(v.) to confuse or bewilder (nonce-word accredited to Rabelais, c. 1469)
(adj.) turmoiled, blundered or pestered, as the brain about a troublesome business (as defined by Randle Cotgrave, c. 1611)
Ha, for favour sake, I beseech you, never emberlucock or inpulregafize your spirits with these vain thoughts or idle conceits…
Francois Rabelais, from Gargantua and Pantagruel, Chapter I.VI
This week’s word offers a dose of historical linguistic nonsense, with some modern incarnations. Rabelais’s mischievously satirical text contained hundreds of invented words, most of which were meticulously interpreted and translated by Randle Cotgrave in 1611—a process which undoubtedly would have left Mr. Cotgrave feeling rather blundered himself at times. In that vein, we bring you Colm Toibin’s recent review of Javier Marias’s The Infatuations and Antonio Molina’s In the Night of Time, in which he meticulously and elegantly unravels “the small matter of love, in all its minuscule twists and turns.”
