Coolth
Coolth has returned. Cool weather, that is. There isn't a "cool" equivalent to the form of the word "warmth," though there ought to be. It was a fine warm weekend that lasted into Monday, but I had to be indoors a lot, at the iMac keyboard, so I missed most of it.
This is the desk where I spend a lot of my time, where I write and edit and post, so that checks will be mailed to me. Of course, I don't want to illustrate it with a picture of me when I can come up with someone much more photogenic.
posted by Dees Stribling @ 10:50 PM
3 comments
3 Comments:
A lot more common than this OED entry lets on, not maybe a fully "real" word, usually considered jocular, and a word that I even use to mean "coolness" (possessing the features of a cool person), but it does exist outside of nonce usage:
coolth
1. Coolness. Now arch.
1547 SALESBURY Welsh Dict., Oerfel, coulthe. 1611 COTGR., Froid, cold, cooth; coldnesse. 1781 F. BURNEY Diary I. 379 My father and Mrs. Thrale seated themselves out of doors..for coolth and chat. 1863 T. TAYLOR Pictures in Words xiii, In pleasant dreams Of English coolth and greenery. 1875 PARISH Sussex Dialect, Coolthe, coolness. ‘I set the window open for coolthe’. 1890 KIPLING Plain Tales from Hills (ed. 3) 137 He kept on steadily and tried to think how pleasant the coolth was. 1926 J. R. R. TOLKIEN in Year's Work Eng. Stud. 1924 30 The current coolth, which shows signs of losing its facetiousness, and may claim part of the territory of cool. 1955 E. POUND Classic Anthol. II. 120 June's mid-summer, August brings coolth again. 1965 E. O'BRIEN August is Wicked Month ii. 21 She felt the coolth of her thighs and thought it nice to feel her own coolness.
2. A cold (i.e. the malady so named). rare, exc. dial.
1881 G. F. JACKSON Shropsh. Word-bk. s.v. Cooth..‘That child's ketcht a cooth’. 1884 Cheshire Gloss., Cooth, cold (malady)..‘I'm so full of cooth and cold’.
Geof
That's what I need around this house, a copy of the OED.
Um, we have the OED. Abridged, with the requisite excellently domed magnifying glass. Haven't cracked it in a while, though. I heartily recommend it! If nothing else, it makes a Scrabble game interesting.
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