Slighcarp and Grimshaw

The Cooper-Hewitt, full frontal

I really like the OED online. For those of you uninitiated: the OED is the Oxford English Dictionary. Sadly, it’s something like $250 to subscribe to the OED online, so I have to wait until I’m on campus to get my fix.

This week’s words come to you from around the year 1841–coolest feature of the OED online? You can browse words alphabetically or by date of origin. Anyway, 1841 because that’s the first recorded use of “ogival.” Why ogival? Because I saw that word at the Cooper-Hewitt’s exhibit of model staircases of France (I’m not even making that up) and just had to know.

ogival: adj.,
1. having the form or outline of an ogive or pointed arch. From Anais Nin’s Collages: “The ogival shape of their eyelids gave them an air of compassion, almost as if they would weep with sympathy.”
2. Of an aircraft wing, having the shape of an ogee in plan view. From a 1962 something or other about flight: “One of the two Fairey FD.2 research aircraft owned by the Ministry of Aviation is being converted . . . to flight-test an ogival wing.”

Ahh, but what is an ogive? an ogee? They’re the same thing, word from around 1290: noun,
1. Archit. A diagonal groin or rib of a vault, two of which cross each other at the vault’s centre; ogee; a round decorative band or wreath; a pointed or gothic arch, also an ogee arch
2. Geol. A stripe or band of dark material stretching from side to side across the surface of a glacier, usually arched in the direction of flow and arranged with others in a parallel series.

This one I have to use in conversation: marvel: verb, US Slang,
intransitive: to go quickly, to move smartly. Also (occas.) transitive: to cause to move rapidly. From J. Martin, Diary in New England: “[The sow] giving a particular pig yell marvelled off with him . . . before he was well awake & was marvelled forard with a kick in his arse before he got asleep again.”

And how can a girl not click on this bad boy? destructify: verb, rare, (no kidding),
To reduce to destruction. From an 1841 edition of Fraser’s Magazine: “Enough to contaminate, poison, degrade, and destructify the whole race.”

Enough what, I wonder?