week 10: scl

when i mince about in my size 38 juicy sweatpants and a lime green snuggie that doubles as a bathrobe/smoking jacket, i fear (from the ghastly looks that i receive) that it’s time to buy some better fitting clothes. from my adventures in the oh ee dee, i now know that such clothing is said to transclout—to change one’s appearance from trim and neat to mis-shapen and untidy.

this word is a weird one, even for me. in fact it was only ever used once in 1647. here is the citation from the simple barber of aggawam:

it is beyond the ken of my understanding to conceive, how those women…disfigure themselves with such exotic garbs, as not only dismantles their native lovely lustre, but transclouts them into barnacle geese, ill-shapen-shotten-shell-fish…

day-yum! it seems that the author, nathanial ward, liked to coin his own words—words that the editors of the oh ee dee thought were worth preservation. in addition to transclout, ward gives us: exadverse, directly opposed; fool-fangle, a silly trifle; nudiustertian, the day before yesterday, and perquisquilian, thoroughly worthless.

here are a few more scl words. while you read over them, i will be transclouting myself with a mylar garbage bag.

crepuscle · twilight
disclander · public disgrace
esclandre · unpleasant notoriety
floscle · a flower
miscleping · misnaming
opuscle · a literary or musical work of a small size
rascle · to yawn
sclaff · in golf, a stroke which scrapes the ground before hitting the ball

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this is a post in the ragbag word summer series. for this series, i search for words in the oh ee dee that contain a randomly generated string of 3 letters and report my findings. it is a thrill ride.