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

American slang term
make like a fish
.
    However, before launching rashly into the waters, you should prepare. Sod’s Law states that you’ll be halfway through showering before you realise that there’s almost no shampoo left in the bottle; so you should
duffifie
it now. Duffifie is an old Aberdeenshire verb meaning ‘to lay a bottle on its side for some time … that it may be completely drained of the few drops remaining’. It’s therefore much more compact than the English equivalent of
making the bottle confess.
Either way, a bit of duffifying will save you much annoyance later on.
    As you set the waters running you might wish to notice the
shower curtain effect
, which would doubtless have interested Benjamin Franklin. When the shower starts, the curtain will be sucked in towards you, and though several theories have been proposed, modern science is still uncertain as to why this happens.
    Even as the curtains are being pulled in around you, you will probably experience the
curglaff
, which is another old Scots term, this time for the feeling you get when you’re hit with cold water. Your heart gallops, your blood rushes, and, if you’re Benjamin Franklin, you don’t like it one little bit.
    Anyway, there’s nothing to be done about that. It is time to
buddle
(scrub in water) all that is not
illutible
(unwashawayable). Baudelaire said that humans were deluded if they thought they could wash away all their spots with vile tears, but Baudelaire was French and therefore knew nothing about hygiene or shower gel.
    There are funny words for almost all the parts of the body, but the important ones in the shower are these:
    Oxter
– armpit
    Popliteal
– behind the knees
    Dew-beaters
/
beetle-crushers
– feet (depending on your usual use for them)
    Inguinal
– relating to the groin
    Everywhere else is optional. After all, if you spend too long in there you’ll end up with the skin on the ends of your fingers
quobbled
.
Part IV: Stare, stare in the basin/And wonder what you’ve missed
Hair
    The Scots used to have a terrible reputation for lice. Whether this was justified, I don’t know. I deal in dictionaries, not Scotsmen. However,
the Scots Greys are in full march
once meant that lice were crawling all over your head. And a dictionary of 1811 defines
clan
thus:
    A family’s tribe or brotherhood; a word much used in Scotland. The head of the clan; the chief: an allusion to a story of a Scotchman, who, when a very large louse crept down his arm, put him back again, saying he was the head of the clan, and that, if injured, all the rest would resent it.
    All of which should explain why a comb used to be called a
Scotch louse trap
. So reviving this term will enrich the language and enrage the Scots, which is a double benefit.
    In fact, one can continue to enrage the Celtic fringes of the hair by dispensing with your comb and instead using your fingersto get your hair into some semblance of order. The Welsh had no reputation for lice, but they did once have a reputation for using cheap substitutes. So a
Welsh diamond
is a crystal, a
Welsh carpet
is a pattern painted on the floor, and a
Welsh comb
is your five fingers.
    The things people do to their hair are so weird and varied that the English language is brimming with useful words on the subject, most of which contain the element
trich
-, which was the ancient Greek word for the stuff. For example, smooth-haired people are
lissotrichous
and wavy-haired people are
cymotrichous
, and
trichotillomania
is a manic desire to pull out all your hair.
    If dictionaries are to be believed then the best possible thing you can do is cultivate dangling curls. Even Dr Johnson’s dictionary called a woman’s curls
heart-breakers
, and the Victorians called them
bow-catchers
, on the basis that they would catch handsome young men, or
beaus
. And Victorian women, in a rare fit of equality, would run after men who sported
bell-ropes
, which brought
belles
to ruin with their curly