Mind your language
I GOT so excited about toothcombs last week that at one point I said the oppo- site of what I meant. I meant to say that the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary says, under tooth, 'toothcomb = fine- tooth comb'. So more or less everyone's right and that's enough about that.
Meanwhile, two more hares are run- ning. The first is iteration, as in Laa-Laa and Tinky-Winky of Teletubbies. Mr B.A. Jackson of Brockenhurst writes to say that he thinks Teletubbies would do well in Kenya where Swahili is widely spoken, a language, he says, rich in this kind of word-formation. Examples include: pikipiki (motorbike), takatak (rubbish), furufuru (confusion), pilipili (pepper), goigoi (lazy), pachapacha (exactly the same) and mazigazi (a mirage).
The other hare is funny names. The personal names that we have run through so far have, and let us keep it that way, been subtly intriguing rather than obscenely grotesque.
Now I have run across a rich vein of funny book titles from the 17th-century debate on Quaker claims to work mira- cles, in which my husband has taken a sudden interest for obscure reasons. William Prynne, for example, published in 1645 a book of which the short title was A Fresh Discovery of some Prodigious Wandring — Blazing — Stars & Fire- brands, Stiling themselves New-Lights. On the same tack was Thomas Edwards, who in 1646 published the bestseller Gangrae- na; or a Catalogue and Discovery of many Errours, Heresies, Blasphemies, and perni- cious Practices of the Sectaries of this Tune. This was soon answered by a joint response, Cretensis; or a Miele Answer to an Ukerous Treatise. Edwards immediate- ly replied with a new edition enumerating 34 extra, newly discovered heresies.
Perhaps the most remarkable exchange of pamphlets was in the duel between various nonconformists who challenged each other to extended fasts to prove their claims. In 1668 Solomon Eccles issued his pamphlet The Quakers Chal- lenge at Two Several Weapons to the Bap- tists, Presbiters, Papists and other Professors. This proposed seven days without food, drink or sleep. It was finally accepted in 1681 by John Pennyman, an ex-Quaker, in The Quaker's Challenge answered, by a Stripling of the Lamb's Anny. Frustratingly, there is no record of Eccles having taken on his opponent before his death in the same year.
Dot Wordsworth
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