Thursday word: barbermonger
Oct. 8th, 2015 08:25 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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1word1daybarbermonger (bar-bur-MON-gur) - n. (obs. slang) a fop.
Literally, one who frequents the barbershop for frequent haircuts. This is early Tudor Slang -- the Historical Thesaurus to the OED gives 1605 as the only year of use for this -- and the only reason it appears in unabridged dictionaries at all is that it's used in King Lear. Possibly it's a Shakespeare coinage that never took off? Regardless, his usage makes the best example -- from act II, scene ii, as Kent confronts Oswald:
Draw, you whoreson cullionly barber-monger, draw!
---L.
Literally, one who frequents the barbershop for frequent haircuts. This is early Tudor Slang -- the Historical Thesaurus to the OED gives 1605 as the only year of use for this -- and the only reason it appears in unabridged dictionaries at all is that it's used in King Lear. Possibly it's a Shakespeare coinage that never took off? Regardless, his usage makes the best example -- from act II, scene ii, as Kent confronts Oswald:
Draw, you whoreson cullionly barber-monger, draw!
---L.
