Inspissated

It's not often I come across a word I have to look up but today I did. I always jot such words down, take a blind guess at what they mean and then google them and chortle in glee if I'm close to correct on my assumption. I find searching them out holds the word like glue in my brain. I had a father who was in love with words and we would do the crossword together every night. The Evening Echo of Cork, a reasonably challenging crossword. A fine way for a 6 year old to start developing language skills. We would look up any word we didn't understand.

Take a shot at the above word. I, of course, went right to the "piss" of it. And as the weather was "inspissated" in the story I thought: "beginning to rain." I should of course, know better than to go with the slang of "piss".

So take a shot at what it means......

Here's Merriam-Webster:

Definition of INSPISSATED


: thickened in consistency; broadly : made or having become thick, heavy, or intense


First Known Use of INSPISSATED

1655

in·spis·sat·ed adjective \in-ˈspis-ˌāt-əd, ˈin(t)-spə-ˌsāt-\ (Medical Dictionary)


Medical Definition of INSPISSATED



: thick or thickened in consistency

—in·spis·sa·tion noun

Along with some rather squeamish medical definitions involving breast ducts. We won't go there, alright? And the illustrations for the word - many horrific images. Avoid.

Susan Hill, recently discovered by moi and on whom I have a serious woman-crush, used it to describe the thickening of a mist into fog.

So there.

I learn something new every day.

Bella Carter

That’s what the man said as we looked out over the sparkling bay. He pointed at these odd ice formations which looked for all the world like paving stones, piled up on the shore line.

“These are called Bella Carters,” he said.

“Bella Carters?” I said, the word being new to me, a mere CFA, always captivated by the wonderful words I hear around me at the edge of the Atlantic in Newfoundland. “Can you spell it?”


“Well,” he said slowly, he always speaks to me slowly as if I’m a rather dimwitted child, “I never did have to write it down but that’s what my daddy called them, and his daddy before him.”

I fell upon my dictionary once I came home. The Dictionary of Newfoundland English. Previously written about here. No Bella Carter listed. But under bellycater it says go to ballicatter. Which I do. In my slow-witted way.

And oh my, it gets a whole half page of space, this word.

And here’s the meaning I’m looking for:

“a narrow band of ice, formed in winter in the saltwater along the foreshore or landwash. Large slabs, chunks and fragments of this ice after break-up.”

And I attempted, with the photo, to give you an up close and personal look at Bella Carter.

Isn’t she gorgeous?

Luscious words

"The Dictionary of Newfoundland English" is a massive tome, 770 pages plus a forward. And I read it like a novel. Many words have the scent of Ireland about them, words of my grandparents and particularly the words of my great-grandmother who was a cranky old wan, disliked by many, but kind to me. "I only have room for the one," she said to my grandmother and her daughters, "Just the one great-grand one!" and she pointed to me and that was it. She refused to have the other great grandchildren around her.

She made a bit of an effort with me. She'd call me her "angashore", not quite the equivalent of "dotey pet" which was used by my Granny. Angashore might have been a bit of a step down from dotey pet but coming from the Great and Fearful Nana S., this was a total endearment. Angashore: a weak little thing, a thing to be pitied, coddled, protected and fed, in a correct translation for that era.

Newfoundlanders have made of the word their very own.
Here, in the dictionary we get:
Angashore, Angyshore
(1) A poverty stricken creature
(2) A weak, sickly person, an unlucky person deserving pity.
(3) A man regarded as too lazy to fish.
(4) An idle, mischievous child or person.
(5) A migratory fisherman from Newfoundland who conducts a summer fishery from a fixed station on the coast of Labrador.

In the tradition of Gaeilge, the Irish language, words beginning with vowels were aspirated (an h put in front) when used in complex sentences. Angashore was packed on board the fishing boats leaving from Wexford and Cork sailing for the new found land, along with the bait, hooks, nets and lines way back in the seventeenth century.

And it emerged at the other side of the Atlantic, sometimes, as "hangashore", thus the new definition in (5) above. A stationary fisherman: "hang a shore".

I just love the evolution of language and I particularly like the special connection for me in this one gorgeous word.