D-AW in this thread (on tweets from Dinneen’s Irish dictionary) linked to the poem “From The Irish” by Ian Duhig, and it seemed to make an excellent follow-up post. So without further ado:
According to Dinneen, a Gael unsurpassed
in lexicographical enterprise, the Irish
for moon means ‘the white circle in a slice
of half-boiled potato or turnip’. A star
is the mark on the forehead of a beast
and the sun is the bottom of a lake, or wellWell if I say to you your face
is like a slice of half-boiled turnip,
your hair is the colour of a lake’s bottom
and at the centre of each of your eyes
is the mark of the beast, it is because
I want to love you properly, according to Dinneen.
I recommend going to the link so you can read the amusing introduction and hear the whole thing pleasingly read by the author in an accent I am not familiar with.
The best comments on Dinneen were made by the immortal Myles.
A companion volume is Dwelly’s Gaelic Dictionary, which will give you the correct terms for the different ways to clip an animal’s ear and other useful information.
I understand Dineen worked extensively with a piglet in a red jacket with a shilling in one pocket and some tobacco in the other.
Biddy Jenkinson, herself a poet, has a charming volume of short stories featuring An Duinníneach as a Sherlock Holmes/Father Brown type detective. See the publisher’s page and Ciarán Carson’s interesting review (in English) here;
http://www.coisceim.ie/bleachtaire.html
I don’t remember if I clicked through to the review back in 2012, but having done so now, I like it so much I’m going to quote the start here:
I recommend clicking through and reading the rest.
I guess “attidulate” is OCR for “articulate”, but hoped from the context it might be a technical term meaning, say, “preternaturally able to select the mot juste”
“detective (rec.)” — rec. means recent, in case anyone else was wondering
Re accent I would have said “North of England”. Wikipedia says Ian Duhig went to Leeds University but does not say where he lived as a child.
EDIT: his Australian nephew was involved with a band called “Tropical Fuck Storm”, according to Wikipedia
I guess “attidulate” is OCR for “articulate”
Rats, you’re right — I really liked “attidulate”!
I suggest we adopt the word in that meaning. For attidulate speakers like us, there’s nothing more pleasing than filling a microscopic lexical gap with an obscure and impeccably learnèd word.
Moreover, with attidulate comes the promise of a whole family of words formed with a prefix to tidulate.
contidulate “able to express a meaning adequately by synonyms; (pej.) inclined to prefer inferior synonyms”
destidulate “having lost the ability to find the precise word, e.g. out of emotional distress”
intidulate “notoriously unable to find the mot juste”
Excellent words all! My friends, let us retidulate…
Here’s a couple of more lexical protidulations:
extidulate “strikingly attidulate; using lexical precision in an aggressive manner”
pertidulate “thoroughly attidulate; able to apply the mot juste to great effect”
posttidulate “having the tendency to find a better word or formulation in hindsight”
Rectidulate, don’t circumtidulate.
circumtidulating — “suggesting several words, none of which quite fits”
Sorry for the maltidulate html (I’m not sure if that’s strong enough, I have a tendency to sustidulate).
(Apologies for using the slangy rectidulate for rectitidulate.)
Eh, haplogy has a long tradition.
It’s antidulated, as you might say.
A most attidulate observation.
ambitidulate “perfectly describing two mutually exclusive situations; perfectly applying a word with double meaning” He was notorious for his ambitidulate galantery.
This appears to be the only comment thread mentioning Father Brown, so I’ll put this note here.
There are a lot of old things one can watch online now, and for shows and movies that the copyright holders have no expectation of monetizing themselves, many of those copyright holders seem to have no problem these days if other channels upload them to YouTube. Of late, I have been watching a lot of 1970s and 1980s content posted at Forgotten British Television. There are several other channels offering similar content, but I think this one is the best.
The guy who runs the channel has uploaded almost all of the old Father Brown series starring Kenneth More. There have been two relatively recent British television adaptations of Chesterton’s mysteries, but I thought they both decidedly mediocre. (Part of the reason has to be that, since around 1995, British adaptations of classic stories, especially mysteries, have seemingly felt no obligations whatsoever to be true to the originals. If they feel free to change the identity of the killer, I am not inclined to watch.) I had watched some of the Kenneth More Father Brown episodes when I was quite young, probably about six. Given the timing, I suspect that was the second time they had been shown on Mystery!, so my parents had seen them before and knew which ones would be appropriate. Some of them made quite an impression on me, like “The Eye of Apollo”; I remembered the details of both crimes, although until I watched it again last week, I had no idea who the detective had been and had consequently despaired of ever seeing it again. Having watched almost the whole series again, I appreciated the relaxed pacing and More’s subtle acting, portraying Chesterton’s ideal of Catholicism.
Father Brown has left the strongest impression, but a lot of the other mysteries, especially period mysteries, have also been very enjoyable. I enjoyed Cribb too, and discovered another couple episodes that I partially remembered, although again I had no idea who had been the detective. I had probably never seen Chessgame before, but I always liked the recetly late Terrence Stanp.
Thanks for that — I’ve sent the link to my old-TV-loving brother, who I’m sure will appreciate it.