Rescue for Lost Words

At first, Ivor Brown, associate editor of the London Observer, thought of his hobby as nothing more than "easy, pleasant work that I could do in bed." From his midnight reading, he would jot down old and rare words whose color and flavor deserved rescue from oblivion. Later, he took to publishing his jottings, brought out six volumes in nine years. This week, with the U.S. publication of his latest two books, No Idle Words and Having the Last Word, in one volume (E. P. Dutton; $3), U.S. readers could go hunting for rescued relics to enrich their own speech. Samples:

Amygdaline means almondlike, "for almond appears to be derived from the Greek amygdal. . . The word would fitly decorate one of those ladies who must have their hair in the hue of a blanched almond. Amygdaline blondes are many, and the epithet would give them more dignity than they usually possess."

Bodkin, in one meaning, was "a person wedged in between two others when there was room for two or two and a half at the most." It might be highly useful "in this age of crowded transport and of rush-hour massing of bodies."

Brandle once meant to befuddle with brandy--"Certainly ... a more gentlemanly term than some such current usage as 'well ginned up.' "

Coze, to Jane Austen; was a quiet chat. "A Cozer, for me," says Brown, "would sit on dark, faded leather and talk in a low, deep voice, chuckling at his own mischief."

Curioso "may be well-nigh extinct, but he is as good a fellow, surely, as the virtuoso who survives almost in abundance. A curioso took care, inquired, studied, was expert. He practised curiosity . . ."

Dandiprat "began as a small coin and ended as a small boy . . . [But] where is the imp now?"

February, once a word of ill-omen, should be an adjective of gloom, just as Shakespeare once used it, in Much Ado About Nothing: "Why, what's the matter that you have such a February face, so full of frost, of storm, of cloudiness?"

Fustilarian was the word used by Falstaff to describe Hostess Quickly. It is "a comic formation based on fustilugs, and fustiluggery itself refers to fat and frowsiness, usually feminine. Fustilug [and] fus-tilarian certainly merit rediscovery . . . for application to a gross virago."

Niffle meant a "human trifler, a man of straw and self-conceit ... in the popinjay class ... To call a man a niffle is to put him in his place, which is next to nowhere."

Thribble meant in Elizabethan times to muddle through, and Englishmen "are foolish to have lost it."

Tintamarre was a clatter, which might be useful for the modern cocktail party with "its tinkle (or crash) of glasses, and strident babble of voices."

In the course of his rescues, Ivor Brown has found that the English have been strangely inconsistent in the words they keep and those they throw away. Why, for instance, does flay persist but not the igth Century word flay some? Why is gruesome still around but not the verb to grue (shudder)? Concludes Curioso Brown, with a February frown: despite the inventiveness of slang, the English language seems doomed to be drowned out by the tintamarre of the commonplace; all it can hope to do is to thribble along.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.