July 02, 2006Weird English Word of the Day
I've been really getting into dialects lately, and weird words...
SKIMMINGTON
A noisy procession intended to bring ridicule on an erring husband or wife.
In English towns this was a common way to express moral outrage at the actions of a member of a married couple, perhaps because the man was a wife-beater or the woman an adulterer. An important part of it was noise. Francis Grose described the way of it in his Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue in 1796: “Saucepans, frying-pans, poker and tongs, marrow-bones and cleavers, bulls horns, etc. beaten upon and sounded in ludicrous processions”. So crucial was this element that another name for the custom was rough music; yet another was ran-tanning, probably an echoic phrase.
via WORLD WIDE WORDS
SKIMMINGTON
A noisy procession intended to bring ridicule on an erring husband or wife.
In English towns this was a common way to express moral outrage at the actions of a member of a married couple, perhaps because the man was a wife-beater or the woman an adulterer. An important part of it was noise. Francis Grose described the way of it in his Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue in 1796: “Saucepans, frying-pans, poker and tongs, marrow-bones and cleavers, bulls horns, etc. beaten upon and sounded in ludicrous processions”. So crucial was this element that another name for the custom was rough music; yet another was ran-tanning, probably an echoic phrase.
via WORLD WIDE WORDS
