what’s in a name? would a rose by any other name be as ferly?

as editor of the ragbag, i receive a fair amount of hate mail (mostly from irate north dakotans), the occasional requests for hi-rez pictures of my handsome moustache, and reams and reams of spam. but very rarely, i receive a letter of such magnitude that it not only knocks my socks off, it douses them with kerosene and blackpowder and ignites them with lightning from an aurora borealis.

such was a communication that i received from mr. craig marchbank who was pleased as candied fruitcake to introduce me to his daughter, FERLY ROSE MARCHBANK. and i am pleased as that same baked good to introduce her to all of you—because get this—craig stated that he and rebecca named their daughter for the very reasons mentioned by orson in his word idol post on ferly!!

at its very core, word idol was about legacy: words that our predecessors have given us and words that we can pass down to our successors. legacy is also what having babies is all about. i am thrilled to see old words and young babies coming together in this way.

welcome to this ferly world, ferly marchbank. i hope that you find it every bit as strange and every bit as wonderful as your name is preparing you for.

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for all you knocked-up parents to be out there, might i humbly suggest featlet or fyllok or any of the other word idol f-words as names for your future bundles of joy.

fourings forever!

it was an unbelievably close race but in the end only 1 word could be selected as the word idol. that word is fourings.

the other words had their work cut out for them at the start—for it is certainly a feat to challenge something that is more than a word—it’s a bonus meal, a nascent social institution, a method of weening ourselves off of oprah, an excuse to cram savory pies into our hungry little mouths, a way of telling the bourgeois snoots that teabag themselves silly every day at 4 that their dainty eating ritual is no longer their own, a symbol of what once was enjoyed by our ancestors may also be enjoyed by us. please join me in a celebratory fourings to fourings!

in the weeks to come, i will keep you posted on what is being done to force fourings back into the english language for all eternity.

vote for pedro

voting day is here at last! in the words of the immortal mills baker, “it is the f-words themselves that we judge.” thus, despite the great teeth and perfect hair and overall class-actness of the champions of these archaic f-words, at the end of the day we are voting on which word that we would like to see make a 700 year comeback.

like in the united states elections, the polls will be open throughout the weekend and the results kept secret. the polls will close when all great showdowns conclude: high noon in the winnepeg timezone (on monday). there will be a final installment of thus far early on monday morning.

as in american idol (like word idol but with karaoke) and the elections in afghanistan, you are limited to casting and re-casting your votes only by your endurance. thank you for indulging me in this preposterous enterprise.

vote now! (write-in f-words welcome)

faff • to move violently
famble • to stutter, or murmur inarticulately
fash • 1) trouble; care; anxiety; fatigue. 2) The tops of turnips
featlet • four pounds of butter
feer • to run a little way back for the better advantage of leaping forwards
ferly • wonderfully strange
flantum flatherum piebald dill • a woman fantastically dressed with various colours
flippering • crying, weeping
flizzen • To laugh sarcastically
flyabostic • outrageously showy as in dress
fourings • an afternoon meal taken at 4 o’clock
frimicate • to affect delicacy; to give one’s self airs about trifles
fyllok • a wanton girl

FASH

by Sarah Belfort

These days, there is really only one f-word that comes to mind when contemplating the Scotsman’s vocabulary (it is not fash). But Scottish discourse was once ruled by another f-word: flyting. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Scots would compete in no holds barred public logomachies that some scholars claim are responsible for the development of modern rap (Rabbie Burns: the first MC?) And what word crops up in the earliest written record of rhyme spitting? Fash, of course:

‘I’d hold high revel, sluice my gob alway,
Ne’er fash myself, nor think of cramping-day,
But Bingavast’s the word!  I must namaze,
McClellan’s cutty eyed and knows my lays;
He’s fly enough to shut up every boozing ken’

Fash is short, catchy, and sounds enough like an expletive that it could easily be re-integrated into today’s music, and from there it would naturally leak into everyday conversation. In fact, fash has already demonstrated its mainstream appeal by appearing in Vanity Fair*. It may not be the most titilating candidate in the running, but its a sturdy word that promises longevity and not just novelty. Besides, inject one medieval f-word into the lexicon and more will follow. But the public isn’t ready for ‘floke mowthede.’ A project as daunting as this must be set forth in small, manageable doses. Some day fourings will replace breakfast as the most important meal of the day, but let fash pave the way. I already have the Folk Association of South Hants on board, and they’ve been kind enough to design a logo, to be printed on t-shirts and tattooed on lower backs.

Start the revolution now by bringing up the etymology of fash the next time you find yourself in an uncomfortable silence (should you wish to make it more uncomfortable)

*circa 1861

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in a twist that nobody saw coming, not even the all-too-delightful sarah belfort, i will now reveal that she is my heretofore-mentioned kid sister. when she is not busy being wooed with rabbit butter, she spends her days engaging in fanciful capers and living in a scottish museum. i have it on good authority that if you submit a song and a stamp to her online collection, the sun will shine warm upon your face and the rain will fall softly upon your fields.

this post is the final entry in the word idol series. you can learn about this series here.

FERLY

by Orson O’Riley

Let’s talk bear. Pandas are wonderful (durr) but even my nephew knows about them and he is a nitwit. Ursus thibetanus gedrosianus exists only as fossilized crud in a dusty vault—it’s strange for sure, but about as interesting as as the skin on my butterscotch pudding. Garden variety brown bears? They are neither wonderful nor strange; they are ordinary. But what of the missing fourth quadrant: bears that are both strange AND wonderful? Bears like werebears and carebears and ursa major—how could they be described? Fabulous and marvelous don’t convey unfamiliarity. Uncanny, peculiar, and curious don’t quite convey wonder. If only there was a single word that could fill this void. [SPOLIER ALERT: it’s ferly]

To get there, we must hop in our DeLorean and point it to the 1400s. This was back when everything was strange. Forests were strange! Birds were (and still are) strange! Children that threw fits were strange! This was also back when everything was still full of wonder. Rain was full of wonder! Socks were full of wonder! Porridge was full of wonder! In short, everything fit into our werebear quadrant—everything was FERLY. It’s easy to look at and easy to say, yet there is a tinge of the exotic in ferly. Indeed, there is a tinge of ferly in ferly.

Back now in 1985, where former-wonders have been vivisected to smithereens and apathetic youths find interest only in their walkmans and rubik’s cubes, is ferly still a thing? Indeed it is! Lake Vostok is ferly! The Fibonacci sequence is ferly! Dirigibles are ferly! To belabor my point, I direct you to exhibit A: a chart on what’s ferly and what ain’t; a chart that the boys at Kinkos were all to eager to make for you.

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orson and i were on the high school mathlete squadron. what can be said about him that doesn’t conflict with his fanatic attempt to guard his privacy? he has a pet turtle? his ring fingers are longer than his middle fingers? he speaks with a peculiar hungarian accent which is entirely affected? he is an elite member of the cowboy aristocracy?

this post is an entry in the word idol series. you can learn about this series here.

FAMBLE

by Kalvin Augustus Mumblelard

I could famble endlessly about how excited I am to champion for the f-word of incoherence, “famble”,  but no one would understand me anyway, so I will try to be brief. Famble has had a hard slog these past centuries in comparison to some of the others among its awkward, inarticulate cousins. Bumble, mumble, ramble, and stumble, despite their clumsiness, have all done better than famble, and fumble has been insufferable since being picked for the football team. But, having fallen off of everyone’s radar, famble has made some moves recently that would surprise you. The pitch meetings for the documentary Famble! The Story of Famble! have not gone well, no one can ever understand what famble is going on about, but the point is that famble is getting pitch meetings at all.  Famble has even met with a certain internet entrepreneur about famble’s possible place on the team. As you can see, famble may be a 14^th century word, but famble is making 21^st century moves, and I for one think that famble’s day has come.

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this is my perception of kalvin and the family mumblelard: that they are actually a band of vaudevillian performers who exhibit their peculiar mishmash of curiosities (insecta, ephemera, flora, et cetra et cetra) by night. by day, they scour hill and dale and forest and moor with pith helmets and magnifying glasses adding to their sprawling cabinet of treasures and murdering evil trolls that get in their way.

this post is an entry in the word idol series. you can learn about this series here.

by Mills Baker

When Skee-Lo, describing a parade of beautiful women well out of his Short, Non-Balling, Rabbitless and Hatless League, murmurs, “She looks fly, she looks fly, make me say my-my-my…” do you think of Jeff Goldblum turning into a revolting insect? Do you think of what sails high above the Earth, airplanes and birds and clouds?

You probably do; you probably never understood that song at all. At a red light in your boxy, thrifty little car, which looks ancient to the kids already laughing at your tired slang, you turn to your friend and ask, “Does Skee-Lo mean these women are, like, airplane pilots? Or, I dunno, like, insect-like robots?”

No, dick. Skee-Lo means that these women are flyabostic: ‘outrageously showy’ in their sartorial plumage. They turn men to tapioca both with their beauty and with the material bounty their wardrobe betrays, because while it’s common enough to be beautiful, it’s precious to be beautiful and swathed in soon-to-be dated fashions.

Now you know, but wait: please don’t embarrass us both by attempting to mime the flyabostic fortunates. You’re not one of them; some are to the manor born, some are better suited to off-the-rack stain-proofed pants. Miming them isn’t as easy as dropping some fat-man’s-candy at the local Woolworth’s.

Try it, and you’ll end up looking flothery, ‘slovenly but attempting to appear fine and showy.’ Your ill-bred blood would show through ten layers of Saville Row’s best; there isn’t enough spray on tan in New Jersey to hide it.

If you want to impress, abandon the aesthetic and pursue the etymological. Everyone loves a wag, so try trivia. For example: the word ‘floss,’ used to describe the flaunting of wealth—Raynor is merely flossing when he repeatedly consults his diamond-encrusted platinum pocket watch—comes from a lisped abbreviation of flothery. From flothery to floth to floss: the history of our language.

Drop that knowledge at the next cocktail party you weasel your way into and one of the waiters might consider you worthy of some time in the coat-check room, or at least a free whisky.

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flantum flatherum piebald dillard mills baker is the eleventh reincarnation of hermann hesse and the third reincarnation of milan kundera. he taught me how to ollie on a skateboard, how to not split infinitives, and how to use the concept of defamiliarization to my advantage. he spends his evenings living in a plane of consciousness parallel to—though more acute than—our own.

this post is an entry in the word idol series. you can learn about this series here.

FLIPPERING

by Molly Young

It’s not something you think about until you find yourself doing it, but: we are missing a good word for the act of shedding tears.

“Crying” is what an infant does— it implies unhappiness due to a simple want of something, like burping or a nipple.

“Weeping” is for Jane Eyre and willows.

“Sobbing” is good for describing totalizing grief, but it’s a strong word and should be used carefully. No one sobs very often. It’s too exhausting.

We could go on, but what our language lacks is this: a word to describe self-aware crying; ridiculous crying that knows its own ridiculousness. Crying, for example, that results from jealousy or a bag of Oreos eaten illegally by a roommate when it is most needed. For this activity—dumb, unrestrained, righteous crying— why not “FLIPPERING”?

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would it surprise you to learn that molly is my second cousin? indeed it would surprise me greatly. it is said that the magic behind her magic molly website is powered from an occult fount—that a creature of her qualities (impeccable spelling, ability to navigate china towns, eyes of medusa) cannot possibly exist in the real world. fortunately, the wizards that charm for her and ghostwriters that draft for her were able to be briefly sub-contracted on the ragbag.

this post is an entry in the word idol series. you can learn about this series here.

FLANTUM FLATHERUM PIEBALD DILL

by Matt Langer

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matt is of course, my ex-lover’s ex-lover—but this is already public knowledge. in the æthereal city of boston, massachoochoo, everyone is everyone else’s ex-lover’s ex-lover. whether it’s growing out his luxurious beard, programming his own rss reader, writing schopenhauer fanfic, or draining vodka tonics, matt spends his time in wild binges.

this post is an entry in the word idol series. you can learn about this series here.