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The ordinary-sized words are for everyone, but the big ones are especially for children.



Monday 4 February 2013

Spot the frippet: spaewife.

A spaewife is a woman who can foretell the future.

All women claim this ability. Some do it professionally on weather forecasts and in fashion columns, but all women do it.

You'll catch your death of cold if you go out like that.

Don't leave it there, someone will come along and trip over it and break their neck.

All hail Macbeth, that shalt be king hereafter.

Men claim this ability, too (ooh, you don't want to go round the M25, you'll catch the traffic terrible on the way home), but I don't think you can call them spaewives.

You can't believe a word any of them, men or women, say.

But as a rule of thumb, the ones in the pointy black hats are the worst.



Spot the frippet: spaewife. This is a Scots word. The spae bit arrived in Scots in the 1300s, comes from Old Norse, and means to foretell the future.

4 comments:

  1. I resent that!
    It comes from spÄ. And I can, occasionally.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Gulp!

    Look...um...Bookwitch is special, okay?

    I'd say that she's the exception that proves the rule, except that that's a really REALLY annoying expression that I'm going to have to rant about soon.

    Anyway, respect to Bookwitch!

    ReplyDelete
  3. It's always an option to stand your ground. We of the pointy hats just might be really bad.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Bookwitch writes a terrific blog, largely about children's literature, which is very well worth a visit. Just Google Bookwitch.

    Any spells she has cast on me have been entirely benign, so far, and she seems perfectly lovely.

    But naturally I'm not pushing my luck.

    ReplyDelete

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