Thursday, January 10, 2013

Anthropomancy

Meaning: divination by human entrails or human sacrifice, occasionally as a way of discovering how the gods felt about the sacrifice. This seems a bit rough on the sacrifice, particularly if rejected. The OED has one of its definitions-with-commentary:
Pretended divination by the entrails of men.
I'm not sure what genuine divination by entrails is called.

Usefulness: 2 (Symbolically, of course: "It wasn't an inquiry, it was anthropomancy - the minister gave him up to the masses to see which way the polls would go.")

Logofascination: 2

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Timenda

Meaning: things which are to be feared

Usefulness: 2 (More difficult to use than it first appears. "Spiders are not among my timenda.")

Logofascination: 2 (From timere, which you will be unsurprised to learn is also the root for timid, timorous and intimidate.)

Tuesday, January 8, 2013

Fugienda

Meaning: things to be avoided, or if you're feeling a bit more literal, fled from.

Usefulness: 1 (for all of your facienda, there are at least ten fugienda. Can be used when someone asks for assistance: "I'll just add it to my list of fugienda." or of people: "Since the Christmas party, she's decided that I'm among the fugienda.")

Logofascination: 2 (I'm amazed this isn't more popular; perhaps its original life in sermonising held it back. From fugere, to flee, which is also the root of fugitive, refuge, fugacious, and, well, lots of words.)

Monday, January 7, 2013

Faciendas

Meaning: Sir Thomas helpfully defines this for us:
Faciendas, are the things which are to be done; faciendum is the gerund of facio.
Faciendum and agendum have similar (if not identical*) meanings, but agendum's busy plural moved with the times and assumed a new meaning.

Usefulness: 1 (If you want a short meeting, ask if anyone has any faciendas. Alternatively, The Horologicon suggests facienda as a more interesting name for a to-do list.)

Logofascination: 1 (Etymologically facienda and hacienda are the same word. Note that Sir Thomas adds the English plural s to the already plural Latin word, although he then uses the singular faciendum a few paragraphs later. He's done this before, so I've added a label for his Latin plurals.)

Saturday, January 5, 2013

Tutivillus

Meaning:  Depending on the era/writer, Tutivillus is the devil responsible for collecting the words of gossips, to be reported against them in heaven, or the errors priests made in liturgy*, ditto. He is also referred to as the "patron demon of scribes", causing errors such as haplography. As is appropriate, his name has any number of possible spellings, including Titivullis. There's more about him here, here or here.

Usefulness: 1 (However scanty the evidence for his past existence may be, we need a typo demon.)

Logofascination: 1 (After various roles in the Mystery Plays, he evolved into a word, titivil, and allegedly shows up twice in Shakespeare as tilly-vally or tilly-fally. That's quite a career, particularly when you consider what small errors it is built on - Screwtape would be impressed.)

Thursday, January 3, 2013

Cleromancy

Meaning: divination by lots; Rabelais refers to the tradition of the King cake, or galette des Rois, for Twelfth Night (Epiphany Eve, January 5 this year):
cheromancy,* as the bean is found in the cake at the Epiphany vigil.
Whover finds the bean in the cake is King for the night, or, presumably, Queen.** As ever, this comes with privileges - such as the ability to create arbitrary laws, (ala the Lord of Misrule); and responsibilities - in Sir Thomas’ example below, paying for the drinks.

Usefulness: 2 (Epiphany Eve is a Saturday this year, so all you need is to assemble some guests, source a galette des Rois, and decide what your Roy de la febve will be required to do. See also: paying for the drinks.)

Logofascination: 2 (The clero- is from Greek, and probably the same one that turns up in cleric.)

Wednesday, January 2, 2013

Logofascinated

Meaning: fascinated by words. Sir Thomas was probably using fascinated in its older sense of enchanted, or bewitched. The softer, modern meaning of 'interested in' doesn't turn up for another century or two.

Usefulness: 1 (Use with caution, as in the source text - see below - logofascination involves fainting or bursting blood vessels.)

Logofascination: 1 (Logofascinated is often used to describe Sir Thomas, although I suspect he would have thought of himself as the logofascinator.  Despite reports to the contrary, he didn't describe himself as a 'logofascinated spirit' - this error is probably due to a misreading of the Oxford DNB's description of Sir Thomas 'in his own terms'. The text the DNB refers to is the one quoted below.)