Saturday, January 19, 2013

Navicular

Meaning: boat shaped.

Usefulness: 2 (Depends on location; outside of the foot, my main association is with the Church of the Primacy of Saint Peter, which has a navicular nave, the prow pointing straight out into the Sea of Galilee.)

Logofascination: 1 (It is of course related to the navy, but also to naves, and possibly even navel.)

In the wild: Yes, but mainly due to the foot thing. I think it's due a revival as an adjective.

Degrees: 2

Connections: navicular - boat

Which is used in: any number of places in G&P, but tonight we visit Book the Second (Pantagruel), 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. We've talked before about how Rabelais' hell is a hell of boring jobs, and here is yet another example.
All the Knights of the Round Table were poor day-labourers, employed to row over the rivers of Cocytus, Phlegeton, Styx, Acheron, and Lethe, when my lords the devils had a mind to recreate themselves upon the water, as in the like occasion are hired the boatmen at Lyons, the gondoliers at Venice, and oars at London. But with this difference, that these poor knights have only for their fare a bob or flirt on the nose, and in the evening a morsel of coarse mouldy bread.

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