1550 M. Coverdale tr. O. Werdmueller Spyrytuall & Precyouse Pearle xxi. sig. Hvjv Why shulde any man..becomber hym selfe about that thing?
I'm reading the Oxford English Dictionary, specifically the entries under the second definition of the prefix "be-," which is used "Forming intensive verbs, with sense of 'thoroughly..., soundly, much, conspicuously, to excess, ridiculously,'" and which arose this morning — as these things do — in the context of "bepenised."
I had blogged a quote that referred to "the spectacle of bepenised straight heterosexual males." Quite aside from the context — go back to that post if you care about context — there was some clamor over the word "bepenised."
My dear husband Meade commented:
I had blogged a quote that referred to "the spectacle of bepenised straight heterosexual males." Quite aside from the context — go back to that post if you care about context — there was some clamor over the word "bepenised."
My dear husband Meade commented:
To bepenised or not to bepenised…
Bespectacled. Bepenised. Bemused.And now, I'm very proud and happy to present one of my newest and nicest friends:
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I like becumber as a personalized option to encumber, indicating participation in the cumbering.
Interesting that bewilderment is now the default word. Intensification of the wild is the essence of the experience, I guess.
Has Hunter tried this yet?
General Cucumber?
"This charming face here belongs to General Cucombre."
(I guess not. According to Google translate, pepino is Spanish for cucumber.)
Becoming becumbered because beliefs beguile and beckon me to begin bemoaning my becoming bepenised.
Of course, nothing makes any sense anymore so random rambling reflects reality rather regrettably.
Newest and nicest friends. I'll drink to that.
Babs doesn't look half bad. Light her the right way in BW, and shoot the nose straight on, and she's almost pretty. Her mouth is as big as the Grand Canyon though. Maybe they got a little TOO close.
Don the Becumber’s had a nice happy hour when I was in college!
Barbra, one of the greatest singers ever, murders one of the greatest songs ever.
Walt Kelly's comic strip Pogo had three bats: Bewitched, Bothered, and BeMildred. According to wikipedia:
A trio of grubby, unshaven bats—hobos, gamblers, good-natured but innocent of any temptation to honesty. They admit nothing. Soon after arriving in the swamp they are recruited by Deacon Mushrat into the "Audible Boy Bird Watchers Society", (a seemingly innocent play on the Audubon Society, but really a front for Mole's covert surveillance syndicate.) They wear identical black derby hats and perpetual 5 o'clock shadows. Their names, a play on the song title "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered", are rarely mentioned. Often even they cannot say for sure which brother is which. They tell each other apart, if at all, by the patterns of their trousers—striped, checkered or plaid. (According to one of the bats, "Whichever pair of trousers you puts on in the morning, that's who you are for that partic'lar day.")
Why is a tree when it leaves.
Both Judy and Barbra were superstars. I love the big band arrangements. I like to hear Barbra belt out the song as in "My Man I Love Him So." I don't like her politics.
For some reason, "encumber the surface of the earth" sticks in my memory. Dag Hammarskjöld is quoted as writing "encumber the earth" in his notebooks. The biblical Book of Luke has "encumber the ground." "Use up the ground" or "waste the soil" in more recent translations. Close enough. "Encumber" also seems to come up in real estate law according to Google.
Would it be true to say that Cole Porter was bewitched, bothered, bewildered, and bepenised?
Is Schrödinger’s bepenised cat dead or alive?
Link to reddit r/TIFU
I first noticed this with “beclowned”. I think that if we work on it, we can create a lot of reflexive “be” words. Should be fun - for at least me. Not so much for my partner who has to put up with my attempts at word play. She only does it because her father was worse than I am.
"Why should any man becumber himself with a cucumber?"
If I was a marine biologist, I would hypothesize that males are just attempting to increase the size of the gene pool.
I'll see myself out.
First the possum picture then the bab strisand video. Hmm.... [insert joke]
Bepenised suggests the opposite of beheaded.
“Here’s fuckin’Barbra Streisand – ’I wanna thank all the little people’ – fuck little people, fuck Barbra Streisand… I like big people… People from Wyoming”
—-Lou Reed
Unhappy wife, unhappy life? A Bobbitt. Perhaps a trans/neo. A man-man? A vegan solution.
No results were found for becomber. Showing results for become.
become (v.)
Old English becuman "happen, come about, befall," also "meet with, fall in with; arrive, approach, enter," from Proto-Germanic *bikweman (source also of Dutch bekomen, Old High German biqueman "obtain," German bekommen, Gothic biquiman). A compound of the sources of be- and come.
Meaning "change from one state of existence to another" is from 12c. Older sense preserved in what has become of it? It drove out Old English weorðan "to befall." Meaning "to look well, suit or be suitable to" is early 14c., from earlier sense of "to agree with, be fitting or proper" (early 13c.).
- etymonline.com
Belittleheaded?
Swinburne used this formation to achieve a hard rhyme:
We shift and bedeck and bedrape us,
Thou art noble and nude and antique;
Libitina thy mother, Priapus
Thy father, a Tuscan and Greek.
We play with light loves in the portal,
And wince and relent and refrain;
Loves die, and we know thee immortal,
Our Lady of Pain.
The nation is becumbered with a recumbent incumbent, a cucumber.
I figured becumber was short for becumberbatch a word meaning to have an encounter with Benedict Cumberbatch. While putting the props away backstage, Leroy was becumbered when he was trapped into a half hour long conversation with Benedict Cumberbatch.
WASHINGTON — A judge said Monday that he would not delay the contempt of Congress trial of Steve Bannon, just one week before it is set to begin.
After the judge concluded, Bannon's lawyer David Schoen said in the courtroom, “What is the point of going to trial here if there are no defenses?”
Nichols agreed, suggesting Bannon’s team consider that.
Well now. I'll bedamned!
Being us that video of Barbara Streisand is why Ann Althouse is so beloved.
Barbra is trying too hard. Don't use the song to advertise what you think is your acting ability. Just sing.
Swinburne! I haven't read any of his poems in decades but was a devout partisan for a couple of years, long ago. Can still recite some of his Hymn to Proserpine...
New Gods are crowned in the city, their flowers have broken your rods;
They are merciful, clothed with pity, the young compassionate Gods.
Well, I don't remember much, alas. By the time I got to college, the spell was broken (vicisti, Galilaee, and I didn't read Dolores etc until they were assigned in a class), but his poetry was a passion, for a while. Considering the paganism, focus on sexual deviance etc in academia these days, you'd think he'd have made a re-appearance in the classrooms but (for one thing) his vocabulary is enormous and the contemporary one is shamefully impoverished.
"Cowcumber" was an earlier form of "cucumber." The legend was that cucumbers were so horrible that only cows would eat them.
“It has been a common saying of physicians in England, that a cuuldcumber should be well sliced, and dressed with pepper and vinegar, and then thrown out, as good for nothing.” -- Samuel Johnson,, James Boswell, "Journal of the Tour of the Hebrides" (1785), entry for 5 Oct. 1773.
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