In a Word

rarissima
n. extremely rare books, manuscripts, or prints

In The Book Hunter (1863), John Hill Burton identifies five types of “persons who meddle with books”:

  • “A bibliognoste, from the Greek, is one knowing in title-pages and colophons, and in editions; the place and year when printed; the presses whence issued; and all the minutiae of a book.”
  • “A bibliographe is a describer of books and other literary arrangements.”
  • “A bibliomane is an indiscriminate accumulator, who blunders faster than he buys, cock-brained and purse-heavy.”
  • “A bibliophile, the lover of books, is the only one in the class who appears to read them for his own pleasure.”
  • “A bibliotaphe buries his books, by keeping them under lock, or framing them in glass cases.”

These groups seem to have been proposed by French librarian Jean Joseph Rive. Bibliographer Gabriel Peignot added four more:

  • bibliolyte, a destroyer of books
  • bibliologue, one who discourses about books
  • bibliotacte, a classifier of books
  • bibliopée, “‘l’art d’écrire ou de composer des livres,’ or, as the unlearned would say, the function of an author.”
| Language · Literature

Hunting

In 1975 British biologist Peter Scott proposed dubbing the Loch Ness Monster Nessiteras rhombopteryx after a blurry underwater photograph seemed to show one of the creature’s fins.

He’d intended the name to mean “monster of Ness with diamond-shaped fin,” but the Daily Telegraph pointed out that its letters could be rearranged to spell “Monster hoax by Sir Peter S.”

American lawyer Robert Rines, who led several expeditions to the loch, pointed out that they can also spell “Yes, both pix are monsters, R.”

08/09/2024 UPDATE: Reader Alan Mandel points out that they can also spell BY INEPTEST HOAXER, MR. ROSS — so now you’ll have to make up your own mind about this post. (Thanks, Alan.)

| Language

Notice

Sign on an English industrial computer, October 1968:

ACHTUNG ALLES LOOKENPEEPERS

Das computermachine ist nicht fur gefingerpoken und mittengrabben. Ist easy schnappen der springenwerk, blowenfusen und poppencorken mit spitssparken. Ist nicht fur gewerken bei das dummkopfen. Das rubbernecken sightseeren keepen hands in das pockets — relaxen und watch das blinkenlights.

(Via Eureka.)

| Language

Term Limits

Little-used words:

anopisthograph
adj. having writing on one side only

antapology
n. a reply to an apology

antephialtic
n. something that prevents nightmares

centesimate
v. to select one person in every hundred for a punishment

citramontane
adj. relating to this side of the mountains

demonachize
v. to remove monks from

frounce
n. a canker in the mouth of a hawk

hendecad
n. a period of eleven years

laquearian
adj. armed with a noose

pastinaceous
adj. of the nature of a parsnip

philosophunculist
n. an insignificant philosopher

spartostatics
n. the study of the strength of ropes

swinehood
n. pigs collectively

togated
adj. clad in a toga

trouserdom
n. the domain of those who wear trousers

yealing
n. a person of one’s own age

See Specialists.

| Language

Subtext

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acrostic#cite_ref-WilliamBrowne_33-0

William Browne’s 17th-century poem “Behold, O God!” forms a sort of symbolic acrostic. The text can be read conventionally, scanning each line from left to right, but the letters shown here in bold also spell out three verses from the New Testament:

  • Luke 23:42: “Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom.”
  • Matthew 27:46: “O God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”
  • Luke 23:39: “If thou art the Christ, save thyself and us.”

The three embedded quotes represent the three figures crucified on Golgotha, and the “INRI” at the top of the middle cross stands for IESVS NAZARENVS REX IVDÆORVM — Latin for “Jesus the Nazarene, King of the Jews” (John 19:19).

| Language · Poems · Religion

Reader Error

A good example of the effect of misplacing a comma is to be found in the ancient oracle — ‘Thou shalt go thou shalt return never by war shalt thou perish.’ By one way of placing the commas, the consulter of the oracle was forbidden to go upon the purposed expedition; by reading it his own way, he went and perished.

— W.T. Dobson, “Literaria,” Dublin University Magazine, August 1873

| Language

In a Word

diallelous
adj. involving circular reasoning

On my challenging an ingenious friend to define time and space, he answered, ‘Time is the condition of two things existing in the same space. Space is the condition of two things existing in the same time.’ This is clever, pointed, and true, but, as may easily be seen, diallelous.

— Francis Garden, A Dictionary of English Philosophical Terms, 1878

| Language

Expedient

Captured by the North Vietnamese in 1965, Navy pilot Jeremiah Denton was forced to participate in a propaganda interview to be broadcast in the United States. Pretending to be oppressed by the television lights, he blinked the word “T-O-R-T-U-R-E” in Morse code — alerting U.S. Naval Intelligence for the first time that American prisoners were being tortured.

In his Investigator’s Guide to Steganography (2003), Gregory Kipper notes that captured soldiers would sometimes use hand signals to transmit messages during photo ops; “often, these gestures were airbrushed out by the media.”

| Language

“Described in a Word”

The members of the Flemish Academy, of Anvers, recently determined to frame a word which would be readily intelligible to all who understand the language of Flanders and who had ever seen a horseless carriage, and the result was that after much deep thought they framed the following word: Snelpaardelooszonderspoorwegpetrolrijtuig. This euphonious word signifies ‘a carriage which is worked by means of petroleum, which travels fast, which has no horses and which is not run on rails.’ This is, from one point of view, a fine example of multum in parvo, but it may be questioned whether one extraordinarily long word is preferable to half a dozen short words.

— Georgetown [Colo.] Herald, May 19, 1899

| Language