Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama: Ugsome!

 Heeeere comes Halloween, All Hallows' Eve, All Saints Day, Día de los Muertos, Samhain, Beltane, Calan Gaeaf... and I'm sure there are more celebratory events around October 31 and into early November. Soooo let's jump in with a word that applies perfectly to the more ghoulish side of Halloween, as expressed in costumes taken straight from popular horror films:

Ugsome.

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Yep, this is a real word, appearing in Merriam-Webster (although they do say it's "archaic"). Ugsome, meaning "frightful, loathsome," first appeared in the 15th century. A Word-A-Day gives us a little bit about its origin, as follows:

From Old Norse ugga (to fear). As in many typical stories where one child in a family becomes well-known while the other remains obscure, "ugly" and "ugsome" are two words derived from the same root -- one is an everyday word while the other remains uncommon. Earliest documented use: around 1425.

World Wide Words has an enlightening post about the word, including this bit:

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.

I think it's time to bring ugsome back into use!

What do YOU find ugsome??

Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama: Flype

 I was paging through The Little Book of Lost Words by Joe Gillard when I bumped into flype and wondered, "What is THAT?"

The answer lies below (keep scrolling)...

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According to Gillard, flype (pronounced flahyp) is a 17th-century verb of Scottish origin that means "to roll up your socks before putting them on. To fold socks inside out in pairs. To fold something back."

How lovely! As a connoisseur of socks (the more colorful the better) I am pleased that there is a word so specific to sock-care.

Ah, but a quick look around the internet reveals more... SO much more... for flype.

Wikipedia notes that, in the mathematical theory of knots (!! I had no idea there was such a field), a flype is "a kind of manipulation of knot and link diagrams used in the Tait flyping conjecture." 

Whaaaat?

Okay, I can't just stop there.

Clicking the link on the Tait flyping conjecture (whoever writes these Wikipedia entries has my everlasting admiration) leads to the following: 

The Tait conjectures are three conjectures made by 19th-century mathematician Peter Guthrie Tait in his study of knots. The Tait conjectures involve concepts in knot theory such as alternating knots, chirality, and writhe. All of the Tait conjectures have been solved, the most recent being the Flyping conjecture.

Alternating knots! Chirality! Writhe! I am dazzled anew!

But I mustn't get sidetracked from the Flyping conjecture, which is explained in a subsection of the main article. However, it all gets pretty mathematical at that point, so I'll simply borrow the diagram that shows flyping as applied to a knot

A flype consists of turning a tangle, T, by 180 degrees.
By Jkasd - Own work, Public Domain
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3872115

The "See Also" section of this Wikipedia entry on provides links to prime knot and tangle, and at this point, I am thinking about knots and tangles and shoelaces and wondering if I am digressing into the realm of messy shoelaces vs neatly folded socks...

I'm gonna flype these babies after I wash them.

Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama: Spuddle

 Whew, Thanksgiving is officially in the rear-view mirror. However, other late fall/early winter holidays and celebratory occasions are tumbling in and I feel like I'm dashing about (at least, mentally) without getting much done. In other words, I'm spuddling around.

As for spuddle, this is what I have to say about that...

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I first saw spuddle on Facebook, where writer/good buddy Dani Greer posted the graphic below:

I decided sighting this word must be a Slang-o-rama sign from the Universe. Gathering what little energy I had, I poked around the internet and found spuddle listed as a "word of the day" on For Reading Addicts. I then bumped into it on Dictionary.net, which referred me to Wiktionary, which led me to a lengthy entry in Joseph Wright's The English Dialect Dictionary (1905). This last provided a number of definitions, some of which involve digging in the ground and plowing. At that point, I decided I was done digging for information on spuddle... at least, for now.

Welcome to December! May any/all of your celebrations be of the non-spuddling sort.

Must recover now, so I can do more than spuddle for Christmas
The Tired Dancer, by John Reinhard Weguelin (1879)
Internet, Public Domain
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=61888403