"Owlglass, n." - Word of the Day from the OED

[Keith Davis]

You don't, by any chance, happen to be wearing a pink carnation in the the
lapel of your spandex outfit?

On Wed, May 30, 2012 at 1:56 PM, Madeleine Maudlin <
madeleinemaudlin at gmail.com> wrote:

> People might not know this?  Dave M. links what I'm thinking about.
>  Within a couple hours.
>
>
> On Wed, May 30, 2012 at 12:40 PM, Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> On Tue, May 29, 2012 at 9:15 PM, Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> .
>> >> http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/135502
>> >
>> > Rachel Owlglass
>> >
>> > http://v.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Rachel_Owlglass
>>
>> On Monday, Nige devoted a post to the 101st birthday of Gypsy Rose Lee
>> and used another word new to me – espieglerie. As he puts it: “What
>> charm, what finesse, what espieglerie - what a dame!”
>>
>> The OED gives us “Frolicsomeness, roguishness,” and cites an 1816
>> usage by Sir Walter Scott: “A pretty young woman with an air of
>> espieglerie which became her very well.” The other usage dates from
>> 1852, when Francis Edward Smedley writes: “Which act of
>> un-English-woman-like espiéglerie must be set down to the score of a
>> foreign education.” Both refer to women, the first with approval, the
>> second with xenophobic distaste.
>>
>> The root is French, espiéglerie: “mischievousness, impishness,
>> roguishness; piece of mischief, prank.” But the French is borrowed
>> from the name of the trickster figure in German folklore, Till
>> Eulenspiegel, the source of Strauss’ tone poem. In Ben Jonson’s The
>> Alchemist (1610), Till makes his first appearance in English
>> literature as “Howelglas” – that is, owl glass or, roughly,
>> Eulenspiegel.
>>
>> http://evidenceanecdotal.blogspot.com/2012/01/etymological-opaqueness.html
>>
>
>


-- 
www.innergroovemusic.com
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