Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Filopendulums

Meaning: Frame glosses this as counterweights which, in context (below), seems about right; something like the weights in a clock, perhaps.

Usefulness: 3 (I'd be impressed if you could work this into conversation, but Rabelais' line might be worth learning.)

Logofascination: 2 (From the Latin for thread and hanging, I wonder if Rabelais is suggesting that these counterweights are flimsily suspended).

In the wild: Although filopendulums isn't defined anywhere, the botanically-inspired filipendulous was recommended by the OED today.



Degrees: 1

Connections: n/a

Which is used in:  G&P, Book the Third, XXII: How Panurge patrocinates and defendeth the Order of the Begging Friars. Panurge is speaking of the Mendicant Friars and Jacobins:
who are the two hemispheres of the Christian world; by whose gyronomonic circumbilvaginations, as by two celivagous filopendulums, all the autonomatic metagrobolism of the Romish Church, when tottering and emblustricated with the gibble-gabble gibberish of this odious error and heresy, is homocentrically poised.
As mentioned in the celivagous post, I think Frame has the sense: the orders are counterweights with heavenly tendencies.

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