forint and fourragere and fornix and foredo and forespent and forspent

One word, fordo/foredo, remains from the earlier pages, and then these pages have loads of interesting terms. But let's begin with The List and then move into more lengthy expositions of a few words.

The List

A fornix is an anatomical arch or fold, but it really is much more comples than that. It refers specifically to an 'arched' formation in the brain, but I need to leave the description of that organ aside for the moment. Forrader is defined by the Collegiate as "further ahead" (British usage), but in the OED you have to go through forrader to forrarder to forwarder before you get a mention of forrarder/forrader. However, the term is attested as recently as 1966 by the London Times, "The case of Gerald Brooke, the British lecturer sentenced in Russia, was discussed but, in the words of a British source, 'We got no forrarder.'" To be forspent means to be weary or exhausted, though the OED (but not the Collegiate) also attests it as forespent. "Their languishing and forespent body forsaketh their soule." A fortalice is a small fort and a fossa is an anatomical pit or groove. But headaches continue. There is also a word fosse, meaning a ditch or moat, but this can also be spelled (according to the Collegiate), foss and so it isn't in the competition. Only fossa would be. Something fossiliferous contains fossils. A fouette, pronounced fway TAY, is a quick whipping ballet movement. Foulard is a twilled silk while a fourchee cross is one whose arms divide into forks at the end.

Continuing...a fourdrinier is a machine for making paper in an endless web, whatever that means, while a fourragere is one of those braided cords hanging down from the left shoulder of a military officer's uniform. I feel I am missing a lot of life by defining fraise only as an obstacle of pointed stakes driven into the ramparts of a fortification in a horizontal manner, but there was no picture in the Century, and I have to move on. A franctireur (lit. 'free shooter') is a guerilla fighter while a fraxinella is a Eurasian perennial herb of the rue family. I rue the fact that I am unacquainted with this family. A fremitus, which I probably would have been able to spell without this note, is a perceptible vibration of the chest while speaking, and a freesia is an African herb. Lots of herbs. Finally (for this essay), a fricandeau is "larded veal roasted and glazed in its own juices," while something frisee--whoops, it can also be spelled frise, so I am just going to ignore it. Try as I might, I cannot make fricative a swear word--it is a term from linguistics and refers to the friction produced by the breath in pronouncing certain consonants. The OED says that the friction is produced "through a narrow opening between two of the mouth-organs." Huh? Which two? Are there more than two? I guess I should stop here.

Individual Words

Words on which I would like to pause for a moment are forint, formant and fractal. But first a word on fordo/foredo. The Collegiate only gives an archaic verb meaning: "to do away with; destroy" while it provides the following participial meaning: "to overcome with fatigue." It may have an archaic meaning as a verb, but Shakespeare uses it in Hamlet, "Who is this they follow?/ And with such maimed rites? This doth betoken/ The corse they follow did with desp'rate hand/ Foredo it own life" (5.1.218-221). A person can be said to be ready to foredo himself. But the more euphonious usage is as the participle. Coleridge, for example, could write, "All foredone with toil and wounds/ Death-like he...dozes among heaps of dead." After the second day of a decathlon competition, most of the athletes are foredone. I like the word much more than "tired" or "bushed" or "exhausted." Help me bring it back, will you? I believe it is a good synonymy of forspent/forespent.

I only pause on forint because it gives us a window into an issue that the Collegiate presents that the OED does not. The Collegiate has a "money" chart (p. 802) which lists more than 100 currencies of the world. The chart is useful, even though I don't plan to go to many of the countries in the near future. Many of the terms are quite obscure (to me, at least), but the are also listed individually in their proper place in the alphabet. Thus, I will need to know that a forint is worth 100 filler, even if I don't need to know that this is the case in Hungary. But I have had to learn other more obscure money words. The dalasi, for example, is worth 100 bututs in The Gambia; a dinar is worth 100 dirhams in Libya; a krona is worth 100 aurar, and the singular of aurar is, apparently, eyrir in Iceland. I wish I was more attuned to the rhythms of Icelandic life but, alas, I am not. A lilangeni is, thankfully, worth 100 cents in Swaziland, but, alas, the plural of lilangeni is emalangeni. I am sure that there is some Swahili rule or other linguisitic trick in the Swazi language that would have made that plural obvious to me but, alas again, it is not so. I once had an acquaintance whose parents were big missionaries in the Nazarene Church stationed in Swaziland, but that was 60 years ago, and I can't get up the heart to call this acquaintance today asking about the family's dealings with Sobhuza III or whoever it was and the Swazi monetary unit. I could go on at some length, but I will only mention that a manat is equivalent to 100 gopik in Azerbaijan, that a ngultrum is 100 chetrums in Bhutan and that a ouguiya is worth 5 khoums in Mauritania.

I have to confess, that this exercise rather exhausted me, so I will have to pick up on the other words and add some more in the next essay.

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