Desk Calendar For The Word Lover And Folklore Enthusiast
Not only am I a fan of the folklore of the world but I also like to stay organized so one of my favorite calendars is Forgotten English.
I enjoy keeping my tasks in check each day but I also love the words which have vanished from our vocabularies that are given to me on a daily basis. Yes, I'll admit I am kind of a time management junkie but I guess that I am also a word junkie. Since I read a lot of historical fiction, sometimes these calendars have come to the rescue when I wasn't sure what a word meant. Besides getting the definition, I also got an explanation of why the word was used and how it came about being a part of language in the first place.
Take the word "fragor" for instance. It means a strong or sweet scent. From the explanation I would guess that just about any human being in rural Britain during medieval times would have had quite a strong and nasty fragor about them. You see, many folks reserved one day a year for their annual bath. That is right! They bathed once a year whether they needed it or not! Ewwww! Tradition at the time was to have that bath on the first Saturday of June which was the day before Sweetening Day when many a couple were wed. Some historians believe that King Henry VIII was bathed when he was born and not again until he died.
That is one of the things that I love about this calendar each year! I get an archaic word but I also learn about the culture of the peoples who used that word in their daily lives.
An instance of a word that really hasn't disappeared from use but is just spelled differently now, is the word gaol. Often times when reading a book that is a fictional story taking place in an era long past we will run across this word. A person might have gone to gaol or someone might go talk to the gaoler. We spell this word jail today. It is pronounced the same just spelled differently. Now, isn't that just fascinating?
If you are a lover of trivia, folklore and words in general; I do believe you will enjoy this desk calendar. It might also be something to think of as a gift for someone on your list that enjoys these topics. What a great idea for a gift for an English teacher! Don't you think?
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