Auriferous

 August 13 Word of the Day: Auriferous

 

A Glossary of Everyday Colours

 

umbrageous

shady; yielding shade

“purple paths umbrageous in white heat”

 

testudineous

resembling the shell of a tortoise

“a deliberately slow reader, his text reflected in testudineous frames”

 

quiddany

marmalade; confection of quinces made with sugar

“their hi-vis lunchtime made a queue of quiddany”

 

plunket

a kind of blue colour

“the sea was as plunket as they had ever seen it”

 

melliferous

productive of honey

“melliferous the clouds at sunrise”

 

lutarious

living in mud; of the colour of mud

“the wash-up is a fashion for lutarious home exteriors”

 

holland

fine linen made in Holland

“japan the master’s gold landscape, his clouds holland”

 

herbescent

growing into herbs

“in watercolour she had perfected herbescent abstraction”

 

erubescent

reddish; somewhat red; inclining to redness

“angry traffic halted at erubescent lights”

 

darkling

a participle, as it seems, from darkle, which yet I have never found; being in the dark; being without a light; a word merely poetical

“a blackness darkling where naught may be found”  

 

cerulifick

having the power to produce a blue colour

“musicians famed for their cerulifick techniques”

 

auriferous

that which produces gold

“acacias again auriferous in August”

 

[Selections from Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of 1755]

 

 

 

Melon

 August 12 Word of the Day: Melon

 

Tragedy has been averted in recent days when it seemed the King of Thailand might expire from a surfeit of melons. The court could no longer suppress the fact of the king’s secret addiction to the fruit, which began at the age of 8. Some say, earlier. The President of Russia has been exposed as the supplier of high-quality melons, planed in secretly from the best melon nations. He was not available for comment. Some of the melons classify as luxury melons, “according to sources familiar with the matter.”  ‘Melon-drama!’ blasted one local tabloid, a witty sub-editor’s play on melodrama, suggesting things had got out of hand, or was that with ice-cream and macadamia nuts? The King of England admitted to enjoying melon on occasion but could not be drawn on how often, beyond saying it’s appropriate at any meal. He grows his own. The French President sent his best wishes on a speedy recovery, commenting that melon was also one of his own weaknesses. The Paris press was quick to remind readers melon was a great favourite of Napoleon. The Rome press went troppo on headline puns using meloni, the name of the Italian Prime Minister, some of them untranslatable. The King of Thailand later admitted the error of his ways, that he needs to ration his diet to three round meals a day. National outpouring was swift, with a huge increase in popularity for any fruit calling itself melon, and a corresponding praise for abstemiousness, self-reflection and proper mealtimes. The Chinese president keeps a measured silence. His Indian counterpart indulged in a week of melon jokes without hinting at what he was referring to. The American press judges the events as a curiosity, with wispy editorialising using lyrics from ‘The King and I’ for reference. Their President also has said nothing directly, but did spend almost 30 minutes of a rambling three-hour speech detailing his favourite melon dishes. Late night comedians joked about why he had not yet died of a surfeit of them. Wiser heads have been asking why the monarch of a country famous for this family of fruit, notably the magnificent durian, would need to accept melons from outsiders at all. Interest has turned to gifts, favours, and tributes, with focus on other leaders involved in pandering to the king’s secret, with further enquiries underway. These conjectures are being outweighed, it can be observed, by salacious articles about other historical figures who died of a surfeit, melons or other; as well as colour pieces on how much melon is too much melon; and warnings against eating too much of one kind of foodstuff, with special reference to the side effects of excess melon, which include bloating and sugar spikes.

Protest

 August 11 Word of the Day: Protest

 

Letrilla: All my songs are protest songs

 

It’s true my heartbeat grows and grows

My body lives out all it knows

All my nerve ends walk to the edge

My tongue goes lightly from the ledge

And all my songs are protest songs

 

There is the song of red flowers

Songs that swagger songs that glower

Drawled songs travelling the world and back

Songs ludicrous songs blue songs black

But all my songs are protest songs

 

Lullabies without a pretext

I sing anthems lots of effects

Tall ballads long crooners their schmaltz lines

Great spirituals in waltz time

But all my songs are protest songs

 

Freeways streaming without a care

Buildings go nowhere into air

All the cables are enough rope

Spaceships promising more false hope

Where all my songs are protest songs

 

 

 

Listening to the Royal Albert Hall concert of 1966

Image: B. Harvey