Futility Closet

I have tried a hundred times, I guess,
To find a rhyme for month;
I have failed a hundred times, I know,
But succeeded the hundred and one-th.

There were two men a training went.
It was in December month;
One had his bayonet thrown away,
The other had his gun th-
rown away.

– Miscellaneous Notes and Queries, August 1894

phobophobia
n. fear of phobias

Terror and horror, from Darwin's The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals.

Ann Radcliffe wrote: "Terror and horror are so far opposite, that the first expands the soul, and awakens the faculties to a high degree of life; the other contracts, freezes, and nearly annihilates them."

Or, in Devendra Varma's words, "The difference between Terror and Horror is the difference … between the smell of death and stumbling against a corpse."

A gentleman who was in the habit of interlarding his discourse with the expression 'I say,' having been informed by a friend that a certain individual had made some ill-natured remarks upon this peculiarity, took the opportunity of addressing him in the following amusing style of rebuke:–'I say, sir, I hear say you say I say "I say" at every word I say. Now, sir, although I know I say "I say" at every word I say, still I say, sir, it is not for you to say I say "I say" at every word I say.'

– Charles Carroll Bombaugh, Gleanings for the Curious from the Harvest-Fields of Literature, 1890

nudiustertian
adj. of the day before yesterday

Epitaph in the churchyard of Llangerrig, Montgomeryshire:

– Charles Bombaugh, Facts and Fancies for the Curious From the Harvest-Fields of Literature, 1860

A whimsical letter written by W. S. Gilbert notes 'a great want' among poets. 'I should like to suggest,' he says, 'that any inventor who is in need of a name for his invention, would confer a boon on the rhymsters, and at the same time insure himself many gratuitous advertisements, if he would select a word that rhymes to one of the many words in common use, which have but few rhymes or none at all. A few more words rhyming with 'love' are greatly wanted; 'revenge' and 'avenge' have no rhyming word, except 'Penge' and 'Stonehenge'; 'coif' has no rhyme at all; 'starve' has no rhyme except (oh, irony!) 'carve'; 'scarf' has no rhyme, though I fully expect to be told that 'laugh,' 'calf,' and 'half' are admissible, which they certainly are not.'

– Miscellaneous Notes and Queries, March 1894

ROT13 is a simple way to encipher a message: Just advance each of its letters 13 positions forward in the alphabet. Thus ABC becomes NOP, FUR becomes SHE, and EBBS becomes ROOF.

Curiously, ABJURER and NOWHERE … become each other.

"Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" "revised by a committee of eminent preceptors and scholars":

Shine with irregular, intermitted light, sparkle at intervals, diminutive, luminous, heavenly body.
How I conjecture, with surprise, not unmixed with uncertainty, what you are,
Located, apparently, at such a remote distance from, and at a height so vastly superior to this earth, the planet we inhabit,
Similar in general appearance and refractory powers to the precious primitive octahedron crystal of pure carbon, set in the aerial region surrounding the earth.

— William T. Dobson, Poetical Ingenuities and Eccentricities, 1882

cultrivorous
adj. devouring knives