Going through the last (not really) of the papers—just the ones I need for my tax return, and Matt’s. in the course of it, as might be expected, I found more treasures: reviews, ideas, quotations and words. Yes.
rootle verb Brit. informal term for root2. the terriers scuttled off to rootle through the brushwood. I rootled around for ten minutes. ORIGIN early 19th cent.: frequentative of root2. NICE ONE
aubade noun, a poem or piece of music appropriate to the dawn or early morning. ORIGIN late 17th cent.: from French, from Spanish albada, from alba ‘dawn’.
preterition noun [ mass noun], the action of passing over or disregarding a matter, especially the rhetorical technique of making summary mention of something by professing to omit it. the favourite rhetorical trope of the historical novelists is preterition, saying that you are not going to say something and thereby saying it. ORIGIN late 16th cent.: from late Latin praeteritio(n-), from praeterire ‘pass, go by’. OOOH, I LIKE THIS ONE.
frass noun [ mass noun ] 1 fine powdery refuse or fragile perforated wood produced by the activity of boring insects. 2 the excrement of insect larvae. ORIGIN mid 19th cent.: from German Frass, from fressen ‘devour’.
eidolon noun (pl.eidolons or eidola |-lə| ) literary: 1 an idealized person or thing. 2 a spectre or phantom. ORIGIN early 19th cent.: from Greek eidōlon, from eidos ‘form’.
Hypergraphia is a behavioural condition characterized by the intense desire to write or draw. Forms of hypergraphia can vary in writing style and content. It is a symptom associated with temporal lobe changes in epilepsy, which is the cause of the “Geschwind” syndrome, a mental disorder. YOU CAN LOOK THAT UP
Livonian —the least used European language. We’ll be seeing a rom-com soon, involving the Prince of Livonia (?) and a young American rock star.
recension noun, a revised edition of a text. under the Carolingians new recensions of the code were made. • [ mass noun ] the revision of a text. ORIGIN mid 17th cent. (in the sense ‘survey, review’): from Latin recensio(n-), from recensere ‘revise’, from re- ‘again’ + censere ‘to review’.
pelmet noun, a narrow border of cloth or wood, fitted across the top of a door or window to conceal the curtain fittings• Brit. informal a very short skirt. ORIGIN early 20th cent.: probably an alteration of French palmette, literally ‘small palm’ (see palmette) . I THOUGHT IT WOULD BE SOMETHING TO WEAR
sarky adjective (sarkier, sarkiest) Brit. informal, sarcastic. DERIVATIVES sarkily adverb, sarkiness noun ORIGIN early 20th cent.: abbreviation. GOOD ONE
phoneme noun, Phonetics, any of the perceptually distinct units of sound in a specified language that distinguish one word from another, for example p, b, d, and t in the English words pad, pat, bad, and bat. DERIVATIVES phonemic adjective, phonemics plural noun. ORIGIN late 19th cent.: from French phonème, from Greek phōnēma ‘sound, speech’, from phōnein ‘speak’.
morpheme noun Linguistics, a meaningful morphological unit of a language that cannot be further divided (e.g. in, come, -ing, forming incoming). DERIVATIVES morphemic adjective, morphemically adverb. ORIGIN late 19th cent.: from French morphème, from Greek morphē ‘form’, on the pattern of French phonème ‘phoneme’.
And that’s just the first few scraps.