Sunday, December 14, 2008

Ahh!oeds .. nifty tidbits


I've tried to be disciplined about dumping my nifty tidbits from my OED travels into a gmail draft email. I call such a tasty quotation an ahh!oed because as I sent each one to my chum, I'd begin the email with ahh another oed gem, or somesuch. so to save time, I label those emails ahh!oed. I'll have to root other plums out of emails I sent before this trick of collecting them occurred to me.
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impostor
1586 JAS. VI in Ellis Orig. Lett. Ser. I. III. 21 To takk..thaime to be malicious imposturis, as suirlie they are.
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Pegasus
1598 J. MARSTON Scourge of Villanie viii, The spirits Pegase Fantasie Should hoyse the soule from such base slauery.
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1945 H. G. WELLS Happy Turning v. 13 He [sc. Jesus] began his career as a good illiterate patriotic Jew in indignant revolt against the Roman rule and the Quisling priests who cringed to it.
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jasm..
1860 J. G. HOLLAND Miss Gilbert's Career xix. 350 'She's just like her mother... Oh! she's just as full of jasm!'.. 'Now tell me what "jasm" is.'.. 'If you'll take thunder and lightening, and a steamboat and a buzz-saw, and mix 'em up, and put 'em into a woman, that's jasm.'
1886 Harper's Mag. Sept. 579/2 The most shif'less creeter I ever see. Willin', but hain't no more jas'm than a dead corn-stalk. 1909 R. L. MASON Trailers x. 99 So as neither of you had the jasm or wit to find it out I thought I would. 1916 Daily Californian 18 Feb. 4/5 'Jaz-m' or 'Pep', much discussed terms which President Wheeler denied having originated.
//As folks are getting lost in World of Warcraft, I gotta watch out for getting dazed for days in the amazing maze of The OED.

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