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FENT Fent is a word new to me this week. Reading an early Victorian law case, I came upon an accusatory passage in which the prosecuting attorney claimed that a suspected bounder had “put his hand . . . into the fent of her petticoat.” Thou Low-Born Toad! I thought. Uncouth Varlet! Utter Cad! Villainous Rotter! Now fent sounded dirty and sort of slitty and vent-like and indeed such is its prime sense. Still in some country dialects of England, a fent is an opening in a garment, especially at the neck, often cinctured by a brooch. But fent is much more frequent meaning ‘a length of fabric of sufficient area to be still useful.’ Examine the picture of the shop below. Etymology of Fent Fent as fabric bolt begins in Middle French as fente. Middle French covers the period from 1340 to 1611 and anticipates the vocabulary and grammar of Classical French of the 17th and 18th centuries. However, the word is still in modern French with meanings like ‘opening of a blouse,’ ‘cleft in a piece of wood’ or ‘armhole in a man’s vest,’ from the common French verb fendre ‘to split open, to chop a log’ and with a reflexive form se fendre la gueule ‘ to spit a gut laughing.’ All forms descend from the Latin verb findĕre ‘to split’ with many active derivatives in modern English like fissure ‘split’ and fissile ‘able to be split’ hence nuclear fission ‘splitting an atom’s nucleus.’ Perhaps also from findere are fibre and Latin filum ‘thread.’ Among Indo-European cognates of Latin findere are the Germanic root that gives English ‘to bite’ and the Sanskrit verbal root bhid- ‘to cleave in two, to split.’ The vent in the back of a man’s jacket or the slit in the back of a coat is the same word, merely a variant of fent. Humble as Dirt The highly productive Latin adjectival suffix –ilis has many borrowings that ended up in English: sessile ‘sitting,’ fragile ‘able to be fractured’ (loss of intervocalic soft [g] gives eventually the English frail), agile, fossile and fossil ‘able to be dug up,’ docile, sterile, civil, percentile and quartile. One of particular interest and not immediately obvious is humble from Old French umble from Latin humilis ‘low, slight, mean, base.’ The hidden root is Latin humus ‘dirt, earth, soil, ground.’ A person humilis was low as dirt! Also related is human from Latin humanus, original sense ‘made of dirt or clay.’ Warning: Obscene Usage Discussed Here! Fent is an extreme vulgarism in modern American slang. It is a coarse synonym for vulva, due to its similarity in sound to the word vent, also a synonym for a woman’s external genitalia.   copyright © 2012 William Gordon Casselman     Any comments, additional word lore or book orders? Please email me at wordguy@shaw.ca     Click above graphic to read 7-page free sample of this book - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -   For readers interested in French, there is a great deal of material on my website about Quebec French. Just click below to begin.

Any comments, emendations, additional word lore or book orders? Please email it to me at wordguy@shaw.ca

 

 

 

Reviews of my New Book

Click bookcover for preview

Jenni French of San Fancisco, California writes on her blog "My Corner of the Universe" for March 19, 2011:

Casselman, Bill. Where a Dobdob Meets a Dikdik: A World Lover's Guide to the Weirdest, Wackiest, and Wonkiest Lexical Gems. Avon, MA: Adams Media, 2010.

"I admit it: I'm a word nerd. I love words: weird words, long words, obscure words, funny words.  This book is right up my alley.  With chapters like "Nautical Words," "Creepy Words," and "Edible Words," I have enjoyed every page of this book. 

And the author has quite a way with words, so I have found myself rereading many sentences in this book and slowing my progress through it. 

My current favorite sentence is found in a discussion of dog hybrid breed names: "What a revolting concatenation of cutesiness and smarmy nomenclatorial treacle parading under the name of canine hybrid breed names" (19).

I'm sure I'll have another favorite sentence in a day or two. 

This book is just that good and just that entertaining."

 

Author Bill Casselman replies: "Thanks, Jenni!"

Just a reminder that this book contains my ALL-NEW word esssays, none of which are available anywhere else in print or online.

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A Great New Review of My Latest Book!

 

October 26, 2011

Welcome to the Enchanted Forest

By WB Johnston

This review is about Bill Casselman’s latest e-book about words: Where a Dobdob Meets a Dikdik: A Word Lover’s Guide to the Weirdest, Wackiest, and Wonkiest Lexical Gems (Kindle Edition)

 

“Wade Davis, lately of National Geographic, once described each living language as “an old-growth forest of the human spirit.” Once you decide to enter the kleptomaniacal woods of our mother tongue, what you need is more than a tour guide. This is no Disney-fied ‘keep-your-hands-inside-the-car-at all-times’, point A to point B, clear-cutting mining of language. You, here, are in the hands of Sir William of Cassel, a genuine shaman modestly posing as a simple lover of words.

In the best of the spiritual tradition, Bill is the shape-shifter who constantly leads you to all the places you need to find in your soul. Every page is a new country, an invitation to an excursion into the wonderland of rich connections with the myriad of sources of what so often we unthinkingly wield as a prosaic tool.

Pay absolutely no attention to anyone who tells you that this book is anything but pure gold. It’s simply not true, sadly, that all the world loves a lover. Particularly someone whose love is so boundless.

But Sir William is fearless. You don’t earn your keep as a medicine man if you have a thin skin. While I cannot for the life of me understand how anyone could walk away from this book unmoved by its wit, its wisdom and the beautiful transparency by which the author celebrates the glorious romp of our almost unlimited linguistic exuberance, I have to sadly conclude that once in a while, you do meet someone who can’t see the forest for the trees, eh?

Read this book. Leave it on the sofa instead of the $%#!*$% TV remote. Maybe someone you care about will pick it up, even just for a moment, and fall in love with their heritage?

Leave it on your desk at work and trust that someone will riffle through it when you are out at lunch. Shamans are magicians of the highest order. The work of their hands and hearts is game-changing. Or, hey, put it on your Kindle and just feel comforted that you can wander back out into the forest with Bill even in the middle of a boring lecture.

Enjoy.”

 

Casselman replies: Thank you so much, Dr. J., for the kudos.

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Cindy Lapeña on her blog "Creativity Unlimited" of July 19 ,2011, writes:

Posted by mimrlith in 365 Things to Look Forward to.
Tags: 365 things to look forward to, books, reading
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19. Starting a book

To a certified bibliophile like me, a.k.a. bookworm, one of the most exciting things to look forward to is to start reading a new book. In fact, sometimes the prospect of starting to read a new book is so exciting that I have to hurry to finish the book I am currently reading, just so I can start a new one.

If there’s one thing I can’t resist, it’s a book, especially if it promises to be a good one. Of course there are certain books I just won’t touch or be seen with, but at the risk of being hung by my thumbs by fans of such literature, I will not mention any genres in particular. . .

Seeing a book with a title that totally captivates me, like Where a Dobdob meets a Dikdik (yes, that is a book title!) has me so worked up, I just can’t wait to dive in. I imagine all sorts of deliciously fancifully outrageous words with a title like that. Is it obvious? I just love books on words. You won’t believe how many dictionaries I own. Or books on lexical oddities and other lexical explorations. Yes, I am a logophile of sorts. I love the new words I pick up from new books. I relish finding out the meanings of all manner of words and phrases and expressions. What could be more fun?"

(Replies author Bill Casselman: Please scroll to bottom of page or click here to link to a free seven-page preview of my new book, Where a Dobdob Meets a Dikdik.

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Sample My Newest Book. Click Below.

Jan. 3, 2011

“Mr Casselman,
I wanted to write to thank you for your thoroughly enjoyable [new] book. By background, I am a technologist practicing the somewhat arcane crafts of Information Security.”  

David Gamey, Canada

 

Testimonial Email

Thursday, February 3, 2011

Dear Mr. Casselman,
A search for the origins of an improbable-looking word, paraprosdokian, led me to the first piece of your prose I have had the pleasure of reading, "The Bogus Word Paraprosdokian & Lazy Con Artists of Academe." I have just placed an order for Where a Dobdob Meets a Dikdik, Canadian Words & Sayings, and As The Canoe Tips, and will add more of your titles as I finish these.

I have just retired from a 40-plus year career in book publishing, the last thirty years spent as director/editor of a number of university presses, attempting to sort the genuine writers from the "Lazy Con Artists of Academe." Sad to say, the latter have so over-bred the former that I could no longer see the rare gem in the avalanches of offal that daily swamped my office and desk. I visited your website and spent far too long there; it was a pleasure to meet a real writer through his work.

. . . I revisited the paraprosdokian page, and have finally quit laughing again at “Casselman's Conclusion.” You were not unkind to the "profligate prof-lets." During my years as an acquisitions editor, in rejection letters I often quoted Prof. Moses Hadas, classicist at Columbia University, who wrote a young scholar in response to having been sent the prof-let's first book, "Thank you for sending me your book. I will waste no time reading it."

I know I will enjoy your books. Keep up the good work.

Thank you,
Luther Wilson
Director (Retired)
University of New Mexico Press, among others

 

 

Nov. 15, 2010: On Twitter, Doug O'Neill, a happy buyer of my new Dobdob book, writes, "Even funnier flipping through it a second time around."

Thanks, Doug!

 

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Buy my new book online

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