the_gneech | Nov. 21st, 2006

And happy belated birthday to

vik_thor! For your present, here's today's Forgotten English!

shinnicked
Benumbed, paralyzed with the cold, especially when accompanied by contraction of the muscles and violent shivering.
--George Story's Dictionary of Newfoundland English, 1982

First Day of Frîmaire
In the late-eighteenth-century calendar created by the first French republic, Frîmaire was the third month, running from November 21 to December 20. The name stemmed from the Latin frim-as (white frost). Physician Tobias Venner discouraged the drinking of melted snow in Via Recta: The Right Way of Living (1650): "While the snow is ingendered, the thinner part of the matter is, as it were, pressed forth of the cold and converted into clouds, the grosser part remaineth and is turned into snow." Venner went on to observe that "snow waters are gross and over-cold, and therefore hurtfull to man's body, for they cause rheumes, and greatly hurt the sinews. Moreover, they breed splenick passions by causing the spleen to grow great, they confound the brest and liver, cause asthmaes, and fill the stomack with flatuous crudities, ... infringeth the naturall heat, breedth the wind-colick and, in continuance, bringeth many other inconveniences to the body."

Not to mention being full of schmutz.

-The Gneech