Selections from Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary: “T”

Edited by Dan Leo, LL.D.,Assistant Professor of Turgid Classics, Assistant Faro Team Coach, Olney Community College; author of Bozzie and Dr. Sam: The Tempestuous Tutoress; the Olney Community College Press.

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*** Tabefaction.The act of wasting away. *** Tachygraphy.  The art or practice of quick writing. *** To Tantalize.  [from Tantalus, whose punishment was to starve among fruits and water which he could not touch.]  To torment by the shew of pleasures which cannot be reached. *** Tarantula.  An insect whose bite is only cured by musick. This word, lover, did no less pierce poor Pyrocles than the right tune of musick toucheth him that is sick of the tarantula. Sidney. *** Tarragon. A plant called herb-dragon. *** To Teh-he.  To laugh with a loud and more insolent kind of cachinnation; to titter. *** Tempest.  The utmost violence of the wind; the names by which the wind is called according to the gradual encrease of its force seems to be, a breeze; a gale; a gust; a storm; a tempest. I have seen tempests, when the scolding winds Have riv'd the knotty oaks.  Shakesp. Julius Cæsar. *** Temple.  A place appropriated to acts of religion. Here we have no temple but the wood, no assembly but hornbeasts.  Shakespeare's As you like it. *** Tenebricose.  Dark; gloomy. *** Testudineous.   Resembling the shell of a tortoise. *** Tree.  A large vegetable rising, with one woody stem, to a considerable height. Trees shoot up in one great stem, and at a good distance from the earth, spread into branches: thus gooseberries are shrubs, and oaks are trees. Locke. *** Turtle.  It is used among sailors and gluttons for a tortoise. *** Tush.  [Of this word I can find no credible etymology.] An expression of contempt. *** Tutsan.   A plant. *** Tympany.   A kind of obstructed flatulence that swells the body like a drum. The air is so rarified in this kind of dropsical tumour as makes it hard and tight like a drum, and from thence it is called a tympany. Arbuthnot. *** Tyro.  One yet not master of his art; one in his rudiments. There stands a structure on a rising hill, Where tyro's take their freedom out to kill. Garth's Disp. *** (Our illustrated adaptation of Boswell’s Life of Johnson will resume next week. Classix Comix is made possible through the continuing support of the Bob’s Bowery Bar™ Fund for the Uncommercial Arts: “Allow me to recommend Bob’s Bowery Bar’s new ‘Autumn Menu’, including a particular personal favorite: ‘Bob’s Mom’s Mulligan Stew’, a tasty mélange of ‘available’ free-range meats and organic vegetables and roots, slow-cooked in Bob’s justly-renowned basement-brewed house bock, served with your choice of Uneeda biscuits or home-baked hardtack. At a buck a bowl this nutritious and filling repast is ideal for those recently cast into near-penury by the recent stock market fluctuations!” – Horace P. Sternwall, host of Bob’s Bowery Bar Presents Horace P. Sternwall’s Celebrity Kaffeeklatsch, exclusively on the Dumont Television Network, Sundays at 3pm (EST). This week’s guests: Percy Helton, Beverly Michaels, Cleo Moore, and Hugo Haas.) ------ "U/V"