termagant
Posted: Wed Oct 12, 2005 10:15 pm
I've just finished reading Washington Irving's Rip Van Winkle and found this quite descriptive term:
BTW, does anyone see the schwa (ə)? I can only see a box. Must be the furschlushinger font.
Let's examine some examples from the Master himself. By George, I think I see future taglines in the first two paragraphs!termagant
SYLLABICATION: ter·ma·gant
PRONUNCIATION: tûr'mə-gənt
NOUN: A quarrelsome, scolding woman; a shrew.
ADJECTIVE: Shrewish; scolding.
ETYMOLOGY: From Middle English Termagaunt, imaginary Muslim deity portrayed as a violent and overbearing character in medieval mystery plays, alteration of Tervagant, from Old French.
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by the Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
What did you think he was going to do with the gun?I have observed that he was a simple, good-natured man; he was, moreover, a kind neighbor and an obedient henpecked husband. Indeed, to the latter circumstance might be owing that meekness of spirit which gained him such universal popularity; for those men are apt to be obsequious and conciliating abroad, who are under the discipline of shrews at home. Their tempers, doubtless, are rendered pliant and malleable in the fiery furnace of domestic tribulation, and a curtain lecture is worth all the sermons in the world for teaching the virtues of patience and long-suffering. A termagant wife may, therefore, in some respects, be considered a tolerable blessing, and if so, Rip Van Winkle was thrice blessed.
. . .
Times grew worse and worse with Rip Van Winkle as years of matrimony rolled on; a tart temper never mellows with age, and a sharp tongue is the only edged tool that grows keener with constant use. For a long while he used to console himself, when driven from home, by frequenting a kind of perpetual club of the sages, philosopers, and other idle personages of the village, which held its sessions on a bench before a small inn, designated by a rubicund portrait of His Majesty George the Third.
. . .
From even this stronghold the unlucky Rip was at length routed by his termagant wife, who would suddenly break in upon the tranquility of the assemblage, and call the members all to nought; nor was that august personage, Nicholas Vedder himself, sacred from the daring tongue of this terrible virago, who charged him outright with encouraging her husband in habits of idleness.
Poor Rip was at last reduced almost to despair; and his only alternative, to escape from the labor of the farm and the clamor of his wife, was to take a gun in hand, and stroll away into the woods.
BTW, does anyone see the schwa (ə)? I can only see a box. Must be the furschlushinger font.
