Funicular

Meaning: to do with ropes. Originally relating to a funiculus, or little rope, which means we have the rather lovely plurals funiculi and funicles.

Usefulness: 4 (depending on your location, but I do love the sound of it)

Logofascination: 3

In the wild: Salzburg, and all these places.

Degrees: 3

Connections: funicular - funiculus - rope

Which is used in: G&P, eighteen times, including in Second Book, XXX: How Epistemon, who had his head cut off, was finely healed by Panurge, and of the news which he brought from the devils, and of the damned people in hell. (Where would we be without Panurge?) Rabelais' hell is particularly nasty - you don't burn, you just get really boring jobs:

"Xerxes was a crier of mustard. Romulus, a salter and patcher of pattens. Numa, a nailsmith. Tarquin, a porter. Piso, a clownish swain. Sylla, a ferryman. Cyrus, a cowherd. Themistocles, a glass-maker. Epaminondas, a maker of mirrors or looking-glasses. Brutus and Cassius, surveyors or measurers of land. Demosthenes, a vine-dresser. Cicero, a fire-kindler. Fabius, a threader of beads. Artaxerxes, a rope-maker. Aeneas, a miller. Achilles was a scaldpated maker of hay-bundles. Agamemnon, a lick-box. Ulysses, a hay-mower. Nestor, a door-keeper or forester. Darius, a gold-finder or jakes-farmer. Ancus Martius, a ship-trimmer. Camillus, a foot-post. Marcellus, a sheller of beans. Drusus, a taker of money at the doors of playhouses. Scipio Africanus, a crier of lee in a wooden slipper. Asdrubal, a lantern-maker. Hannibal, a kettlemaker and seller of eggshells. Priamus, a seller of old clouts. Lancelot of the Lake was a flayer of dead horses."