Monday Word: Jequirity

[stonepicnicking_okapi]

jequirity [juh-kwir-i-tee]

noun

1. the scarlet and black seed of Indian licorice used in India and other tropical regions for beads in rosaries and necklaces and as a standard weight, also known as rosary pea
2. Indian licorice

examples
1. Late though it was, in the laboratory Kennedy set to work examining the dust which he had swept up by the vacuum cleaner, as well as the jequirity beans he had taken from Mrs. Anthony's jewel-case. The Treasure-Train by Arthur B. Reeve
2. The French oculist, Dr. de Wecker, was the first to employ jequirity for this purpose, in the form of a 24 hours’ maceration of the seeds, 10 grams to 500 grams of water.The Medicinal Plants of the Philippines by T. H. Pardo de Tavera

origin
Portuguese jequiriti, jequirití, perhaps of Indic origin; akin to Hindi rattī ratti

Comments

[calzephyr]

What a neat TIL!

[stonepicnicking_okapi]

You are welcome (and I learned TIL, yes, I am old, but I can be taught!)

[full_metal_ox]

Thank you once more for a vocabulary word I’d never before encountered! To me it has the sound of one of the cryptic coinages of R&B songwriter Vernon Green in “The Letter”:

Oh my darling, let me whisper
sweet words of pizmotality
and discuss the puppetutes of love.

"Pizmotality described words of such secrecy that they could only be spoken to the one you loved", Green explained. He coined the term puppetutes "to mean a secret paper-doll fantasy figure who would be my everything and bear my children".

Famously alluded to (and distorted) by Steve Miller in “The Joker”:

Some people call me the space cowboy.
Yeah! Some call me the gangster of love.
Some people call me Maurice,
'Cause I speak of the pompatus of love.

[stonepicnicking_okapi]

I didn't know all that! I have wondered on and off what those Joker lyrics meant. Puppetutes is a funny word and a bit of an eerie idea, like Coppelia. But you're welcome re: the word. I got it from a biography of Edward Gorey about words Gorey liked.