Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama: Deliciate

 Deliciate is a lovely word for the season. It's too bad that it has fallen into disuse...

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According to Webster's 1913 dictionary, deliciate means "to delight one's self; to indulge in feasting; to revel." Reveling and feasting sure sound good to me! Bring on the pumpkin pie! (Or the fudge. I'll accept either or both.) If you are wondering how this word is pronounced, I've included a YouTube pronunciation link right here.

And if you celebrate Christmas and are looking for a little Christmas-y music to listen to as you deliciate, click this link for "Top 200 Christmas Songs of All Time"... 10 hours worth of tunes accompanied by a cozy Christmas scene. You're welcome!

Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama: Crawmassing

So, after you scurryfunge about (see last week's Slang-o-rama entry) and the wintry celebrations have come and gone, it may be time to engage in a little crawmassing. Which is ye olde English word meaning...

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(at least according to the BBC, which should know these kinds of things)...

[T]o go around begging gifts at Christmas. It also means to gather up, or go through the remnants of a festive feast.

Crawmassing also appears in an article in The Independent, "11 Christmas words the English language has forgotten," with a little bit about its (possible) origin:

Gathering up or going through the remnants of a Christmas meal is called crawmassing. It’s probably based on comassing, an earlier word referring to someone who begs from their friends or neighbours rather than strangers.

It would be nice to know when crawmassing came into being, but the road to knowledge about this word is more like an overgrown deer path in the woods, and I couldn't find much more.

Oh well. I have presents to wrap and consumables to fix for Friday, and crawmassing to look forward to on Saturday. I'd best get busy!

Now this has excellent crawmassing potential.
Image by vivienviv0 from Pixabay

Wishing happy and healthy holidays to you and yours this season!

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama: Scurryfunge

 

Scurryfunge is a perfect slang-o-rama word for the winter holidays... although maybe not for this year. Read on and you'll see why...

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According to the site For Reading Addicts, this marvelous word means to rush around the house, cleaning up, before company arrives.

With many of us hunkering down in pandemic mode, there's probably not going to be much scurryfunging around, unless we feel compelled to straighten up for those in our "bubble" (or for those areas that appear in our Zoom screens).

Wordfoolery suggests the following etymology:

Scurry is a well-known verb to indicate rushing, particularly of the mouse variety. Funge is a bit trickier to track down but the best guesses relate to changing something, in this case from being messy to being superficially tidy and ordered.

It might be... Middle English? Old English? Favorite Forgotten Words pulls up a date of 1882. I can't find it at all on Google Ngram. StackExchange has an interesting conversation about the word here. 

Hmmm. 

Well, while scurryfunging around, I like to listen to music for the season. Right now, I'm partial to the carol "The Holly and the Ivy." (Holly and ivy being associated with winter celebrations long before Christmas, according to this post on The Conversation.) So, here's a little musical interlude to hum along to as you scurryfunge.

Christmas came early (Slang-o-rama takes a break)

My author copies of MORTAL MUSIC arrived earlier this month... yet another reason for me to celebrate the season.

And here, as a little gift to you, is a piece of music that features prominently in this most recent Silver Rush historical mystery. Sit back and enjoy!



Wishing you all a restful break this week. Slang-o-rama will return next Wednesday: the first day of a new year and a new decade.

MERRY CHRISTMAS! Leadville, 1879

As we all wallow under a surfeit of HD TVs, iPods, iPhones, MP3 players, Play Stations, XBoxes, Nintendo DSs, BlueRay videos, and an abundance of electronic games and geegaws, let's take a pause and reflect on what was available for the discerning shopper in Leadville for the 1879 Christmas season, in some tidbits gathered from the newspapers of the time by Griswold and Griswold in their magnificent historical tome: The History of Leadville and Lake County, Colorado. And remember as you read this list: There were no trains to Leadville yet. Everything had to be hauled in ... and there was lots and lots of snow to contend with. There were, apparently, some folks with lots and lots of money as well.

Holiday Goods.

B.F. Allen & Co. Invite the special attention of Ladies and Miners, who are in search of Goods suitable for Presents to their Friends both in Leadville and the East and South, to their recent importation of NOVELTIES. Our Stock comprises: English Silk Handkerchiefs, Silk Suspenders, French Jewelry, English Neckwear, Fine Buck Glove, Lined, Fine Lap Robes, French Clocks, Ladies Neckwear, Lined Mitts, Pocketbooks, Etc.

The Griswolds noted that none of the advertisements included prices (most which read rather like the one above, so B.F. Allen didn't have a lock on the imported stuff). However, Daniels, Fisher & Company did included some prices for their wares:

... All wool suits sell from $15 to $25; wool and silk combination suits from $25 to $50; combination street costumes from $35 to $65; silk dresses from $35 to $75, and a general variety of black silk velvet and ratine suits, ranging in price from $40 to $175 each, and some elegant parlor dress suits from $175 to $200 each.

Sounds like a good deal, right? Well, consider that $15 in 1879 had the same "purchase power" as $333.98 today. So, that "cheap" wool suit is really more like $340. And, the "elegant parlor dress suit" at $200 would cost you $4453.01 today. That's how many Dell laptops?

Anyway, to get an idea of how prices of "long ago" compare to prices today, I suggest checking out the "Measuring Worth" website and the page Purchasing Power of Money in the United States from 1774 to 2008. Rather mind-boggling.