flesh-pot (fleshpot). noun. Literally, a pot in which flesh (a highly desirable foodstuff) is boiled, generally referring to the phrase in Exodus (see below). As an allusion, a place or person of luxury, indulgence and titillation.
[Read more…]
fencing
faze
faze /FAYZ/. verb. To perturb, disturb, unsettle or fluster. Unrelated to phase (from the Greek phainein, to show), with which it is commonly confused—see the Mark Twain example below—faze derives from the dialectal feeze(to alarm or frighten), from Old English fēsian (to drive away, to banish).
[Read more…]
falcate
falcate /FOWL-kayt/. adjective. Sickle shaped. Hooked. Curved to a point. From Latin falcem (sickle) + -ate (resembling). Not to be confused with defalcate (to embezzle, sadly not pronounced to rhyme with defecate).
[Read more…]
frammis
frammis /FRAM-əs/. noun. A generic term for a thing that someone can’t name, similar to thingamabob or gizmo. A common invented surname in comics and invented company name in technical writing. More generally, nonsense or jargon, commotion or confusion. Origin unknown, perhaps derived from a family name.
“It [the comic strip ‘Silly Milly’] has its pet vocabulary—all names are Frammis, laughter is Yuk Yuk, and the language of animals is Coo.” (M. Farber)
“I could not write most science-fiction films, especially the kind where there is all that lunatic ‘Captain, the frammis on the right engine is flummaging’–type dialogue.” (William Goldman)
“We didn’t have a flangella voltometer with us. Very important during electrical work, otherwise you can fry the frammistat.” (Tom Piccirilli)
“The kook really meant it. He wanted to go find that uppity creepy cemetery where Ginny’s blue-blood parents had stuck her body, and blow trumpet for the dead. It was all at once laughable and pitiable and creepy. Like a double-talker giving you the business with the frammis on the fortestan, and you standing there wondering what the hell is happening.” (Harlan Ellison)
“Let’s do an example with some data. We just bought a frammis cutter for $10,000 five days ago…” (Joe Celko)
“In this little frammis, one of the oldest, you were persuaded to leave your clothes on the bureau… You see, honey? No one can touch ’em.” (Jim Thompson)
fleer
fleer /fleer/. verb or noun. To grin or grimace; to sneer or jeer; to jibe…or the look of one doing so. A mocking speech. Unknown origin, possibly related to Norwegian and Swedish flira, Danish flire (to grin, to laugh inappropriately).
“What, dares the slave
Come hither, cover’d with an antic face,
To fleer and scorn at our solemnity?”
(William Shakespeare)
“Hebuiza laughed aloud, a fleering, raucous sound.” (Robert Boyczuk)
“The gas-lights hissed with a faint, malicious susurration, and except for their infinitesimal mechanical vivacity, that jetted fleeringly from obscenely open small slits, all life was extinguished.” (Hermann Broch)
“Nat wore the look he got when he was listening to something amazing that was new to him. A fleer of analysis, like he was startled to learn that he could have missed this before, given that he knew everything about anything worth knowing.” (Michael Chabon)
“My jaw muscles tightened and I think my lips fleered back like a wolf’s at the kill.” (John Steinbeck)
“I have always seen her critical, scornful and fleering; but now it is with genuine ill nature that she tears those she calls her friends to pieces.” (Simone De Beauvoir)
“As I went up by Ovillers
In mud and water cold to the knee,
There went three jeering, fleering spectres,
That walked abreast and talked of me.”
(Ivor Gurney)