Thursday, June 6, 2013

Myki

Meaning: Old Norse for cow dung. No, really. See also here.

Usefulness: 1. (Google tells me that there was a bit of press about this when the system first came out, but no-one told me.)

Logofascination: 1 (Etymologically related to muck and midden.  Mainly of interest to those of us residing in Melbourne; myki is our public transport ticketing system. Its problems are so notorious that there's a hashtag: #mykifail. I suppose it provides the rest of you with a usefully obscure word for cow dung; "This report is sheer myki!")

In the wild: Of all places, I found it in a post on Lancashire dialect. I'm trying to figure out where loomster comes from.

Degrees: 3

Connections: myki - muck - manurers (It's been a while since we had a word this far removed; I think this is because Sir Thomas used Scottish vernacular rather than English - muck and midden - and the influences are different.)

Which is used in: Logopandecteision. To over-simplify, Sir Thomas is arguing that you can verify how ancient his heritage is by considering that of his tenants:
both historie and the most authentick tradition we have, avoucheth the first labourers and manurers of the land to have come along with my ancestors Beltistos, Nomostor, and Lutork, and for their good service done, especially to the last of those three, received leases thereupon in the quality of yeomans, who were so well pleased with what they got that after they had most contentedly spent the best of their age, when decrepit years did summon them to pay their last due to nature, they bequeathed unto their children the hereditarie obedience they did owe their master, to whom they left their blessing and best wishes 
Manure originally just meant cultivate, but of course manuring is one of the chief activities of cultivation, particularly before modern fertilizers. 

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