Uncommon and unusual words, part ii

Continuing a thread of uncommon and unusual words encountered in reading or cataloguing.

cag -- 16th cent., noun: a small sailing vessel; a herring-barrel (caque); a keg holding four or five gallons;
verb: to offend, insult, or to ruin a joke;

"On holidays and sometimes on Sundays sports and games -- from sack races to climbing a pole, maybe it was greased as some said -- and at times a "cag" of something, with a brass band from the city..." Springer, John. "Shadows Eastward Thrown, Recollections Of The Sixties In Johnson County"
Reprinted from the Year-Book of The Old Settlers' Association, Johnson County, Iowa, 1924-1925

feuar -- seen on a transcript of a gravestone, while working on the family tree. Evidently a form of Scottish landholding, but I guess that @Haydninvienna is one of the few Dragoneers who could give an intelligible explanation of this one.

A last contribution from English books & readers 1475 to 1557:

inkhorn terms - a critical description of latinate loan words adopted into English mid-16-mid 17 cent. during the transition from Middle English to Modern English, deemed useless by critics who argued that understanding of these borrowings depended on knowledge of classical languages. 'Inkhorn term' even has a Wikipedia page, which lists dismiss, celebrate, encyclopedia, commit, capacity and ingenious as inkhorn terms that have stayed in the language. Others, including expede, are now obsolete, although the synonym expedite and the parallel impede survive.

trench - 'to encroach or verge', presumably derived from forward trenches encroaching on no man's land in trench warfare. "We know of seventeen books issued by them, but here again they were trenching but little on Caxton's market".

emblemished - '(obsolete) synonym of blemish', describing pirated editions of books "whereby they were greatly defaced and emblemished".

A pantechnicon was originally a heavy furniture removal van drawn by horses and used by the British company The Pantechnicon for delivering and collecting furniture which its customers wished to store.

huh. I was exposed to the word pantechnicon as an industry word for a large truck, what i would call a semi-trailer now. Circa 1990. Often shortened to pantech. Never knew the etymology.

>6 MrAndrew: I came across pantechnicon at school. We were reading a novel, The Card, Denry the Audacious in the US, which was written in 1911. Someone was moving house and their belongs were loaded onto a pantechnicon. I do not believe it referred to articulated trucks; just very big fixed body removal van type vehicles. It is not a word I have come across many times, although I have found it in crosswords.

>7 pgmcc: Agreed, "big fixed body removal van type vehicles". A fixed body is an important part of the definition. I think these days most people in the UK would just say "removal van", but would know what you meant if you said "pantechnicon".

"He had the idea that he’d distemper the rooms..."

To me this word is a virus dogs (and other pets) can catch. There are vaccines to prevent it. But way down at the bottom of the definitions I found this:

noun
a technique of painting in which the pigments are mixed with water, glue, size, etc, used for poster, mural, and scene painting

Funny, I came across that same word in the book that referenced a pantechnicon and had to think a sec before I remembered- it helped a lot that the character was painting her new apartment.

Oddly enough, I also recently encountered pantechnicon. It was in a work of fiction, but I can't remember which one.

ok this is getting creepy.

I'd like some help with this one: the word is "richards." It's in "Views and Opinions" by Ouida, 1895. I'll give some of the sentence for context:

"There is a morality or immorality, that of the passions, with which society ought to have little or nothing to do; but there is another kind with which it should have a good deal to do, i.e., the low standard of honour and principal which allows persons in high place to take up "richards" for sheer sake of their wealth, and go to houses which have nothing to recommend them..."
"richards" is italicized, so it was likely slang in 1895. So... prostitutes? mistresses? I have found nothing about this usage except at one time it may have meant buttocks.

>13 estragon73: Check the OED. I don’t have access at the moment or I would look. If anyone would have it they will. I’m thinking it’s something pretty off color.

>14 varielle: I tried, but there is a paywall.

Googling for "richard" slang or archaic usage yielded nothing useful.

>14 varielle: >15 clamairy: I also hit the paywall when clicking the 'View entry' link:
 
 

Someone's going to have to mention it, but the standard diminutive of the forename Richard is Dick. Could it be some sort of mealy-mouthed back-formation, using richard when they meant dick?

I was surprised to see Wikipedia's article "Dick (slang)" say: "The term came to be associated with the penis through usage by men in the military around the 1880s". Much later than I'd imagined, but practically a neologism in 1896. Perhaps making it more likely to be italicised?

>17 Cynfelyn: But would a person in high places take up a dick because they could afford it? The wording did not make sense to me.

I’m thinking they took up gentlemen acquaintances who might have been of the Oscar Wilde persuasion.

Just dropping this here for all you word nerds who don't visit my reading thread (and why not??!! LOL) -

Dictionary of Fine Distinctions

Is the screen-shot from OED I posted not showing up for you all? Their page says, "British slang. Also with lower-case initial. A young woman."

>21 ScoLgo: I see it now! Thank you.

Thanks all of you. Yes, the screenshot is here. I have a compact OED at home, but the word isn't in it. Seems likely it describes women of casual morals. But...but...probably you also saw the term "satchel of richards", which was extended to mean a bag of dicks, per Urban Dictionary, further exaggerating the pejorative value to indicate a high capacity for dickery. What I really, really want it to mean is a man's junk. But of course that's not at all the usage here. Ouida did have a sharp tongue and a no-nonsense, unsentimental nature. She's great fun to read.
The Burnstein book is very tempting.

>23 estragon73: "satchel of richards" I can't begin to tell you how much I appreciate this expression... :o)

from Edgar Saltus, "Purple And Fine Women", 1925:

"What is truth? -- verity to one, error to another, an elenchicism fit only to be concealed."
"May it not be that some of your friends, alarmed by your claustration..."
"In words not articulated, which, however, through some process similar to that of clairaudience, seemed to vibrate within me..."
""Love is a fever. Marriage is a febrifuge."

Oh, the vocabulary writers used to have!

More nonsense words from the Guardian's children's books top ten lists, including heffalumps, slithy toves and bummle wens.
https://www.librarything.com/topic/361275#8755265

This is further to https://www.librarything.com/topic/342577#8267760

Is Spike Milligan (no. 4 in the column) responsible for the past participle of think, 'thunk'? I wouldn't put it past him.

An update to "richards" -- I have an additional instance of Ouida using "richards" in italics, in a completely different context:

"It is not from the mixture of Methodism, drunkenness, revolver-shooting (what the hell?), wire-pulling, and the frantic expenditure of richards who were navvies or miners a week ago, that any alteration for better in social life can be ever looked for."

Obviously referring to money. Maybe a cockneyism... I can't make sense of this. Incidentally, while looking around for richards and dicks and so forth I found that private investigators came to be called private dicks after the hero of a popular series of Victorian penny dreadful stories featuring a detective named Dick Donovan.

>27 estragon73: Is there a coin depicting a Richard?

>28 2wonderY: A few rare mediaeval silver pennies, but nothing after c. 1485 that I can think of.

I searched for images on currencies. Queen Victoria was on every piece of British currency, paper and coin. American currency was presidents, and anyway Ouida was never in America. AI told me there was a commemorative silver dollar issued in 1896 with an image of Richard Nixon. I responded to that.

>27 estragon73: Does “richards” obviously refer to money here? I think the richards are men who were navvies or miners and are now frantically spending money. Maybe “richards” as in every Tom, Dick, and Harry?

>30 estragon73: "AI told me there was a commemorative silver dollar issued in 1896 with an image of Richard Nixon."

Sweet baby cheeses, that's quite the error. Ha ha!

>32 clamairy:
Clare, do you not realise it is the evidence of time travel we have all been waiting for?

>33 pgmcc: He wasn't nicknamed "Tricky Dick" for nothing! ;-)

>34 Hammy_JLK:
LOL

>33 pgmcc: & >34 Hammy_JLK: Bwa ha ha!!!

>31 Charon07: That's an excellent suggestion, and I think very likely true. Good job!

This dicks and richards stuff has so infected my brain that I unconsciously picked up and started to read "Moby Dick". I think I have Shakespeare's "Richard III in the house... Maybe there's a reading list to be worked up.

Anyway, I came here to post the word "peltry", referring collectively to animal skins -- "...they yield their beaches to wild barbarians, whose red painted faces flash from out their peltry wigwams;"

One thing I've heard about the Richards thing meaning a young woman, came from an account of rhyming slang according to Michael Caine. He said that calling girls birds morphed into calling them Richard the Thirds and shortened to Richards. No idea if it's true, but hey, it's as good an explanation as any. But why they should be in a sack or have any other crazy connotations is a bit beyond me. English is so weird.

>39 Bookmarque: I'm inclined to accept Michael Caine's authority on this. How such a term could have come to the ears of a young Victorian Englishwoman I won't even begin to imagine.

>39 Bookmarque:
“Richard the Third” is cockney rhyming slang for a turd. I have heard turds referred to as “birds” in parental conversations with young children in the 1960s. If “Richard” is being used as a shortened version of a Richard the Third, then a bag full of Richards makes sense.

>41 pgmcc: Here in the Seattle area, there is a burger chain called 'Dicks'. They are open late and so are a popular spot for after the bars close. It is a common thing to overhear someone leaving the pub and saying, "Hey! Let's go get a bagful of Dicks."

In light of your description, I will perhaps decline this offer if and when it comes up in future.

And say nothing about the sporting goods chain called Dick's. They have balls.

>43 Bookmarque: *snort*

Come to that, >42 ScoLgo: *snort* to you as well.

Living in Philadelphia, we always think "Poor Richard" in such instances. (Just as Ben Franklin would wish.)

Itineration in Tongaati p. 106. for "journeying" or "travel". I am reminded of a long since ex-boss-lady, whose comment whould have been to the effect of "Don't us a $3 word when a 3c one does the job better. (The rest of the book's prose is just as leaden.)

>45 hfglen:
Him! I suppose participating in a meeting would then be "agendaising", or possibly "agendaizing".

I guess if you were producing itinerants, its would be accurate.

The extravagant menu used as an epigraph to Factotum, no. 39, February 1995, the newsletter of the Eighteenth Century Short Title Catalogue, includes bittours, an archaic version of bitterns (see also the East Anglian dialect version, buttles, for example in Arthur Ransome, The Big Six).

Also rees, which coming at the end of a list of birds, and before "Bucks, Does and Roebucks", could be beast or fowl, or something else again.

And I'm going to guess that jelly parted and jelly plain are more or less fancy savoury jellies, like brawn.

Subfusc from The Crimson Petal and the White, referring to a dull and gloomy aspect.

In preparation for the group read of The Nine Tailors, I am sharing a fairly lengthy set of cathedral-related terms. These came up initially in Chapter Two as the vicar's wife is giving a tour to Lord Peter.

Piscina – A stone basin used for washing holy vessels used during Mass or Communion services. Piscinas are usually set into a niche in the church wall near the altar (usually to the south side of the sanctuary or chancel). Infrequently, piscinas could be free-standing, on a column of stone. There is a drain hole at the bottom of the piscina to allow water to escape. Very infrequently you may see a pair of side by side piscinas in one niche. These so-called double piscinas are rare but not unheard of.

The term piscina is frequently, and erroneously, applied to a similar recess for holy water placed near the main door of the church. These are more correctly called a holy water stoup, and were used for washing hands by worshippers entering or leaving the church, whereas a true piscina is used for washing vessels used during services.

Chancel - The east end of a church, traditionally the place where the high altar is located. In early Christian churches there was little or no division between the nave, at the western end, and the chancel, at the eastern end. In the medieval period the nave and chancel were often divided by a screen, usually of wood, which could become quite elaborately carved.
Chancels may have seating for a choir, and there may be small chambers off the chancel, such as a vestry, an 'office space' for the priest. Chancels were often dominated by a large east window above and behind the altar. Definition above provided by: britainexpress.com/church-history.htm

Lancet - Lancet is a term applied to any arched opening, typically a window, of tall, narrow design. Technically speaking, the arch radius is larger than the arch span, which in layman's terms simply means it is tall and slender. Lancet windows were the most common style in the early medieval period, and the most common window of the Early English Gothic style.
The term is sometimes loosely applied to any narrow window or grouping of windows. It is also erroneously applied as a synonym for narrow Saxon windows, but a lancet is more often a pointed Gothic arch.

Clerestory - An upper storey of a church, raised above the level of the aisles. The clerestory is often pierced with large windows, admitting welcome light into the nave. Many medieval churches were initially constructed without clerestories, but growing wealth and improved architectural techniques during the medieval period led to expansion upward, pushing the height of the nave up above the aisles, with the addition of a clerestory with windows. In some large churches the clerestory is topped with a third storey, called a triforium, often with blank arcading in place of windows. See diagram here: https://blog.stephens.edu/arh101glossary/?glossary=clerestory
Definition above provided by: britainexpress.com/church-history.htm?term=Clerestory

Corbel - A corbel is a projection, usually of stone, that acts a base for an arch or roof timber, transfering the weight of the timber to a wall or pillar. These projecting corbels are often carved with heads, or faces, hence the term 'corbel head'. The carvings are sometimes human, sometimes religious figures, but frequently they are peculiar or grotesque beasts or mythological creatures, very often with humourous or frightening facial expressions. You often see corbel heads 'orphaned' projecting out from an interior church wall without any apparent timber nearby. These stranded corbels were left behind when the interior was rebuilt, or a roof was raised. Definition provided by: britainexpress.com/church-history.htm

Hammer-beam - Interrupted tie beam projecting from the top of a wall, supported by a brace and supporting a hammer post. A hammer beam roof frame permits a large roof span made of relatively short timbers.

From an alternate info source: https://www.medart.pitt.edu/_medart/menuglossary/hammer.htm
a short horizontal beam, usually made of wood, extending from the top of a masonry wall outward towards the center of the enclosed space, but not completely traversing it. The projecting end is usually connected to the roof with a diagonal brace. The protruding ends of hammer beams were often elaborately carved.

Parclose - A screen, usually of wood, closing off a side chapel from the rest of the church. Compare to a rood screen which was invariably across the chancel arch. Parclose screens were often decoratively carved and painted.

Tracery: Decorative mouldings in screens, vaulting, panels, and especially windows. Technically speaking, tracery is the intersecting pattern of mouldings at the head of window design, and is most often associated with Gothic design. The pointed arch characterstic of Gothic design created a space below the peak of the arch, above two or more vertical window 'lights', or panels of glass. This space was often filled with decorative stonework. see britainexpress.com/church-history.htm?term=Tracery

>50 jillmwo: Great information. Do you have any idea when the practice of washing hands in the holy water stoup ended?

>51 Karlstar:. I really have no idea. Perhaps it ended when churches were trying to rework spaces in the building, but that's just a guess.

>50 jillmwo:
I was surprised to see the receptacle for holy water at the door of a church called a stoup. In all my years I have never heard it called that. I have always known it as a holy water font.

>53 pgmcc: I had been completely unaware of either term (piscina or stoup) until this particular read of The Nine Tailors. But here's the original entry https://www.britainexpress.com/church-history.htm?term=Piscina

I think font would indeed be a more familiar term to most of us.

>53 pgmcc: My experience is the opposite: the font is where newbies are baptised, and if the church has a receptacle for holy water (most Anglican ones around here don't) it's a stoup.

>55 hfglen:
We called the holy water container at the door the holy water font and the baptismal font the baptismal font.

referring to Alice Meynell, in 1923, Viola Meynell writes: "Her thought is a thought which very few writers got. It is mystical, but excucite."

Anybody know what "excucite" means?

>57 estragon73: I’m wondering if it was a typo. I ve checked several dictionaries and haven’t found it.

>58 varielle: Yes, probably, but a typo for what I can't figure.

>59 estragon73: exquisite?

execute.

Jamais vu in milkman. I hadn't encountered it before. Very Oliver Sacks.

phlogiston-- Before scientists understood the element oxygen, phlogiston is what they called the "fire-like" ingredient in air.

>27 estragon73: "the frantic expenditure of richards who were navvies or miners a week ago" - a week ago they were navvies or miners, now they are Richards, and spending frantically. I think the implication here is that a miner or navvy wouldn't be called Richard, that they now are Richards suggests an attempt to clamber the social ladder, even if only by a rung or two.

>13 estragon73: "which allows persons in high place to take up "richards" for sheer sake of their wealth, and go to houses which have nothing to recommend them" - a house which has nothing to recommend it would be a house of ill repute, "A brothel, strumpet house, bordello, bawdy house, ranch, house of ill repute, house of ill fame, or whorehouse is a place where people engage in sexual activity with prostitutes". I think these richards are obviously tarts.

A couple of weeks ago someone asked the meaning of the word "sanie" on the Wikipedia Language Reference Desk. They had read it in 'The Horror from the Hills' ("Weird Tales", January 1931) by Frank Belknap Long.

The answer was given "a thin mixture of pus and blood serum discharged from a wound".

Eleven days after that q&a I was reading 'The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis' by Clark Ashton Smith, and encountered "... the pale, sanies-like sunset...". That story was first published in "Weird Tales" in May 1932.

I'm sure the question on Wikipedia was the first time I'd ever read or heard the word, and its appearance in 'The Vaults...' was the second.

It lead me to wondering if there was a particular vocabulary peculiar to "Weird Tales"? Any words with a significantly greater frequency in them compared to literature at large?

>66 DuncanHill:

Well, H. P. Lovecraft certainly had a distinctive lexicon, and Clark Aston Smith's was even more exotic. These two may have rubbed off on writers like Frank Belknap Long. But Weird Tales prominently featured Seabury Quinn, whose stories feature relatively pedestrian vocabulary, and I don't think it was really a "house style" to use arcane verbiage.

jorum: a large drinking bowl. Seen in The Nebuly Coat.

Just encountered the word coffret in The Darkling Bride. It's defined as a small box or casket, but some of the images I found make them look quite attractive. Apparently the Victorians liked them as jewelry boxes. It originated from the French, according to Wiktionary. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/coffret

Odic force in The Devil's Manuscript by S. Levett-Yeats, found in the anthology The Haunted Library edited by Tanya Kirk.

Wikipedia says Odic force (also called Od /oʊd/, Odyle, Önd, Odes, Odylic, Odyllic, or Odems) was a hypothetical vital energy or life force believed by some in the mid-19th century. The name was coined by Baron Carl von Reichenbach in 1845 in reference to the Germanic god Odin.

See The Odic Force by Karl Reichenbach.

Came across precarity (state of being precarious, uncertain). It sounded made up, and was not in my kindle dictionary, but is defined on the internet. I’ve probably come across it before and forgotten about it, and I naturally think of the noun form as precariousness.

Usage: “For all their precarity and relative daintiness, the concept of the classical city is…”

That example still sounds unnecessarily awkward to me, but it is a long, awkward sentence for which I’ve only provided the pertinent part.

Elsewhere, I’ve discovered there is a subtle difference between precarity and precariousness:

“As nouns the difference between precarity and precariousness is that precarity is a condition of existence without predictability or security, affecting material or psychological welfare while precariousness is a state of being uncertain or unstable.”

>71 ludmillalotaria:

I think it's a pretty recent coinage, mostly used in political and economic discourse. It has spawned the derivative term precariat.

Why do people say a horse rears up when actually it fronts up?

>73 TorMented: 😆😆😆

People don't know what they are talking about, as usual?

>73 TorMented: In the same way, the kitchen tool that reduces things like bread or cheese to smaller fragments should surely be a lesser, not a grater>?

While reading Glacial Period I came twice upon serac: A sharp tower of ice formed by intersecting crevasses of a glacier. Not something you find blocking staircases very often, which is what they were doing here.

>76 defaults:
That rings bells from my school physical geography classes.

waukrife: "...one must know something of the waukrife London that the homeless perpetually cross and recross...
Merriam-Webster says it is a Scottish variant of 'wakerife', a person who wakes up early. The quote is from a travel book by James Bone, quoted in a book review in the NYT in 1925.

>78 estragon73: I can't make that definition make sense in that sentence fragment. Is there a typo? Perhaps if you posted the whole sentence?

>79 jjwilson61:

It seems comprehensible if you substitute a near-synonymous adjective:

"...one must know something of the sleepless London that the homeless perpetually cross and recross..."

I mean, it's sort of poetic, but meaningful enough. (And despite the ellipses, it's an independent clause.)

Thanks. That makes sense.

>76 defaults: Read that just before serac cropped up in The Third Shadow, by H. Russell Wakefield, collected in Sunless Solstice.

Weird-word lovers (note, I didn't say "weird word-lovers"), here is a book for you:

Guilty by Definition, by Susie Dent

Staffers of a dictionary publisher that is transparently the OED are plagued by messages from an unknown person who is goading them to seek answers concerning the disappearance of a former colleague. Page after page is adorned with archaic, obscure, and obsolete words to delight the amateur vocabulist. A dear friend sent it to me as a gift, and I am thrilled to pass the title on to you.

>83 Meredy:
That is an excellent novel.

Vitulity. I can’t find a definition for it. It is from a story translated from German, and from the context, I think it might be an old form of “vitality.”
“The art of the sorcerer had indeed bestowed upon Brunhilda an artificial life, and due nourishment had continued to support the restored body; yet, this body was not able of itself to keep up the genial glow of vitulity, and to nourish the flame whence springs all the affections and passions, whether of love or hate; for death had for ever destroyed and withered it: all that Brunhilda now possessed was a chilled existence, colder than that of the snake.”
From “Wake Not the Dead” by Ernst Raupach.

vitulity -- the whole passage is quite nice: "a chilled existence..."

Today's problem is the word "spong": "You never see sich a clean boy, you never see 'im but what 'e seemed to 'ave sponged 'is collar that minute."
from "Living Alone", Sally Benson, 1920. We can suppose it means straightened; OED says it refers to a long strip of land, but nothing else. Given the context, it may be a contemporary slang term that was never recorded.

But there's even more fun in a nearby listing: "spondulicks", meaning cash; from 1857. "Those who ordered job work should come down with spondulicks as soon as the work is done." "Of fanciful American origin." What an absolutely ridiculous word! Perfectly Damon Runyon but wrong time period.
"Okay, mister, hand over your spondulicks and be quick about it."
Sign in window: "We only accept spondulicks." I could go on and on with this.

>86 estragon73: Could that be the past tense of sponge?

>86 estragon73: Could that be the past tense of sponge?
Could this be a double post?

In the 1800s, some collars were made from celluloid, an early form of plastic that mimicked the look of linen. Seems like that could be cleaned with a sponge.

>85 TorMented: I would suspect vitulity of being a typo for vitality

>86 estragon73: As others have said, it's the past of the verb "to sponge", to clean with a sponge.

Spong was a famous brand of mincer, but you wouldn't Spong your collar :)

re: "spong"; my apologies for that idiotic post last week. Apparently I suffered a neural spasm and couldn't identify the word "sponge" -- probably because the context was unfamiliar. Plus I'm old.
So to make up for it, and not waste a word, I've decided that a spong is one of those plastic dining utensils that's half spoon and half two-tined fork.

>91 estragon73: Don't feel bad. I posted a word that was an obvious typo that probably came from scanning in a printed page.
Not to pile on, though, but there's a name for a utensil that's part spoon and part fork. It's a spork.

>92 TorMented: Or a Splayd.

>93 haydninvienna: I learned a new word. But I do note that a splayd also has features of a knife.

>94 TorMented: It does, but it's not actually much good at it. We have a set, but they don't see much use nowadays.

A splayd must be a jack of all trades and a master of none.

There must be a joke in here somewhere.
“I nearly fell over when I bent down to retrieve that weird utensil.”
“Splayd?”
“No, I just crouched down a bit.”

>96 TorMented: That's about right.

>97 TorMented: 👍🏾

Okay, well, that's too bad about sporks. I will have to try harder for my bit of immortality.

Edna Ferber, "So Big": "Selina, none too knowledgeous herself, still recognized that here was something rare..."
I think Ferber was making a joke. She was, after all, a member of the Algonquin Round Table group.

materteral: to do with a maternal aunt. Seen in Michael Cardo's biography of Harry Oppenheimer, describing the subject going on a shopping expedition in London in about 1919 with his mother (!).

swingeing: extreme and having a serious and unpleasant effect. Encountered in the introduction to the book: Converts: From Oscar Wilde to Muriel Spark, Why So Many Became Catholic in the 20th Century by Melanie McDonagh.

To give a sense of the context, someone had written a "swingeing riposte" to an anti-Catholic article.

>102 jillmwo: Just on the faint flicker of a chance, does the book mention a comment by someone (don't know whom, but it could be Bertrand Russell) to the effect that many people who went Catholic did so for aesthetic reasons (music, robes, incense etc) viewing the Church of Rome as innocuous, but to get a real idea of what it was like they should have looked to Ireland, where it was powerful? I read this somewhere but don't remember where, and I've been trying to track it down for years.

>103 haydninvienna:
This reminds me of lines from the totally irreverent play, Improbable Frequency, about a British spying mission to investigate the goings on in small restaurant in Dublin during “The Emergency”, i.e. WWII. The restaurant clientele are mostly German. The play is a musical comedy and one of the customers sings this line:

”It’s not that we’re nazis, we just like the style.”

Characters in the play include Professor Schrödinger, Flan O’Brian and John Benjamin.

>103 haydninvienna: You're certainly in the ballpark. The word appeared in a sentence about Hilaire Belloc responding to H.G. Wells' 1920 book, The Outline of History. The argument between in two went on back-and-forth for the better part of that decade. While there was a mention as to the allure of the aesthetics, the author of Converts: From Oscar Wilde to Muriel Sparks insists that wasn't as much of a motivator as may sometimes be claimed. (The Anglo-Catholic branch of the Church of England was perfectly able to supply the aesthetics.)

BTW, the sentence I mentioned above wasn't in the introduction; it was more in mid-point of the text. When the book arrived, I did what I normally do. I flipped through chapters to see what was there; the unusual word caught my eye because initially, I thought it might be a typo.

>105 jillmwo: "Swingeing" used to be a fairly common word in British journalism, often as part of the stock expression "swingeing cuts" (to budgets or whatever).