Sunday, December 16, 2012

Nominy

Meaning: a long or tedious sermon; also a piece of doggerel, a rhyme. 

Usefulness: 1 (I was asked for a word to describe the "You wouldn't steal a car..." blurb at the beginning of most videos these days; while nominy captures the moralising tediousness, it lacks the compulsory element. Can obviously be used in a number of contexts: "Not another nominy, George: we've heard enough today.")

Logofascination: 1 (Possibly from in nomine patris... at the beginning of sermons; that's probably about all that was retained of sermons delivered in a drone or muttered in a monotone.)

In the wild: There's a nominy here - the rhyming kind - which was used as part of a public shaming process explained at the link.

Degrees: 2

Connections: nominy - sermon.

Which is used in: Book the First (Gargantua), XLI: How the Monk made Gargantua sleep, and of his hours and breviaries. Gargantua is having trouble sleeping before a battle:
Whereupon the monk said to him, I never sleep soundly but when I am at sermon or prayers. Let us therefore begin, you and I, the seven penitential psalms, to try whether you shall not quickly fall asleep. The conceit pleased Gargantua very well, and, beginning the first of these psalms, as soon as they came to the words Beati quorum* they fell asleep, both the one and the other.
*The beginning of Psalm 32: "Blessed are they..." I'm reasonably sure this is the second penitential psalm, which means they managed to get through Psalm 6 first.

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