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I was in the bath tonight reading Georgette Heyer's Bath Tangle, which I'd swiped from the break room at work. As we're a library, there's a big rack of books in the break room where people exchange books - well, I think they don't do it as much anymore because it's reached the point where it's full of a mix of generic romances and Doestoevsky that nobody really wants to read. I found the Heyer tucked in the back and snagged it.
Anyway, in the bath I remembered one of the last Heyers I'd read - it was in audiobook format, actually, and I was volunteering earlier this year at the Dallas Museum of Natural History cleaning fossils with a miniature air-powered jacknammer and it's necessary to listen to something to keep from going crazy due to the constant relentless noise. I've forgotten the title (was it The Corinthian?) but I'm sure one of y'all will be able to supply the title shortly. It's the one where the hero is staggering home drunk and sees the young heroine dressed in boy's clothing making her escape from a window of a relative's house, and ends up masquerading as her tutor and accompanying her on her journey to her childhood home. I had obviously read far too much slash at that point, since the whole journey seemed even more entertaining if I assumed that she wasn't dressed as a boy, but was an actual boy - the whole absurd plot seemed tailor-made for manga.
But that's not the point. The point is that my inner 12-year-old sniggers like hell at Heyer's choice of wording and how, in some cases, the most common meaning for her time has shifted away and is replaced by another meaning. I am talking, of course, of the word "ejaculated," which is one of her favorite speech tags. And I almost lost it, right there in the paleo lab, as schoolchildren watched me through the big glass window, when the actress reading the book put juuuust the right sort of oomph into this line:
'"Huh!" he ejaculated, as he threw himself into the chair.'
And now my cat is running around the place like she's possessed, as cats do, so I shall go entertain her for a while.
Anyway, in the bath I remembered one of the last Heyers I'd read - it was in audiobook format, actually, and I was volunteering earlier this year at the Dallas Museum of Natural History cleaning fossils with a miniature air-powered jacknammer and it's necessary to listen to something to keep from going crazy due to the constant relentless noise. I've forgotten the title (was it The Corinthian?) but I'm sure one of y'all will be able to supply the title shortly. It's the one where the hero is staggering home drunk and sees the young heroine dressed in boy's clothing making her escape from a window of a relative's house, and ends up masquerading as her tutor and accompanying her on her journey to her childhood home. I had obviously read far too much slash at that point, since the whole journey seemed even more entertaining if I assumed that she wasn't dressed as a boy, but was an actual boy - the whole absurd plot seemed tailor-made for manga.
But that's not the point. The point is that my inner 12-year-old sniggers like hell at Heyer's choice of wording and how, in some cases, the most common meaning for her time has shifted away and is replaced by another meaning. I am talking, of course, of the word "ejaculated," which is one of her favorite speech tags. And I almost lost it, right there in the paleo lab, as schoolchildren watched me through the big glass window, when the actress reading the book put juuuust the right sort of oomph into this line:
'"Huh!" he ejaculated, as he threw himself into the chair.'
And now my cat is running around the place like she's possessed, as cats do, so I shall go entertain her for a while.
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And speaking of possessed cats, my "darling" cat knocked over my Christmas tree today >_<
Does she still like her little bed, BTW?
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And for added amusement:
knead [Show phonetics]
verb [T]
to press something, especially a mixture for making bread, firmly and repeatedly with the hands and fingers:
Knead the dough until smooth.