Good morning readers! I'm a day late, but let's review the Words Nobody Uses or Knows in this week's issue — which, by the way, has to be one of my favorites to date. It's The Beer Issue, if you haven't already noticed, and we did so much reporting on local beer and Beer Week festivities that we created an entirely new webpage for it. It's a great place to start if you're looking for a calendar of events, want to learn more about Cincinnati's rich brewing history or what today's local breweries are all about.
But let's get started. Two high-brow words that caught my eye are in Steven Rosen's piece on the Cincinnati Art Museum's forgotten Japanese art collection. The first is cloisonné, a French word pronounced KLOIS-ZE-NAY. (I found the actual phonetic spelling of it, klȯi-zə-ˈnā, a bit confusing.)
cloisonné: of, relating to, or being a style of enamel decoration in which the enamel is applied and fired in raised cells (as of soldered wires) on a usually metal background (n.)
Here's an example of a beauteous Chinese cloisonné incense burner, via the Google:
In the issue: "Those objects include paintings, screens, prints, ceramics, lacquer and metal wares, ivory carvings, arms and armor, cloisonné, dolls, masks, costumes and textiles."
The next word is accessioned. It looks like a word I ought to know, like an SAT word, but nope.
accession: to record the addition of (a new item) to a library, museum, or other collection (v.)
In this issue: “I didn’t even know we had a Japanese art collection because most of it had never been published or displayed or organized, and some were not even accessioned,” she says.
Tippling, another obscure word, is found in Garin Pirnia's piece on lesser-known taprooms and breweries that are brand-spanking new or slated to open in the Tristate area in the next few months.
tipple: to drink (alcoholic liquor) or engage in such drinking, especially habitually or to excess (v.)
What a great word. I should start using that all of the time and really confuse people. "Hey! I'm out tippling!"
In this issue: "Needless to say, now would not be a good time to curtail your tippling."
Moving on. Perhaps my favorite word of the entire issue is found in Worst Week Ever: hoosegow. It's bizarre and antiquated and contains no hint whatsoever of its meaning.
hoosegow: slang for jail (n.)
Fun fact: According to thefreedictionary.com, the term was born from a mixture of Spanish and English spoken in the Western part of the United States at the beginning of the 20th century. In other words, it's Old West slang.
It comes from the Spanish word juzgado, meaning "court of justice, tribunal." If that's confusing, here's an explanation:
"In many varieties of Spanish, the ending ado is usually pronounced as ao in everybody speech, with no d at all or only a very lightly articulated one. The spelling hoosegow thus is a pretty good representation of the American Spanish pronunciation of the word juzgado as it might sound to the ears of an English-speaking American, even though hoosegow looks nothing like the actual written form of juzgado."
In this issue: "Remus’s life story is a fascinating and complicated one, which culminated in him killing his wife in Eden Park for betraying him while he was in the hoosegow."
Have a great weekend, readers!