A growing assortment of words and definitions used in the Early Modern era. See the Guide for more information.
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Word
Definition
Bathykolpian
Deep-bosomed. Also bathykolpic; Greek bathos, deep + kolpos, breast. Both forms have been used spelled with uk, yc, uc. The word bathos, descent from the sublime to the ridiculous, springs from Alexander Pope's satire BATHOS, THE ART OF SINKING IN RHETORIC (1728) , a travesty of Longinus' essay ON THE SUBLIME. Hence bathetic, fashioned after pathetic; also bathotic. While a plain and direct road is paved to their hypsos, or sublime, said Pope, no track has been yet chalked out to arrive at our bathos, or profund. Other words formed with bathy-, deep, include: bathyal, of the deeper regions of the sea; bathybic, dwelling in the deeps, also bathypelagic.bathylimnetic, living at the bottom of a marsh or lake, like the ondines.
Cosins
An 18th century style of stays, named from the maker. Alexander Pope in THE ART OF POLITICKS (1729) inquired: Think we that modern words eternal are? Toupet, and tompion, cosins and colmar Hereafter will be called by some plain man A wig, a watch, a pair of stays, a fan.
Forfex
A pair of scissors. The Late Latin word, used humorously in English, as in Alexander Pope's THE RAPE OF THE LOCK (1714), The peer now spreads the glittering forfex wide, To inclose the lock. Note also forficate, shaped like a pair of scissors, and forficulate: (1) shaped like a small pair of scissors; (2) as a verb, to feel a creeping sensation, as though a forficula (earwig) were crawling over one's skin; Bulwer- Lytton said in THE CAXTONS (1849) : There is not a part of me that has not . . . crept, crawled, and forficulated ever since.
Phantomnation
An illusion; the appearance of a spectre. The word itself was originally a phantomnation; it was first recorded in the dictionaries by a misreading. The original sense appears in Alexander Pope's translation (1725) of the ODYSSEY: The phantome nations of the dead.
