mikeet has adopted no words, looked up 0 words, created 0 lists, listed 0 words, written 2 comments, added 0 tags, and loved 0 words.
mikeet has adopted no words, looked up 0 words, created 0 lists, listed 0 words, written 2 comments, added 0 tags, and loved 0 words.
Comments by mikeet
mikeet commented on the word spitalhouse
A spitalhouse, where spital is a shortening of hospital, is a place set aside for the diseased or destitute, usually of a lower class than a hospital.
A trio of women holding hands, gaunt and thin as the inmates of a spitalhouse and attired the three alike in the same cheap finery, their faces daubed in fard and pale as death.
Cities of The Plain, by Cormac McCarthy, 1998.
Source: Michael Quinion via WorldWideWWords. July 2, 2016.
October 16, 2023
MikeET commented on the word hassayampa
According to the Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins, 4th Ed. by Robert Hendrickson (ISBN-13: 978-1-60751-235-6):
DARE traces this Western word for someone given to exaggeration, or a liar, back to 1901 and says it derives from the name of the Hassayampa River in Arizona; the river's name, in turn, probably coming from a Yuma Indian word. The term was first applied to old prospectors with wondrous but untruthful stories. Why was the river associated with liars and lying? According to the Dictionary of American Folklore: "There was a popular legend that anyone who drank of the Hassayampa River...would never again tell the truth."
June 10, 2013