tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34100394210713838612011-07-07T21:51:07.340-07:00Pelican's Journal of Lost WordsPelican Morehousehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13981527366572418318noreply@blogger.comBlogger171100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3410039421071383861.post-67613603247770602012009-07-09T09:56:00.000-07:002009-07-09T10:51:46.424-07:00

Pronounced shuh-NEE-bull, this is a fascinating word I stumbled upon while in the midst of thrilling research into the history of the United States Postal Service. It would seem that in 1904, a small, ragged army of put-upon coal miners executed a coup of sorts in the Wisconsin village of Shaniebuhl. (Do not bother looking for it on a map. There is no way of knowing if it still exists, much less

Pelican Morehousehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13981527366572418318noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3410039421071383861.post-26944447722977917722009-07-09T09:00:00.000-07:002009-07-10T07:38:01.042-07:00

An unblossomed bud, after Sister Agnes Plippis (1822-?), late of the Anglican Community of St. Margaret in Grinstead, England. For the majority of Sister Agnes's life, her green thumb was a thing of legend. "Where 'ere she walks," an Anglican broadsheet, The Golden Angle, proclaimed in the Spring of '64, "the earth warms and billows in verdant majesty. Sunflowers shoot enormous, tall and wide

Pelican Morehousehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13981527366572418318noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3410039421071383861.post-1752554411515250392008-02-18T08:31:00.000-08:002008-03-03T07:01:39.401-08:00

An optical illusion-producing pattern in tile; from Pettiere Dolachex, a Swiss plumber of the radical left who in the turbulent 20s scandalously employed his technique in the houses of bourgeoisie with the effect of disorienting them in their bathrooms. After he had been ousted from the Swiss Plumber's Union in bloody internecine warfare initiated - it was rumored - by insidious agents of the

Pelican Morehousehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13981527366572418318noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3410039421071383861.post-20449446369362600122008-02-18T07:56:00.000-08:002008-03-03T07:02:35.341-08:00

When someone deflects one question by answering another, they have engaged in a frambalism. Now a commonplace in political campaigns, the word is actually derived from a parlor game, called Frambala!, popular among America's idle rich in the early 20th century. The rules of the game were as follows: Say there are three participants; in the opening round, Person A is asked a question by both

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Larschious described a style of distilling spirits common to the rural poor of Iowa during the Prohibition. It was ostensibly linked to a recipe relied on by generations of native Sioux, and typically involved the use of nettle, tree bark, and black walnuts. Numbers are hard to come by, but folk history suggests the consumption of larschious spirits was a fatal transaction up to twenty-percent of

Pelican Morehousehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13981527366572418318noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3410039421071383861.post-4552610891662027802008-02-18T07:08:00.000-08:002008-03-03T07:04:50.658-08:00

A stangler is a member of a quasi-secretive fraternal society of New Englanders whose fathers were killed in fishing accidents. Many members would tattoo the word "stangler" to their chins and grow beards - this stemming from a tale oft told of a bearded seaman who died on a trawler in a terrible gale in Massachusetts waters and whose tradition-starting tattoo was revealed upon his death. The

Pelican Morehousehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13981527366572418318noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3410039421071383861.post-44431620174164593382008-02-18T06:39:00.001-08:002008-02-18T07:08:15.754-08:00

A crime of some sophistication executed with such flawless methodology that the perpetrator is not only never apprehended, but a convincing suspect is never even investigated. Pronounced to rhyme with "crudite," it should come as no surprise that this word derives from French. In 1957, Emanuelle Fiecundite was a gallic painter of shady origins. Letters were addressed to the elusive artiste both

Pelican Morehousehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13981527366572418318noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3410039421071383861.post-33555526025318879822008-02-18T06:03:00.001-08:002008-03-03T07:07:03.560-08:00

While I do not myself indulge in the reading of children's books, I have been led to understand that the Harry Potter series, by British authoress J.K. Rowling, met with some success in the publishing world in recent years. The word blantamold stems from that franchise, having circulated with alarming rapidity in London circles - with apparently nothing better to do - prior to the release of the

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This was the nickname of a diminutive pugilist famous for a brief time in the last decade of the 19th century. An unlikely heavyweight, the Zipper stayed for the most part on the periphery of the American boxing scene, competing for small purses in bare-knuckle bouts held as far away from local New England police as possible. In his posthumously published memoir "What I Seen," Hall of Fame

Pelican Morehousehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13981527366572418318noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3410039421071383861.post-31844410172759723472008-02-18T04:28:00.000-08:002008-02-18T04:39:40.640-08:00

A center cut of meat from the extinct African Tuxedo Monkey (known as such for its peculiar coloration: the Tuxedo Monkey was sheer white save three black "buttons" on its chest, black "sleeves" and a curiously correct black "bow-tie"), killed off by colonizing French poachers and gourmands in the northwest of the continent. Belf meat, described by the famous American big game hunter Donovan

Pelican Morehousehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13981527366572418318noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3410039421071383861.post-41552596488366172322008-02-02T08:21:00.000-08:002008-02-04T14:58:54.748-08:00

On the Oregon Trail in the early 19th century, in the vicinity of what came to be known as Tansecky Pass in the Rocky Mountains, Wyoming, Rosalyn and Herdon Tansecky had a child too sickly to bear the rigors and privations of continued travel. Stuck, Herdon sent a nephew back to Cheyenne, where his brother-in-law, a man named Roebuck, had accumulated a tidy fortune in dry goods and livestock. The

Pelican Morehousehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13981527366572418318noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3410039421071383861.post-50699325423357535352008-02-02T07:23:00.000-08:002008-02-03T10:57:31.381-08:00

Containing elements of the words "sliver," "volley" and, especially, "shiv," it should come as no surprise that this euphonious word refers to a weapon and that, considering its Piccadillyesque tonal arrangement, it originates in the Australian outback circa early 19th century. The nature of the word, however, brought me very nearly to tears alternately from the comic portent of its meaning and

Pelican Morehousehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13981527366572418318noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3410039421071383861.post-34772720265615982252008-01-25T14:23:00.000-08:002008-02-03T10:54:38.349-08:00

As a young girl, right around the time she was betrothed - at seven - to Henry V, Holy Roman Emperor, Matilda (or Maud) (or Maude) invented the game of Tippins, later employed on a wide scale and for unnumbered centuries by Royal subjects on the occasion of the monarch's birthday. Matilda's reign, though lasting only eight months in the year 1114, incited the ire of Britannia, who believed her

Pelican Morehousehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13981527366572418318noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3410039421071383861.post-77049449072684840612008-01-24T16:54:00.001-08:002008-02-03T11:13:16.687-08:00

During a period of approximately three years in the first decade of the 20th century, Berlin's Jewish community was entranced by the image of one of its own: Yehuda Plizvitz, a young playboy considered by one and all to be the most dapper, dashing fellow born in generations. The sartorially resplendent Plizvitz enjoyed a fame, for three brief years, the likes of which could only be appreciated by

Pelican Morehousehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13981527366572418318noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3410039421071383861.post-50393618294236027002008-01-24T15:02:00.000-08:002008-02-04T15:04:11.749-08:00

In the Autumn of 1756, Lady Marjorie Parks-Sand, a botanist accompanying an expedition through the Alps, discovered the milkwaist, a species of flower belonging to the exceedingly rare dioecious population in which all plants are either androecious (male, pollen producing) or gynoecious (female, seed producing). It is not known how Lady Parks-Sand settled on the name for this beautiful and almost

Pelican Morehousehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13981527366572418318noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3410039421071383861.post-88449516153812630092008-01-24T14:23:00.000-08:002008-01-24T14:30:23.314-08:00

Pronounced "care-a-geen" by the Australian Aborigines and rhymed with "margarine" in American English, chargerine is a spice derived from certain coral rocks found predominantly in the Pacific Rim, off the shores of Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Australia, and in the Caribbean. Lately fallen into fashion among the eco-hungry crowd, chargerine is purchased as small rocks and then ground.

Pelican Morehousehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13981527366572418318noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3410039421071383861.post-61583736940356304482008-01-23T16:33:00.000-08:002008-01-24T14:23:00.693-08:00

The braythistle is a larger-than-average chocolate brown bird with iridescent blue spots. A desert bird and herbivore, the braythistle has a high-pitched staccato call and survives almost exclusively on the milk of cacti. Once a staple of cowboy poetry, the braythistle symbolized proximity to water. Curiously, braythistle was also a word denoting an architectural feature of medieval fortresses,

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