1st february 2006

Some days are peculiar; they start off strange and the taste just doesn't go away.
The dictionary this morning was acting up:

chide chīd, v.t. to scold, rebuke, reprove by words: to be noisy about, as the sea. [my italics: this makes no sense to me at all grammatically]

v.i. to make a snarling, murmuring sound, as a dog or trumpet [my italics again: this isn't a dictionary entry, this is some kind of poetry]

I was right about chidden, though.  But then there was

grape'fruit a fine variety of the shaddock, the pompelmoose, with sometimes a slightly grapelike taste.

Wot? This was too much all at once. Never mind the curious pompelmoose
between its drawling commas, referring whether to the shaddock or the
grapefruit I didn't know (and being defined elsewhere as the shaddock, esp. the grapefruit, also pampelmoose, pampelmouse, pumple-nose (Dutch; origin obscure); but there was shaddock,
a word I'd never heard before, which it turns out is a family of fruits
named for Captain Shaddock of the East India company who brought plants
from Malaysia to the Caribbean. And tasting like grapes? I've never
noticed.

After all this one is expected to go to work; ludicrous.

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