The Horologicon: A Day's Jaunt through the Lost Words of the English Language Read Online Free Page A

inappropriate to something that is often so troubling in foreign lands. The great actor David Garrick took a trip to Europe in 1764 and wrote to his brother saying:
    … I never, since I left England, till now, have regal’d Myself with a good house of Office, or as he calls it, a
Conveniency
– the holes in Germany are generally too large, & too round, chiefly owing I believe to the broader bottoms of the Germans […] We have a little English Gentleman with us who Slipt up to the Middle of one of the holes & we were some Minutes before we could disengage him. – in short you may assure Townley, (Who loves to hear of the state of these Matters) that in Italy the People
do their Needs
, in Germany they
disEmbogue
, but in England (& in England only) they
Ease
themselves.
    House of office
has a pleasing grandeur to it, although some ofGarrick’s contemporaries would have called it a
House of Commons
, which is good for the politically-minded. Medieval fellows would
go to siege
, which has a fine martial ring and is particularly appropriate for the constipated. And militarism was still present in the Victorian
scraping castle
. In fact, there are a million and one variants and euphemisms, all of which mean that since the thirteenth century nobody has had to be so vulgar as to
do their filth-hood
.
    While actually on the
gong-hole
one should take care about one’s precise actions. For example, in a house with thin walls it is a little rude to
squitter
or ‘void the excrement with a noise’. Your
purgation
,
exoneration
,
dejection
or whatever you choose to call it should be performed pianissimo and the
tantadlin tart
baked in silence.
    When it is all over you may turn your attention to the necessary paperwork, and if you think that the English language may fail you here, then you haven’t read Sir Thomas Urquhart’s 1653 translation of Rabelais, which has this tantalising little tip:
    I say and maintain, that of all torcheculs, arsewisps, bumfodders, tail-napkins, bunghole cleansers, and wipe-breeches, there is none in the world comparable to the neck of a goose, that is well downed, if you hold her head betwixt your legs. And believe me therein upon mine honour, for you will thereby feel in your nockhole a most wonderful pleasure, both in regard of the softness of the said down and of the temperate heat of the goose …
    Bumfodder
has had a rather curious history in the English language, for though it is now a very obscure word for loo roll, it stillsurvives in a shortened form.
Bumf
is, to this day, a rather derogatory term for large, but necessary, amounts of paperwork. And necessary it certainly is, if you want to avoid what were once called
fartleberries
.
    However, in the dire circumstance that you have neither paper nor a back-up goose, you can always resort to a corner of your cloak, provided David hasn’t crept up on you and cut it off, privily.
Part III: For all the water in the ocean/Can never turn the swan’s black legs to white,/Although she lave them hourly in the flood
    Benjamin Franklin invented the lightning conductor, bifocal glasses, the chair-desk and the
cold air bath
. This last innovation he described in a letter of 1768. The crux of it was that he didn’t like water:
    The shock of the cold water has always appeared to me, generally speaking, as too violent, and I have found it much more agreeable to my constitution to bathe in another element, I mean cold air. With this view I rise almost every morning, and sit in my chamber without any clothes whatever, half an hour or an hour, according to the season, either reading or writing.
    In the interests of water conservation, Franklin’s invention could be usefully revived, although it is hard to see what effect it would have on dirt and smell. So we of the twenty-first century are probably stuck with water; and, such is the pressure of time, we are probably going to use a shower. The best thing about takinga bath is that you get to use the 1950s