Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Forgotten English -- pollincter

I bought myself the Jeffrey Kacirk Forgotten English 2008 Calendar: A 366 Day Calendar of Vanishing Vocabulary and Folklore on a whim, and will be posting some words periodically from it that I enjoy.

Today (actually January 14th's word, I'm catching up) is:

pollincter -- One who prepares materials for embalming the dead; [from] Latin pollinctus, French polingere, to wash and prepare a corpse for a funeral.

Enjoy learning archaic words and usages,

Bp

4 comments:

Stu Farnham said...

This will shock you, but ...

I *MUST* have that calendar!

Enjoy the arcane if it's all you've got going

Bpaul said...

I could post almost every day the words are so cool. I suggest you get it, endless entertainment. I'll probably have to get the book tho, because I'm using the past days for scrap paper or recycling them -- no record for my extended memory.

Must-need-etymology hehe

or is that entymology

one is bugs one is words, you know what I mean.

Catherine Just said...

that is cooooool. I will enjoy learning words I don't need to use but will shock others with my knowledge of them.

Stu Farnham said...

ahhh-hem,ahem (clearing of throat)

etymology /0ɛtɪˈmɒlədʒi/ noun. LME.
[ORIGIN Old French ethimologie (mod. étymologie) from Latin etimologia (Medieval Latin ethymologia, ethim-) from Greek etumologia, from etumologos student of etymology, from etumon: see etymon, -ology.]

1 An account of, or the facts relating to, the formation or development of a word and its meaning; the process of tracing the history of a word. LME. ▸ †b The original meaning of a word as shown by its etymology. L16–E18.

folk etymology.


2 The branch of grammar that deals with the way individual words are inflected. arch. L16.

3 The branch of linguistics that deals with the etymologies of words. M17.


etymologer noun = etymologist E17. ˌetymoˈlogic adjective = etymological E19. ˌetymoˈlogical adjective of or pertaining to etymology; in accordance with etymology: L16. ˌetymoˈlogically adverb in an etymological manner, according to the principles of etymology M18. etymologist noun M17.

Enjoy being a word geek, nolens-volens.

(Ha!)