words
Once in a while a word gets stuck in my teeth and I have to find a way to dislodge it. Today I had two such words.
The first is stoop. Such as, I remember sitting on the stoop with my grandmother when she came to visit. Or: The front stoop was where we spent all our time on summer evenings.
What an odd, odd word, no? But the OED tells me that it has been in use in this way since at least 1789:
a. ‘An uncovered platform before the entrance of a house, raised, and approached by means of steps. ... 1789 Massachusetts Spy 20 Aug. 3/2 Several persons were in a stoop and at windows within fifteen or twenty feet from the tree. 1833 C. P. TRAILL Backwoods of Canada ix. (1836) 142 The Canadians call these verandahs ‘stoups’. 1837 HAWTHORNE Amer. Note-bks. 13 July (1883) 58 Councillors seated about, sitting on benches near the bar, or on the stoop along the front of the house. 1856 MISS WARNER Hills Shatemuc ii, He was cleaning the harness of the wagon, and he took it out into the broad stoop outside of the kitchen door. 1883 STEVENSON Across the Plains (1896) 16 The clear, bright, gardened townships spoke of country fare and pleasant summer evenings on the stoop.The other word is from the poem I quoted in a post a few days ago, to wit:
I say that words are men and when we spellAren't you wondering what a great Bridal could be? Here, the OED explains it:
In alphabets we deal with living things;
With feet and thighs and breasts, fierce heads, strong wings;
Material Powers, great Bridals, Heaven and Hell.
1. A wedding feast or festival; a wedding. (The sense ‘wedding feast’ is distinct in early usage; by the time of Wyclif the word was often extended to include the whole proceedings of the wedding or marriage, in which use it was often made plural (cf. L. nuptiæ, sponsalia, F. noces, ME. sposailes, mod. nuptials); it is now chiefly poetic, except when used attributively (see 2).And while I was sloshing around in the OED I decided to look up one of my least favorite words. To my surprise, I found that people have been using this word in the same way for a long time:
Hubby. A familiar colloquialism for HUSBAND.I provide these quotes in the hope that they will curl your toes, and convince you never to use the H word, if indeed you have been committing that particular infelicitude. And before you ask: no. Infelicitude is not in the OED, but I'll remind you that human language is a flexible construct, ever renewing itself. It is within my power (and yours too) to coin new words by taking liberties with bound prefixes and unbound suffixes and even (gasp) infixes, jumbling all or some of these up with whatever roots strike my fancy.1688 E. RAVENSCROFT London Cuckolds 28 Oh my hubby, dear, dear, dear hubby. 1798 MORTON Secr. worth knowing Epil. (Farmer), The wife, poor thing..Scarce knows again her lover in her hubby. 1803 True Briton in Spirit Pub. Jrnls. (1804) VII. 274 My dear Hubbey, this can't make me sick. 1887 Pall Mall G. 23 July 11 In disputes between a hubby and his better half.