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StJohn  ·  4245 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Personal projects and research

Hypnopompic! These are some great words — and it's exciting to find someone else who digs around etymological dictionaries. I get to see the Oxford English Dictionary online thanks to my library's subscription, and what's great about that is it has the etymology and first recorded use of a word. Which means you can stumble on gems like:

    flapdoodle, n. Pronunciation: /flæpˈduːd(ə)l/ Etymology: An arbitrary formation; compare fadoodle n.

    1834 F. Marryat Peter Simple II. ix. 152 ‘The gentleman has eaten no small quantity of flapdoodle in his lifetime.’ ‘What's that, O'Brien?’ replied I... ‘Why, Peter,’ rejoined he, ‘it's the stuff they feed fools on.’