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The Iconoclast
Thursday, 20 September 2007
Carminative

Today I came across yet another reason to back Boris Johnson in his campaign to oust Ken Livingstone as Mayor of London: his favourite word is "carminative". Thanks to Dot Wordsworth for giving me this to mull over as I walk the bemerded streets of Islington:

This does not, as the BBC reported, mean ‘the effects of relieving flatulence’, but ‘promoting the expression of flatulence’. Jonathan Swift wrote the memorable couplet ‘Carminative and diuretic / Will damp all passion sympathetic.’

A character in Aldous Huxley’s Crome Yellow explains why he had used it in error in a line of poetry that he had written: ‘And passion carminative as wine’. In carminative, he explains, ‘was the idea of singing and the idea of flesh, rose-coloured and warm, with a suggestion of the jollities of mi-Carême and the masked holidays of Venice. Carminative — the warmth, the glow, the interior ripeness were all in the word.’ Then it occurred to him to look it up in a dictionary.

Update: It has occurred to me that this is not the first time the word "carminative" has been used at this site. It is the kind of word that repeats on you.

Posted on 5:48 AM by Mary Jackson
Comments
20 Sep 2007
reactionry

A Thousand Pardons, Sahib - I posted while late for a conference.  If it's not too much Trouble, please delete my post and I'll try to resubmit an edited version later today.

Thanx,

R.



20 Sep 2007
Reactionry
[Minutes after posting the above request, I felt dirty and ashamed. This site should not have to cater to the whims of high-maintenance commentators from the Peanut Gallery] 1776 And All That Or: You Look A Little Green, Nu? Or: The Carminator Or: Beardstroke Hearkening back to the words of Noah Hamster, President Lincoln, the Great Enunciator, after applying a handful of carmine to the nether regions of his face for the benefit of photographers and stepping up to the imodium, spoke against censorship of newspapers in their campaign for the reformation of drunkards: "By the vexed seas of Grenadine*, we shall make the green one black and white and red all over". *See The Grenadines, a specialized unit which lobbed what were later known as "Molotov Cocktails" into the ranks of the enemy.

20 Sep 2007
reactionry
Now that I've ruined or unravell'd this thread for everyone else, might as well follow the link to Boris and then to fop and thence, I guess, to the anti-fop of your northern screeches.  Of course I don't know, as was said by the Angle slave-girl in Gone With The Welsh, "nuthin' 'bout birthin' Britons" ( a long and difficult process, and incomplete after thousands of years according to Peter Brimelow), and I haven't the foggiest notion about some lines from Butley, and have nothing to do with -Upon My Beard -Wullah Bullah - the following ditty:
 
Back In The U.K.
by the Dover Beach Boys
 
Well, the northern girls,
First do it with brooms*,
Keeping their boyfriends out of sight,
And then with Earls,
With Right of First Night,
Before attending their grooms
 
*See Harry Potter, ya' pervs.
 
Butley
ACT TWO
[Ben Butley is miffed over losing his lover, Joey, to Reg, who is in "pooblishing" (as I recall the accent). Joey had earlier misled Ben into thinking that Reg comes from a working-class background]
 
BEN. Reg! (Reg turns again)
        Will you wear it all then?
REG. Sorry? What? Wear what?
BEN. Your gear and tackle and trim. Have you got it with you?
REG. What? (Puzzled, he looks at JOEY)
BEN. Reg!
(As REG seems to go on) Reg!
        REG steps back in.
        No, it's not custom, Reg, it's you, old cheese.  Personally I don't give a f*ck that moom and dad live oop Leeds and all, or that the whole tribe of you go to football matches looking like the back page of the Daily Mirror and bellow 'Ooop ta Rovers' and 'Clobber busturds' or own a butcher's shop with cush on ta side from parking tickets. (JOEY laughs -REG sees him) I really don't, old cheese.  No, what's culturally entertaining is yourself.
REG. Is that what you're talking about?
BEN. (making a circle round JOEY'S desk throughout the speech) Because you're only good at getting what you want because you're a fraction of a fake, old potato, you really are.  You don't show yourself up north except twice a year with your latest boy or sommat in tow, do you?  And I bet you get all your football out of ta Guardian and television except when you flash a couple of tickets at some soft Southern bugger - do you object to that word, old fruit? - like me, to show some softer Southern bugger like him - (Gestures at JOEY) -how tough you are.  Did you cling consciously onto funny vowels, or did you learn them all afresh? I ask, because you're not Yorkshire, you're not working class, you're just a lucky parvenu fairy old fig, and to tell you the truth you make me want to throw up.  Pardon, oooop! All over your characteristically suede shoes.
............
............[skipping some lines]
 
BEN. .......[skipping some words]....Have you had plain talk and brass tacks about thyself with moom, when she's back from pasting tickets on cars, lud, eh, or with dud while he's flogging offal, lud?  Thou'd get fair dos all right then, wouldn't thee?  From our dud with his strup? Or would he take thee down to local and introduce thee round to all t'oother cloth caps?  'This is our Reg.  He's punsy.  Ooop, pardon Reg, lud, Omosexual.  Noo, coom as right surprise to moother and me, thut it did, moother just frying oop best tripe and garbuge and me settling down with gnomes to a good read of Mazo de la Roche! (He laughs in REG's face)
 
[I hope that the above made sense to someone, although I suspect that it's from an era about as bygone as that of Elmo Tanner.  It might not have been worth the trouble to read, but I couldn't resist the urge to type out "Clobber" once again.]