BEYERS DE VOS
Every now and again Perdeby comes across a word, like “bunghole” or “floccinaucinihilipilification” (seriously), which is so strange, unlikely or unpronounceable that we can’t help but question its existence. So this week, we list some weird and wonderful words with the help of Foyle’s Philavery and Squidoo.com.
Ataraxy: “freedom from disturbance of mind or passion” or “the nature of or relating to the parsnip”. Meaning that if someone accuses you of ataraxy, they are either telling you you’re sane or that you remind them of a parsnip. Good luck.
Blatherskite: a blatherskite is someone who talks rubbish very loudly or sounds foolish. So basically, everyone (including ourselves) in the Square on Thursdays by about 22:00.
Cockshut: we’ll give you a moment to snicker quietly. Right. Cockshut actually just means twilight or dusk and was first used by Shakespeare in Richard the Third. You have to wonder if Twilight would have sold as well if Stephenie Meyer had called her debut novel Cockshut instead? Something tells us it might have sold even better.
Foofaraw: “making a fuss about nothing.” Apparently this word is widely used in North America. We remain doubtful, but plan on walking really close to American or Canadian tourists until we hear it.
Fuzzing: to us it sounds like growing a lot of hair, but officially it’s a verb meaning to shuffle a deck of cards with extreme care.
Josser: according to Foyle’s Philavery, this is someone who “is not born to circus life”. So that includes just about everyone who isn’t a clown or a bearded woman. Ironically, it can also mean “an outsider”.
Oojah: when we first heard this one we had an overwhelming desire to walk into a dental surgery and shout “pass me the oojah!” which would probably not have gone down well since an oojah is defined as a “thingumabob, doohickey or whatchamacallit”.
Oxter: the armpit. We have no comment.
Squabash: A crushing defeat. As in: “The Sharks were given such a squabash by the Bulls on Saturday.”
Wenis: so walking innocently along a passage in the HSB, the phrase “can I touch your wenis” is heard. True story. So, we investigate and discover that the wenis is the patch of rough skin on the outside of the elbow. Why this part of the anatomy needs a name, and why it has this one, we don’t know. Honestly we are too busy giggling to find out.
OK, we had to try and make a sentence out of these, and no matter how hard we tried we couldn’t stop it from sounding dirty. So here it is anyway:
“The oojah, who suffered from ataraxy, was fuzzing at cockshut preparing to give the batherskite a squabash, while the josser made a fooferaw about his oxter and wenis.”
Now say that five times fast.
