Labels: Alice Meynell, Ben Jonson, Lord Macaulay
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Permalink: poetaster Entry By: CJ Cooney Smash illiteracy! Email This Word To A Friend: |
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poetaster PO-uh-tas-tur noun a lousy or inferior poet 1602The PoetasterRufus Laberius Crispinus, and Demetrius Fannius, hold up your hands. You are, before this time, jointly and severally indicted, and here presently to be arraigned upon the statute of calumny, or Lex Remmia, the one by the name of Rufus Laberius Crispinus, alias Crispinus, poetaster and plagiary, the other by the name of Demetrius Fannius, play-dresser and plagiary.1860The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord MacaulayThat knowledge he had derived partly from books, and partly from sources which had long been closed; from old Grub Street traditions; from the talk of forgotten poetasters and pamphleteers who had long been lying in parish vaults; from the recollections of such men as Gilbert Walmesley, who had conversed with the wits of Button; Cibber, who had mutilated the plays of two generations of dramatists; Orrery, who had been admitted to the society of Swift; and Savage, who had rendered services of no very honourable kind to Pope.1917Hearts of Controversy...Swinburne, who hailed a certain old friend, in a dedication, as 'poet and painter' when he was pleased with him, and declared him 'poetaster and dauber' when something in that dead man's posthumous autobiography offended his own self-love…Labels: Alice Meynell, Ben Jonson, Lord Macaulay
Barathrum ba-RUH-thruhm noun a bottomless hole; an abyss; a name for hell or the underworld in Greek mythology 1600Every Man In His HumourLOR. JU. Opinion, O God, let gross opinion sink and be damn'd As deep as Barathrum,1837Athens: Its Rise and FallIt had been a saying of Aristides, 'that if the Athenians desired their affairs to prosper, they ought to fling Themistocles and himself into the barathrum.' But fortune was satisfied at this time with a single victim, and reserved the other for a later sacrifice.1876Pausanias, the SpartanInstead of ostracising me, they should have cast both myself and Themistocles into the Barathrum.Labels: Ben Jonson, Edward Bulwer-Lytton
mammothrept MAM-mo-thrept noun a spoiled child 1601Cynthia's RevelsAMO: But very well! O, you are a mere mammothrept in judgment, then.1970Master & CommanderAnd having seen the parents I am impatient to see this youth, the fruit of their strangely unattractive loins: will he be a wretched mammothrept?Labels: Ben Jonson, Patrick O'Brian
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