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Examples
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If you had a Rolls Royce would you awap it for a Lada?
Irish Election 2009
oroboros commented on the word awap
"The huge and carved paneled doors hung awap on their hinges and a carved stone Virgin held in her arms a headless child."
--Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
April 18, 2009
divineosaur commented on the word awap
So what does this word mean?
May 31, 2009
Gammerstang commented on the word awap
I remember that Robert Graves in an essay called, I think, Mother Goose's Lost Goslings suggests that the rhyme which starts:
" Grey Goose and Gander
Waft your wings together,
Carry the Good King's Daughter
Over the One Strand River."
is a corruption of
" Grey Goose and Ganer
Wap your wings together,
And bear ye the good king's baner
Over the One-Strand River."
Graves argued that the poem was actually a Scottish lament for the death of King James IV at the Battle of Flodden Field.
He said that wap was what wild geese do with their wings in flight - I can't remember if it had two p's or one. He also talked about the lugubrious noise made by the geese. The theory is quite striking and the essay famous. Perhaps McCarthy has read it.
September 10, 2017