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.