nicker. In Kingsley’s HYPATIA (1853) we find: “What is a nicor, Agilmund?” “A sea-devil who eats sailors.” Various other meanings have been attached to this form: a cheater; an 18th century hoodlum…
– Dictionary of Early English
Monthly Archives: December 2010
I have a Top Book of 2010. Yes, a book. Singular.
I was considering posting a Top Books of 2010 list. After all, that’s what people do. The New York Times did it, Publishers Weekly did it, The Daily Beast did it, The Huffington Post did it, you get the idea.
And, if all these guys are jumping on the literary soap box, so would I. And I eventually did (see the bold, red text below) but not in the way I expected.
Negative Space: Where all the mopey aliens are from.
This week, a double gift for Christmas!
HORSE … a thick rope, extended in a perpendicular direction near the fore or after-side of a mast, for the purpose of hoisting or extending some sail thereon. When it is fixed before a mast, it is calculated for the use of a sail called the square-sail … When the horse is placed abaft or behind a mast, it is intended for the try-sail of a snow, and is accordingly very rarely fixed in this position, except in those sloops of war which occasionally assume the form of snows, in order to deceive the enemy.
SNOW, (senau, Fr.) is generally the largest of all two-masted vessels employed by Europeans, and the most convenient for navigation … When the sloops of war are rigged as snows, they are furnished with a horse, which answers the purpose of the try-sail-mast, the fore-part of the sail being attached by rings to the said horse, in different parts of its heighth.
– Wm. Falconer’s Dictionary of the Marine (1780).
Am I the only one who thinks “sleep in heavenly peace” sounds like a Mafia euphemism?
I may be one of the luckiest writers on the planet. “How so?” you ask with your brows flat like a pair of furry balconies for your brain’s apartment. Let me tell you.
Following the lead of author and former lit agent Nathan Bransford, I decided to settle the pirates vs. ninjas controversy once and for all, using Google’s Ngram generator, which charts instances of words in literature from 1800 to the present.
Listening to Louis Armstrong, who apparently wants all my grizz-mushes to be wide.
A great article on the Revolution-era ironmaster’s estate at Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site in Elverson, Pennsylvania, is now available at Colonial Sense.
The article focuses on reenactments of Christmas celebrations in the various Hopewell Village houses, including a visit from Der Belsnickel!
A great piece for historical fiction writers and anyone interested in the early American history.
“&@#% you, Nat King Cole!”
– Ninety-three year old who loves Christmas.