OT trick or treat

I just *had* to look it up- I tried resisting since this thread first started. I don't need any more little factoids crowding my poor pea-brain!

According to "Michael Quinion writes on international English from a British viewpoint"-

"This word is hardly new, since it was used by J R R Tolkien at the beginning of the first volume of the Lord of the Rings, published in 1954. As with so many unfamiliar words in his works, he derived it from Old English, in this case the one usually written maðm, "a precious thing, treasure, valuable gift", that was current in about the year 1000. Following Tolkien, it has gained significant currency online and in a few printed sources. To define the modern meaning, I can do no better than quote Professor Tolkien's own words: "Anything that Hobbits had no immediate use for, but were unwilling to throw away, they called a mathom. Their dwellings were apt to become rather crowded with mathoms, and many of the presents that passed from hand to hand were of that sort". It's a useful little word for which there seems no simple alternative and now that we have come across it, mathom will no doubt become part of our family's standard vocabulary, since we have an attic full of the stuff."

So now I have one more thing I will forget as soon as I need to remember it..... and I have LOTS of mathoms hanging around my house. Most seem to be in my quilting studio! LOL

Leslie & The Furbabies in MO.

AFAIK, it's strictly a J.R.R. Tolkien thing. It may have entered different fans' vocabularies from there.

Doc

Howdy!

Tolkien readers.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the treats are gone, the trick was to see every trick-or-treater, 'cause they were all great fun and everyone had a good time.

Today: of all the skads of ideas, which quilt to start next? Scrappy? Wizard of Oz fabrics? Scrappy?

R/Sandy

How about a scrappy Wizard of Oz quilt? ;)

Darling girl you would have been one of my first picks for somebody here who knew that word.

You would also be one of my first picks for people who know what words Shakespeare invented, people who know what crepuscular, tyro, and chary mean, and the number one most likely to slap me if I called you an artless worsted stocking mimping gixy. Which by the way I would never do.

NightMist

Giggle...

I also know fushionless, shookly, cariwheekit, and swithering. And mardy, mithering, havers, and what fents are.

I love the less ordinary corners of English vocabulary, and those words and phrases that get left as mathoms on the dusty drawers of usage.

email peter jackson, he probly has a good explanation. j.

"NightMist" wrote ... it is just one of those words like "grok" or "muggle" that filled a niche lacking in english, and just became part of our standard house parlance.

NightMist

Only if it has too many gribbets.

Howdy!

That's why I like this girl!

R/Sandy- scrappy...Wiz-Oz... oooo, wait a minute... here's a pic of a red & white scrappy... so many choices, so much stash to rootle ;-D

The Official Title of the person who looked after the stuff in the Board Games Society at Durham University is/was The Keeper of the Mathoms. A name coined by Kate's DH in the late 70s. Since then it has been in common parlance amongst us.

My favourite Shakespeare insult was always, "The devil damn thee black, thou cream-faced loon!" which seems to say it all really!

I love words pilfered from sources unthought of and used in families. They have a quality about them that always makes me smile.

Nel (Gadget Queen)

Oh, *he* started that one, did he? Why am I not terribly surprised... ;)

Big Sis coined the term 'swaybelly' when she was quite small. Unkind, but descriptive...

I preferred the stage directions: 'Enter a bloody child' has resonance, but I think we have friends who really appreciate 'Exit persued by a bear'!

We have a fair few in my family, largely Scots terms from my parents childhood playground speak. These are levened by Lincolnshire terms, and those of Scarborough.

The wonderful thing about the English language is that it allows us to preserve old words and meanings as well as develop new ones. And it's a bit of a Borg language, stealing and assimilating terms from any other language it encounters.

To return for a moment to literature: we had a term for a while when I was in the Lower VI at school: 'Elfed'. When something in the art department came out particularly delicate and beautiful, we said we'd 'elfed' it. Oddly, I used this term somewhere recently, and the person I was with knew EXACTLY what I meant. We had a bit of a thing for all things elf in those days, and not all of them were JRR's elves. We also had a passion for Lord Dunsanay and William Morris.

In the same way that dialect is a language of a group of people and regiolect is the language of a region and sociolect the language of a social class, the language of a family or household is oikolect.

"do you bite your thumb at me sir?", "no sir, but I do bite my thumb sir"

There are a few nice ones here:

Never come to visit us. You would never stop smiling and likely never want to leave.

HBO ran a series in the early '90s called "Dream On". The main character's thoughts were expressed via old movie, cartoon & tv clips. It could easily have been me; my head just works that way (it's a strange and sometimes scary place), and I grew up on the same shows, cartoons, & movies. DW & I constantly use words, phrases, expressions, one-liners, etc. from who knows where (anymore - we've used them so long...) She picked it up from me, and since we've been together since high school in the early '70s, what a long strange trip it's been indeed...

Doc

I think it was that toaster I received years ago that I gave as a gift....hmm. regifted? amy in CNY

My oldest son created "gription" for the quality of a gripping surface having friction. Household word now. Kate, we always used "swaybelly" when I was a kid. Texas is not so far from Scotland. ;)