it down; never to let it rest; to pursue it with the bitterest and most unrelenting animosity; to vent upon it the hatred that I deeply felt, and to spit upon the empty vaunt of that insulting will by draggin it, if I could, to the very gallows-foot.
July 27, 2021
snack commented on the list ot-2mfQESYVQEFe
beadlehood
xvii, Mr. Bumble‥was in the full bloom and pride of beadleism. Later edd. read ‘beadledom,’ and ‘beadlehood.’ The latter is in the C.D. ed.
dodger
viii, Among his intimate friends he was better known by the sobriquet of ‘The artful Dodger’.
earwig
1850) 251/2 Suppose he was to do all this‥not grabbed, trapped, tried, earwigged by the parson‥but of his own fancy.
lummy
lummy, a. slang.
(ˈlʌmɪ)
First-rate.
1838 Dickens O. Twist xliii, Jack Dawkins—lummy Jack—the Dodger—the Artful Dodger
July 27, 2021
snack commented on the list la-bas-8kJjgQGj4c2h
missing from wordnik: veneniferous
veneˈniferous, a. rare—0.
f. L. venēnifer (Ovid): see -ferous.
(See quot.) Also veneˈnifluous a., flowing with or discharging venom.
1656 Blount Glossogr., Veneniferous, that bears poyson, venemous. 1891 Cent. Dict. s.v., The venenifluous fang of a rattlesnake.
July 14, 2021
snack commented on the list la-bas-8kJjgQGj4c2h
hysterogenic zones : No doubt Charcot determines very well the phases of the attack, notes the nonsensical and passional attitudes, the contortionistic movements; he discovers hysterogenic zones and can, by skilfully manipulating the ovaries, arrest or accelerate the crises, but as for foreseeing them and learning the sources and the motives and curing them, that's another thing.
Là-bas
July 12, 2021
snack commented on the list aubreys-brief-lives
cod's-head n. mid 16th-19th cent. a dupe, or fool; thus the fool's head, often the 'thickness' of the cod's-head, noting mid 17th cent use of cods meaning testicles, thus cod'shead or codshead, penis
June 4, 2016
snack commented on the word Frohsinnsfaschismus
The god-awful mediocrity of organized fun.
August 13, 2015