In 1814, as the British burned Washington, commander Sir George Cockburn targeted the offices of the National Intelligencer newspaper, telling his troops, “Be sure that all the C’s are destroyed, so that the rascals cannot any longer abuse my name.”
British politician Thomas Erskine (1750-1823) had such an enormous ego that, it was said, one newspaper had to curtail its coverage because its “stock of capital I’s was quite exhausted.”
“No general proposition is worth a damn.” — Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. (a general proposition)
trusatile
adj. that may be pushed; worked or driven by pushing
In 1977 Jay Ames found he could approximate nursery rhymes using the names in the Toronto telephone directory:
Barr Barre Black Shipp
Haff Yew Anney Wool
Yetts Herr, Yetts Herr
Three Baggs Voll
Wan Farr Durr Master
Won Forder Dame
An Wun Varder Littleboys
Watt Lief Sinne Allain.
In 1963 the TV show I’ve Got A Secret searched the phone books of New York City to find residents whose names, in order, approximated the lyrics to “In the Good Old Summertime”:
Some words become famous for their implausibly specific definitions:
ucalegon: a neighbor whose house is on fire
nosarian: one who argues that there is no limit to the possible largeness of a nose
undoctor: to make unlike a doctor
Mrs. Byrne’s Dictionary of Unusual, Obscure, and Preposterous Words, by Josefa Heifetz Byrne, collects examples ranging from atpatruus (“a great-grandfather’s grandfather’s brother”) to zumbooruk (“a small cannon fired from the back of a camel”). My own favorite is groak, “to watch people silently while they’re eating, hoping they will ask you to join them.”
Alas, most of these don’t appear in the magisterial Oxford English Dictionary. Accordingly, in 1981 Jeff Grant burrowed his way into the OED in a deliberate search for obscure words. When he reached the end of A he sent his 10 favorite finds to the British magazine Logophile:
acersecomic: one whose hair was never cut
acroteriasm: the act of cutting off the extreme parts of the body, when putrefied, with a saw
alerion: an eagle without beak or feet
all-flower-water: cow’s urine, as a remedy
ambilevous: left-handed on both sides
amphisbaenous: walking equally in opposite directions
andabatarian: struggling while blindfolded
anemocracy: government by wind
artolatry: the worship of bread
autocoprophagous: eating one’s own dung
“I have been working slowly through ‘B’ and so far my favourite is definitely ‘bangstry’, defined as ‘masterful violence’, an obsolete term that is surely overdue for a comeback.”
(From Word Ways, November 1981.)
Sign, spotted by Ellen Feld. It was in the window of a Cincinnati sporting goods store and this is what it said:
NOW IS THE DISCOUNT
OF OUR WINTER TENTS
— Ron Alexander, “Metropolitan Diary,” New York Times, March 15, 1989
As the U.S. tariff act of June 6, 1872, was being drafted, planners intended to exempt “Fruit plants, tropical and semi-tropical for the purpose of propagation or cultivation.”
Unfortunately, as the language was being copied, a comma was inadvertently moved one word to the left, producing the phrase “Fruit, plants tropical and semi-tropical for the purpose of propagation or cultivation.”
Importers pounced, claiming that the new phrase exempted all tropical and semi-tropical fruit, not just the plants on which it grew.
The Treasury eventually had to agree that this was indeed what the language now said, opening a loophole for fruit importers that deprived the U.S. government of an estimated $1 million in revenue. Subsequent tariffs restored the comma to its intended position.
George Washington’s teenage journal contains this love acrostic:
From your bright sparkling Eyes, I was undone;
Rays, you have, more transparent than the sun,
Amidst its glory in the rising Day,
None can you equal in your bright arrays;
Constant in your calm and unspotted Mind;
Equal to all, but will to none Prove kind,
So knowing, seldom one so Young, you’l Find.
Ah! woe’s me, that I should Love and conceal,
Long have I wish’d, but never dare reveal,
Even though severely Loves Pains I feel;
Xerxes that great, was’t free from Cupids Dart,
And all the greatest Heroes, felt the smart.
Reading the first letter of each line spells FRANCES ALEXA. Who was this? Possibly the subject’s full name was Frances Alexander and Washington hadn’t finished the poem.
“When Dr. Barton Warren was informed that Dr. Vowel was dead, he exclaimed, ‘What! Vowel dead? Well, thank heaven it was neither you nor I.'”
— William S. Walsh, Handy-Book of Literary Curiosities, 1892