Natural history -- Outdoor books; Nature; Nature study; Paris (France) -- Description and travel
Hamlet folk are very apt to look a gift horse in the mouth, and if any
one should receive a present not so large as expected, it would be
contemptuously described as a "footy" little thing. "Footy" pronounced
with a sneering expression of countenance conveys a sense of
despicableness, even to those who do not know its exact definition,
which may be taken as mean. Suppose a bunch of ripe nuts high up and
almost out of reach; by dint of pressing into the bushes, pulling at
the bough, and straining on tiptoe, you may succeed in "scraambing" it
down. "Scraambing," or "scraambed," with a long accent on the aa,
indicates the action of stretching and pulling downwards. Though
somewhat similar in sound, it has no affinity with scramble; people
scramble for things which have been thrown on the ground. In getting
through hedges the thorns are apt to "limm" one's clothes, tearing a
jagged hole in the coat. Country children are always "limming" their
clothes to pieces; "limm," or "limb," expresses a ragged tear.
Recently, fashion set the example of ladies having their hair shorn as
short as men. It is quite common to see young ladies, the backs of
whose heads are polled, all the glory of hair gone, no plait, no twist,
but all cut close and somewhat rough. If a village Californian were to
see this he would say, "they got their hair hogged off." "Hogged" means
cut off short so as to stand up like bristles. Ponies often have hogs'
manes; all the horses in the Grecian sculpture have their manes hogged.
In bitter winter weather the servants in the dairies who have much to
do with buckets of water, and spend the morning in splashing--for
dairies need much of that kind of thing--sometimes find that the drops
have frozen as they walk, and discover that their aprons are fringed
with "daglets," _i.e._ icicles. Thatched roofs are always hung with
"daglets" in frost; thatch holds a certain amount of moisture, as of
mist, and this drips during the day and so forms stalactites of ice,
often a foot or more in length. "Clout" is a "dictionary word," a knock
on the head, but it is pronounced differently here; they say a "clue"
in the head. Stuttering and stammering each express well-known
conditions of speech, but there is another not recognised in dictionary
language. If a person has been made a butt of, laughed at, joked, and
tormented till he hesitates and fumbles as it were with his words, he
is said to be in a state of "hacka." "Hacka" is to have to think a
minute before he can say what he wants to.
"Simmily" is a word of little interest, being evidently a mere
provincialism and distortion of "seemingly," as "summat" of
"something," or "somewhat," indifferently.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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