788-1: Feedback, Notes and Comments

Godwottery Following last week’s Weird Word, Steven Harris wrote, “This puts me in mind of yogsothery used by H P Lovecraft and his circle of friends to refer self-satirically to Lovecraft’s (and his friends’) use of invented names of monstrous deities, such as Yog-Sothoth. I don’t have my sources handy to give you a reference, and the web is of little use as the word has been appropriated by a Lovecraft-inspired music group. But I know it’s to be found among Lovecraft’s correspondence.”

Jane Halsey commented, “Godwottery sounds like what Josephine Tey meant by talking forsoothly, a criticism she levels at historical novels in The Daughter of Time.”

“Your explanation of the very irregular verb, wit,” Heather Liston wrote, “left out one example that is commonly known to many people, even if it’s not exactly modern. In the King James Version of the Bible, in Luke 2:49, when the parents of the twelve-year-old Jesus find him in the temple with the learned men, he says, ‘Wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?’ This often becomes an accidental homonym, with many people assuming Jesus means, ‘Don’t you wish me to ...?’ In fact, of course, the boy Jesus is asking, ‘Don’t you know this is what I have to do?’”

Redding the table Hugo Johnson and Ken Gibb pointed out that another sense of the word exists. The latter wrote, “You will be aware I’m sure of its existence in the noun redd, connected with areas prepared in stream gravel by salmon and other fish for breeding and egg laying.”

“My mother came from Lancashire,” commented Ian Colley, “and her expression for this was siding or side the table. Might this be connected in some way to sideboard? It was never used in any other context.” Nineteenth-century dialect glossaries say it was then more common in Yorkshire, though known in Lancashire and Cheshire. It often appears as side up and means tidying up or putting in order as well as clearing away dishes. There are analogies in old Dutch and German verbs that meant to set aside or stand aside. The English Dialect Dictionary also records sideation and sidement, the actions of siding-up; the person doing it was a sider-up, more generally someone with an orderly mind.

Omission An item in the Wordface section about the British press custom of banging out was accidentally left out of the HTML e-mail version last week. You will find it here.