Saturday, October 20, 2012

Terms in Sayers' Lord Peter Later Books: Busman's Honeymoon

So finally I did what I've been meaning to do with Dorothy L. Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries -- note terms with which I am not totally familiar, even if I figure them out in context (which I've been doing since I learned to read!).


Busman's Honeymoon terms noted
(all from the 1986 Perennial Library paperback edition)

"Parva" as a add-on to a town name, e.g. "Pagford Parva," ( p. 31).
Kev had told me he thought this was similar to a market town, from his in-context figuring out from Wodehouse.  It is NOT in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) online!
Here is what UK Yahoo Answers' Best Answer says: "English villages frequently come in pairs, distinguished by Great, Much, or Magna for the more populous, Little, Lesser, or Parva for the less populous, or less extensive."

 "Deal Dresser" (p. 111) --  I think it is something like a sideboard.
 Once again not in the OED!  I'd imagined I'd get all sorts of etymological definitions for this post from the OED! 
Here's a blog post from the wife of a woodworker who tried her own hand at building a "deal dresser," though she and he don't really explain the word.

"Caitiff" (p. 185) -- actually in the epigraph to Chapter XI, from Shakespeare's Measure for Measure: "What is you worship's pleasure I shal do with this wicked caitiff?"
FINALLY USC's subscription to the online version of the OED does not fail me! --
"Forms:  α. ME caitef, caiteff, caityf, caityue, kaitif, kaytefe, ME caytef, caytif, ...

Etymology:  < Old Northern French caitif, caitive, captive, weak, miserable (= Provençal ...
†1. Originally: A captive, a prisoner. Obs."
Prisoner is the best meaning in context here.



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