Annotations and comments

GrahamT has posted 460 annotations/comments since 9 January 2003.

Comments

First Reading

About Saturday 10 January 1662/63

GrahamT  •  Link

"doting coxcomb":
I think this is more lovestruck fool, than swaggering fool. Used as a simile, Pepys is saying Minnes is sycophantic, and ignoring his own earlier - valid - reservations, rather than be seen to be obstructive.

About Annotators of Sam

GrahamT  •  Link

Raise up your bowls and drink a wassail,
In wormwood or Rhenish or old Kentish ale,
To Jeannine our Bard, and be of good cheer,
'coz now she must write one every New Year!

About Monday 8 December 1662

GrahamT  •  Link

Behindhand:
In current usage, behindhand mean behind schedule with a payment, (i.e. in debt) whereas to be "in hand", as in "I am two weeks rent in hand", means ahead of schedule. Sam'l is saying (I think) that Gosnell's not working out was God's way of saving hime from getting into debt.

About A Christmas Day Pepys walk

GrahamT  •  Link

Super Adult! Does that mean that once I turn 65 I will be able to leap tall buildings in a single bound?
By the way: no congestion charges over Christmas/New year so driving to London for the walk will cost you £8 less than it normally would.

About Friday 28 November 1662

GrahamT  •  Link

Re: Matthew Boulton.
Off Topic, but he was the business man behind James Watt and one of the movers and shakers behind the industrial revolution.

About Saturday 29 November 1662

GrahamT  •  Link

Marmotte:
These are very common in the Alps.
They are very cute looking but have a taste for brake fluid, so nibble car brake lines. Not a very popular habit with people living and driving in the mountains.
The name comes from Latin mus montis - mouse of the mountains, via French. In French Marmotte means to murmur, but marmottes actually whistle, and in Quebec are called siffleux - whistlers.
In Aqua Scripto is guessing an etymology of "ma motte" which is "my mound", fairly meaningless French, but attributing the English slang crudity motte which is from the medical word for "a tuft of hair on the body". I will leave it to your imaginations to guess which part of the female body he is referring to.

About Sunday 26 October 1662

GrahamT  •  Link

Ludlow Scare... was living in Vevey in 1662:
Vevey is now better known as the last resting place of Charlie Chaplin (and the headquarters of Nestlé.) It seems it has always been a popular place for British exiles. Having lived there I can understand its popularity.

About Saturday 25 October 1662

GrahamT  •  Link

Sweet and savoury... seems to be less popular in the English cuisine:
What about:
Pork and apple sauce?
Lamb with mint?
Turkey with cranberry sauce?
Cheese or gammon and pineapple?
Sweet and sour pork?
(not all strictly English, but happily adopted)

About Saturday 18 October 1662

GrahamT  •  Link

Joyners:
There are three grades of woodworker involved in a house: The carpenter who builds the wall and roof timbers (the charpente in French), the joiner who does the more skilled work, where real joints are needed, and the cabinet maker, the most skilled and highest class woodworker, who made the furniture and fine fittings. There are also carvers, but they were perhaps more artists/sculptors than just woodworkers and would be employed in the stately homes, rather than, perhaps, those of a humble clerk of the acts.

About Saturday 11 October 1662

GrahamT  •  Link

"Just another example of American English coming from older roots than British English."
This is nonsense, British and American English come from the same roots, therefore, neither can be from older roots than the other. American English split from British English in Elizabethan times and both have evolved separately but interdependently since. Up until the begining of the 20th century, American English was still influenced by British English, but since (perhaps started by Hollywood, and hastened by the end of the British Empire) the traffic has been in the opposite direction.
This Urban Myth about US English being "older" than British English started when someone compared hillbilly english against London English, and found some words in hillbilly that had fallen out of use in London. A similar comparison of, say, west country, or Yorkshire English against D.C. English would show that UK English was "older" than US English. Obviously neither claim is true.
What is amazing is that after 500 years of separation, the two Englishes are still 99% mutually understandable - at least in the Standard forms. Slang and dialect are another story.

About Saturday 11 October 1662

GrahamT  •  Link

Broil vs Grill:
As far as I am aware, broil in American is the same as grill in English. Broil, for me, means to cook meat in a closed container over heat, similar to the American pot-roast - a term that is taking over here in Britain from broil. There were obviously no gas or electric grills (broilers?) in Chaucer's time, so he could have meant it in the current British sense.
btw, a broiler hen is one too old and tough for roasting (or grilling) but is slowly broiled (pot-roasted) to tenderise it. Hence the insulting slang for a woman past her prime - an old broiler.

About Thursday 9 October 1662

GrahamT  •  Link

Re: "The moon was almost at first quarter."
I seem to remember that the phases of the moon are coincidently aligned with ours, so it would be a waxing crescent moon on this date - 3 days after New Moon, Though, if it was overcast (it rains on the 10th) then the moon would be hidden anyway.

About Wednesday 1 October 1662

GrahamT  •  Link

Re Boyle:
Albeit that this was in the days before petroleum drived plastics, it sounds like Boyle is demonstrating a form of polymerisation.
300 years later, in the 1960's, electronic components were "potted" by placing the circuit in a mould and two clear liquids mixed and poured in. Overnight they became a transparent yellowish solid protecting the circuit.
Something similar can be seen with modern two part adhesives where two viscous liquids are mixed together, which "go off" to form a solid bond.

About Thursday 2 October 1662

GrahamT  •  Link

Re: Theatre/Inn names.
An old local pub with the name of the Black Boy has had its sign changed from a picture of a black boy, to a picture of two young chimney sweeps. A young King Charles II would have been better, if it had to be changed

About Thursday 25 September 1662

Grahamt  •  Link

words for bodily functions:
I would think these terms would be common currency, and not thought of as "rude" in today's sense. Certainly in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (14th century) the word's fart, ers (arse) and piss are used by the parson, nun and prioress without causing any comment. "Ruder" (our "four-letter") words are not used at all.
Although the Restoration period follows the Puritans, it is evident from Restoration comedy that the censorship of that period has been swept away. After all what else would people say? I don't think defecation, flatulance and urination would be in most 17th century citizen's vocabulary.
We might find it difficult to understand with the puritanism of the Victorian age (and the puritan colonists in America) isolating us from earlier earthiness (e.g. Wheatley's censorship) but "the past is a foreign country, they do (say)things differenly there."

About Thursday 25 September 1662

GrahamT  •  Link

Synchronicity:
...two doggs at Walthamstow ...
Walthamstow is now the site of a large Greyhound race track, usually known as Walthamstow dogs.

About Saturday 20 September 1662

GrahamT  •  Link

Sam is being pragmatic. If Tom can't find "a match made in heaven" then he will help with a match made on earth

About Saturday 20 September 1662

GrahamT  •  Link

Re: JWB's mouldy grain:
Rye (and other grains, but less commonly) can develop a black mould called Ergot. This contains a substance once called Ergotine, now better known as LSD. It is a well documented cause of "plagues" of madness. Rye is a common additive to bread in colder climates, so if a baker used a bad batch of Rye flour, a lot of his customers would go mad (ergotism)and some would die of the mycotoxins.
See: http://www.botany.hawaii.edu/facu…