Winnol weather, woodpeckers, and sloominess

MOST POPULAR THIS WEEK

WINNOL LOSE

Saturday was St Winwaloe’s Day. Hope your St Winwaloe’s Day party went with a bang.

To be fair to St Winwaloe, he’s perhaps not the most well-known of saints these days. Although given that his mother was called “Gwen the Three-Breasted” and he’s the patron saint of priapism, he perhaps deserves more of a place in history than he has.

But in some corners of the British Isles, at least, Winwaloe once was (or perhaps still is) a lot better known that he might seem. The founder of Landévennec Abbey in northern France, Winwaloe’s reputation crept across the Channel to the Celtic southwest of England throughout his lifetime, and after his death in 532 his relics were taken by his followers to Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, and across the country to East Anglia.

Along the way, chapels and churches were founded in his name, and his feast day soon became locally important in several counties across southern and central England. 

It’s from his name that the expression Winnol weather—which popped up on HH this weekend—derives. According to an early nineteenth century Vocabulary of East-Anglia, Winnol weather is bad weather that you can expect to blow in around March 3. And after a week of snow and gales here in the UK, it seems St Winwaloe had his work cut out year. 

Elsewhere this week we found out:

• a garishly or ludicrously dressed person is a totty-all-colours
• doing unpleasant housework in the kitchen is called scuddling
• Elizabeth Gaskell used the word raccoon to mean “to wander around at night”...
• ...while to go sproaging is to go out courting after dark
• and if you’re held up by bad weather, then you’re storm-stayed. (Useful, that one.)

POPULAR THIS WEEK

PECKING ORDER

Two woodpecker-related facts happened to pop up on HH this week.

The first was the expression “woodpeckers don’t breed sparrowhawks”, an old Tudor-period proverb warning that children cannot be expected to behave any better than their parents. The second was the fact that green woodpeckers were once supposed to presage bad weather, and so were once known as rainbirds.

As advice/snide commentary for parents go, “woodpeckers don’t breed sparrowhawks” makes a nice sister expression to another saying we’ve tweeted about on HH before, namely that “owls think their young the fairest”. Owl babies aren’t known for their looks let’s face it, and so this expression warns that parents are often blind to their own children’s faults. 

As bird nicknames go, meanwhile, rainbird is probably at the tamer end of the HH scale. At the more elaborate end, there’s always lady-with-the-twelve-flounces as a nickname for the goldfinch; wink-a-pussy for an owl; maggoty-pies for magpies; plum-budder for the bullfinch; and cuckoo’s footman for the wryneck.

Pity the poor long-tailed tit, though: besides billy-feather-poke, it has to make do with going down in the dictionary under the somewhat questionable name of bum-towel. The mind boggles.

POPULAR THIS WEEK

SLOOM AT THE TOP

The most popular Word of the Day on HH this week was sloomy, a nineteenth century word meaning “sluggish” or “slow-witted”.

Although in that sense sloomy dates back to the 1800s, the word itself has been with us a lot longer. Originally, sloom was a verb used mostly in agricultural contexts to mean “to be waterlogged” or “laid down by water, snow, or mud”. Grain that was sloomed, or sloomy, was ultimately poor quality, slow to grow or, even worse, quick to mould and decay.

It’s thought that the use of sloomy to mean “sluggish” is probably a figurative application of this old farming term—although there’s likely been some confusion along the way with an even older verb sloom, meaning “to slumber” or “doze”.

In any case, it all makes for a nicely evocative word for that muddle-headed, slow-thinking feeling better known as Monday morning.

AND FINALLY...

ANAGRAMS #28

Four more tricky anagrams to round things off this week: each of the words below can be rearranged to spell another much more familiar dictionary word. What are they? 

BAUSOND

AUSTERER

AUSTRALES

AUSTRINGER

Last week’s solution:

SMARTEN, ENTOMBED, LAMENTING, PREEMINENT