"She had been a village beauty before marriage, noted for her skill at dancing the bolero and rattling the castanets..."

"... and she still retained her early propensities, spending the hard earnings of honest Peregil in frippery, and laying the very donkey under requisition for junketing parties into the country on Sundays, and saints’ days, and those innumerable holidays which are rather more numerous in Spain than the days of the week. With all this she was a little of a slattern, something more of a lie-abed, and, above all, a gossip of the first water; neglecting house, household, and everything else, to loiter slipshod in the houses of her gossip neighbors. He, however, who tempers the wind to the shorn lamb, accommodates the yoke of matrimony to the submissive neck." 

Wrote Washington Irving in "The Alhambra" (Gutenberg).

I found that via the OED entry for "lie-abed," which means "One who lies late in bed; a late riser; a sluggard."

"As with previous months, higher prices oozed into just about every sector of the economy, leaving households to feel the strain at the deli counter, shopping mall and just about everywhere else."

Oozed! 

It's getting nasty. WaPo is saying "oozed" in "Prices climbed 7.5% in January compared with last year, continuing inflation’s fastest pace in 40 years/High inflation is undermining a robust recovery, testing policymakers at the Federal Reserve and White House." 

The White House has been touting its actions to lower prices, including targeting corporate consolidation to help create product markets that are more competitive. But inflation has proved a blistering political handicap for Biden, and a litmus test for how many Americans judge the economy. Republicans largely blame Democrats’ $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan for overheating the economy, and the GOP is set to hammer on inflation going into the midterm elections this fall.

ADDED: The word "ooze" — according to the OED — comes from the same line as the Old Frisian word wāse, which means mud, the Old Icelandic word veisa (wetness, mud, marshy ground), the Norwegian veis (marshy soil), and the Danish regional vejs, which means something that is more fun to say in English: oozy bottom. As a noun meaning wet mud or slime, "ooze" goes back to early Old English. The verb "ooze" is more recent, and I can see that the earliest uses had to do with bodily fluids. Example: "Ulcers that lye deep, and ouze out their Matter thro'..winding Passages" (1737). 

Some of the greatest wordsmiths have deployed the verb "ooze":

"I picture 5 people in a barrel... A table made of bread etc... Green garbage-less grass stretching in yoga poses..."

Meade writes, in a text that quotes this:

"A group of five people sat around a campfire in a barrel next to a table of bread, donuts, oranges, graham crackers and water. Green grass with no garbage stretched out between the clusters of tents.”

The quote comes from an article in The Wisconsin State Journal, "City softens approach to close homeless camp, explores options for men's shelter site."

I had to read the quote carefully to see what was so funny about Meade's interpretation and then I laughed a lot. 

A group of five people sat... in a barrel next to a table of bread.... Green grass... stretched out.... 

Of course, the problem of homelessness isn't funny, though if you have the patience to read the linked article, you might find the slow-moving confusion of city officials something to laugh at.

FROM THE EMAIL: Douglas is reminded of the 3 Wise Men of Gotham. Here's the nursery rhyme:

Three wise men of Gotham,

They went to sea in a bowl,

And if the bowl had been stronger

My song would have been longer

But what's the story behind that? Wikipedia explains: 

"In the short time beginning on May 1, 2020, that face coverings have been required for entry into stores/restaurants, store employees have been threatened with physical violence and showered with verbal abuse."

Said Stillwater City Manager Norman McNickle, quoted in "Oklahoma city ends face mask rule for shoppers after store employees are threatened" (NBC).

The city government made the rule, but it was left to workers in stores and restaurants to do the enforcement, so they were the ones who got the abuse from citizens who didn't like the rule. Apparently, there were threats of violence against the employees, so the city abandoned the rule.

When I first read that headline, I thought the problem was that people in masks were threatening violence, and the mask rule was ended so the malefactors could be identified. But, no, citizens intent on showing their face were going ahead and threatening violence.

I wonder what kind of a place Stillwater is. Wikipedia:

The north-central region of Oklahoma became part of the United States with the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. In 1832, author and traveler Washington Irving provided the first recorded description of the area around Stillwater in his book A Tour on the Prairies. He wrote of “a glorious prairie spreading out beneath the golden beams of an autumnal sun. The deep and frequent traces of buffalo, showed it to be a one of their favorite grazing grounds.” 

According to one legend, local Native American tribes — Ponca, Kiowa, Osage, Pawnee — called the creek “Still Water” because the water was always still. A second legend states that cattlemen driving herds from Texas to railways back east always found water "still there". A third legend holds that David L. Payne walked up to Stillwater Creek and said, “This town should be named Still Water”. Members of the board thought he was crazy, but the name stuck.

Stillwater Creek received its official name in 1884 when William L. Couch established his “boomer colony” on its banks. While the creek itself was tranquil, the next few years saw turmoil as pioneers sought free, fertile land and soldiers held them off while complicated legal issues and land titles with Creek and Seminole tribes were hashed out....

I like that Washington Irving showed up. And the term "boomer colony."

AND: About those boomers:

"Boomers" is the name given to settlers in the Southern United States who attempted to enter the Unassigned Lands in what is now the state of Oklahoma in 1879, prior to President Grover Cleveland opening them to settlement by signing the Indian Appropriations Act of 1889 on March 2, 1889. The Sooners, settlers who entered the Unassigned Lands just prior to the April 22, 1889 official opening, were preceded by Boomers by a decade.

The term "Boomer," in relation to Oklahoma, refers to participants in the "Boomer Movement." These participants were white settlers who believed the Unassigned Lands were public property and open to anyone for settlement, not just Indian tribes. Their belief was based on a clause in the Homestead Act of 1862 which said that any settler could claim 160 acres (0.65 km2; 0.25 sq mi) of "public land." Some Boomers entered the Unassigned Lands and were removed more than once by the United States Army....

Was Washington Irving gay?

Richard Brookhiser examines a new biography of the writer:

[H]e was a restless man. He traveled constantly, never married and did not buy a home of his own until his 50s. "His smile is one of the sweetest I know," wrote a woman friend, "but he can look very, very sad." Was he gay? [Andrew] Burstein examines the question without prurience or presentism and concludes that he doesn't quite know. There are no deeply intimate relationships between men and women in Irving's fiction; what he lost in realism, though, he made up in myth.

The book is called "The Original Knickerbocker." From the Publisher's Weekly blurb at that Amazon link:

... Burstein thinks it more likely the writer was simply a bachelor, a respectable role in his time and place.

What do you think of this practice of examining external facts of the life of a person long dead in an effort to determine his sexual orientation? Are we engaging in "presentism" and failing to understand what was done in other times and places if we assume that unmarried men who have no apparent intimate relationships with women had a homosexual orientation (whether acted upon or not)?