1word1day | Entries tagged with shakespeare

incarnadine [in-kahr-nuh-dahyn, -din, -deen]

adjective:
1 blood-red; crimson
2 flesh-colored; pale pink
verb:
to make incarnadine, redden

Examples:

Inspired by the dreamlike, incarnadine color schemes of the series' covers, this piece exudes a fresh and fearsome attitude befitting an unapologetic battler of demons and fantastic beasts. (Rich Johnston, Level 52 and Vault Comics Create Statue For Natasha Alterici's Heathen, Bleeding Cool News, April 2020)

That outpouring of flowers from an upper window, washing down like a sea incarnadine around the white walls of the medieval fortress. (Chris Upton, 'Has sense of grief been hit by poppy spectacle?', The Birmingham Post, December 2014)

No, this my hand will rather / The multitudinous seas incarnadine, / Making the green one red. (William Shakespeare, Macbeth)

Oh no. He was emberant. Incarnadine. He was bright with better bright beneath, like copper-gilded gold. (Patrick Rothfuss, The Slow Regard of Silent Things )

On the lips incarnadine of my own beloved Joy there is honey most divine. (Giuseppe Calvino, Sicilian Erotica)

She ran quick with a little cry, and coming again, sat crowned, incarnadine in the blushing depths of the gold. (M P Shiel, The Purple Cloud)

Origin:

1590s (adj.) 'flesh-colored, carnation-colored, pale red, pink,' from French incarnadin (16c), from dialectal Italian incarnadino 'flesh-color,' from Late Latin incarnatio. The adjective now is archaic or obsolete. Its direct root might be the noun incarnadine 'blood-red; flesh-color,' though this is not attested until 1620s.(Online Etymology Dictionary)

Carn- is the Latin root for 'flesh,' and 'incarnates' is Latin for flesh-colored. English speakers picked up the 'pinkish' sense of 'incarnadine' back in the late 1500s. Since then, the adjective has come to refer to the dark red color of freshly cut, fleshy meat as well as to the pinkish color of the outer skin of some humans. The word can be used as a verb, too, meaning 'to redden.' Shakespeare used it that way in Macbeth: 'Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather the multitudinous seas incarnadine, making the green one red.' (Merriam-Webster)

sallymn.livejournal.com

adjective:
(Scot and North England) disgusting, horrid; loathsome

Examples:

In a sometimes ugsome, plague-filled world of violence and adventure that evokes the swashbuckling nature of The Count of Monte Cristo, you're presented with so many super heroic abilities, you feel like an omniscient kid in a candy store. (Harold Goldberg, 2012 In Review: The Best Games Of 2012, NPR, December 2012)

              When doukin in the River Nile
              I met a muckle crocodile.
              He flicked his tail, he blinked his ee,
              Syne bared his ugsome teeth at me.
                                                 J K Annand, 'Crocodile'

At all events, the statute literally recites the 'ugsome oaths' that are used by the old versifier. (Julian Sharman. A Cursory History of Swearing)

I found my Vivien full sick, and a weariful and ugsome time had I with her ere she recovered of her malady. (Emily Sarah Holt, In Convent Walls)

Origin:

1350–1400; Middle English, equivalent to ugg(en) to fear, cause loathing (Old Norse ugga to fear, dread; cf. Ugly) + -some-some (Dictionary.com)

If this reminds you of the inarticulate cry of disgust that most often appears as ugh! then you’re on the mark. The conventional spelling of ugh! was probably influenced by that of ugsome, something loathsome or horrible. In a case of linguistic turn-and-turn-about, ugsome derives from the ancient and long defunct word ug, which about a millennium ago came into English from the Old Norse ugga, to dread. That Old Norse word is also the source of ugly (which meant frightful or horrible before it weakened to refer to something merely unpleasing in appearance). You could argue that ugsome is the opposite of handsome.

In the centuries before Shakespeare, ugsome was common enough, mostly in Scotland and northern England, but then almost completely died out except in dialect. It was resurrected in the eighteenth century by writers seeking an archaic word to help set a historical scene. The following century, popular authors such as Sir Walter Scott (“Like an auld dog that trails its useless ugsome carcass into some bush or bracken”), Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton (“‘’Tis an ugsome bit of road!’ said the Corporal, looking round him”) and Charles Dickens ('One very ugsome devil with goggling eyes, seems to hold up frightful claws, to bar the traveller’s way') regained it some small exposure, though it was never very popular. (World Wide Words)

sallymn.livejournal.com

flibbertigibbet [flib-er-tee-jib-it]

noun:
1 a silly, scatterbrained, or garrulous person
2 (archaic) a gossip

Examples:

This is how we will stay strong through this crisis. Why, just last night I entered my bathroom a mild-mannered person sliding quickly into madness and emerged a self-proclaimed flibbertigibbet with red hair and a weird husky voice modeled after Angelica, the second of Ryan's characters in the film. Is this what the public (my houseplants) wants? No. Is it what the public (my houseplants) needs? Absolutely. I am an altruistic flibbertigibbet and you're welcome. (R Eric Thomas, Finding Solace in Life's Absurdity and Terror in Joe Versus the Volcano, yahoonews, April 2020)

A flibbertigibbet in a Little Red Riding Hood raincoat, with a reckless habit of stepping out on to life’s busiest roads? (Kiran Sidhu, How my farmer friend Wilf gave me a new perspective, The Guardian, August 2021)

As blue chips turn into penny stocks, Wall Street seems less like a symbol of America's macho capitalism and more like that famous Jane Austen character Mrs. Bennet, a flibbertigibbet always anxious about getting richer and her 'poor nerves'. (Kiran Sidhu, Well-toned first lady brings style to her job, South Florida SunSentinel, March 2009)

All this responsibility at such an early age made her a bitchy flibbertigibbet. (Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five)

Origin:

1540s, 'chattering gossip, flighty woman,' probably a nonsense word meant to sound like fast talking; as the name of a devil or fiend it dates from c. 1600 (together with Frateretto, Hoberdidance, Tocobatto). OED lists 15 spellings and thinks flibbergib is the original. (Online Etymology Dictionary)

It's a fine word to throw out, in the appropriate circumstances, though there's a risk of tripping over all those syllables. That's no doubt why it has had so many spellings.

The original seems to have been recorded about 1450 as fleper-gebet, which may have been just an imitation of the sound of meaningless speech (babble and yadda-yadda-yadda have similar origins). It started out to mean a gossip or chattering person, but quickly seems to have taken on the idea of a flighty or frivolous woman. A century later it had become respectable enough for Bishop Latimer to use it in a sermon before King Edward VI, though he wrote it as flybbergybe.

The modern spelling is due to Shakespeare, who borrowed it from one of the 40 fiends listed in a book by Samuel Harsnet in 1603. In King Lear Edgar uses it for a demon or imp: "This is the foul fiend Flibbertigibbet... He gives the web and the pin, squints the eye, and makes the harelip; mildews the white wheat, and hurts the poor creature of earth".

There has been yet a third sense, taken from a character of Sir Walter Scott's in Kenilworth, for a mischievous and flighty small child. But despite Shakespeare and Scott, the most usual sense is still the original one. (World Wide Words)

trellia-chan.livejournal.com

tetchy: [tech-ee]

adjective: irritable, touchy, testy, bad-tempered.

First known use 1592 by Shakespeare in "Romeo and Juliet." Obscure etymology.

theidolhands.livejournal.com

brind·ed [ˈbrindəd]:
origin: (1623) Middle English; Old Norse brǫndóttr.

adjective [also, brindled]
Archaic; an animal that is beige, tan, grey or neutral in color with darker striations or markings on top -- such as a brown tabby cat.

Quotes:
"Thrice the brinded cat hath mew'd." — Shakespeare, The Tragedy of Macbeth
"Glory be to God for dappled things / For skies of couple colour as a brinded cow — Gerard Manley Hopkins, Pied Beauty

( other brinded animals )

Entries tagged with shakespeare

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