the scoop on poop!
Nov. 7th, 2003 02:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
javasaurusfrom my page-a-day of Forgotten English, for Nov.3, 2003.
In earlier times the indelicate subject of animal excrement apparently was discussed with far more precision, as the following group of archaic terms for the leavings of particular creatures suggests. John Kersey's New English Dictionary (1772) includes trettles ("the dung of a rabbet or coney") and lesses ("the dung of a boar, bear, or wolf"), while B. E.'s Dictionary of the Canting Crew (1699) gives billeting ("foxes' excrement") as well as spraints or spraintings, which came from otters. Halliwell's dictionary furthers our knowledge of this topics, contriubuting the general term ging along with fuants, "the dung of the wolf, fox, marten or badger . . . crotels, the ordure of hare, rabbit or goat, also called croteys and crotising; of the hart . . . fewmets, the dung of deer, also called fewmishings . . . [and] werdrobe, the ordure of the badger."
In earlier times the indelicate subject of animal excrement apparently was discussed with far more precision, as the following group of archaic terms for the leavings of particular creatures suggests. John Kersey's New English Dictionary (1772) includes trettles ("the dung of a rabbet or coney") and lesses ("the dung of a boar, bear, or wolf"), while B. E.'s Dictionary of the Canting Crew (1699) gives billeting ("foxes' excrement") as well as spraints or spraintings, which came from otters. Halliwell's dictionary furthers our knowledge of this topics, contriubuting the general term ging along with fuants, "the dung of the wolf, fox, marten or badger . . . crotels, the ordure of hare, rabbit or goat, also called croteys and crotising; of the hart . . . fewmets, the dung of deer, also called fewmishings . . . [and] werdrobe, the ordure of the badger."
