Round 3081 LAIRWITE Defs - Vote Now!

[Tim Lodge]

Here we have 14 creative defs of the word LAIRWITE, only one of which came from my dictionary.  Please vote for your two favourites by public reply to this message,  before the deadline of:

          10:00 BST on Friday 19th June, which is:
          11:00 CET
          09:00 GMT/UTC
           5:00 AM EDT
           2:00 AM PDT
          21:00 NZST in New Zealand

New players are welcome - just don't look up the word until after you've voted.

--  Tim L

 *** LAIRWITE ***

 1.  a recluse or hermit.

 2.  a bad or tasteless joke.

 3.   to work in a haphazardly manner.

 4.  a type of vetch, _Vicia ervilia_.

 5.  a small Eurasian finch having streaked brown plumage.

 6.  a fine for fornication or adultery, esp. with a bondwoman.

 7.  in saxon legend, a lesser genius loci with a malevolent bent.

 8.  an armorer specializing in bludgeoning weapons such as maces.

 9.  the raw skin of a sheep or goat, stripped and ready for tanning.

10.  a type of parasitic insect found in the dens of hibernating mammals.

11.  [Obs] a wife beater; also LAIRWIGHT [OE common law: literally _a home troll_]

12.  (var. Lairwight or Laerwight) a small mischievous and sometimes malevolent creature in Celtic mythology.

13.  the northern shrike (_Lanius borealis_) noted for its piercing cry ("lair-WITE, lair-WITE") repeated two or three times.

14.  a shark of the genus _Lamna_, especially _L. nasus_, a large, voracious species of the North Atlantic and North Pacific oceans.

[Debbie]

1 and 8, though I don't like any of them.

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[Daniel B Widdis]

8 and 11 go together, although they shouldn’t.

 

[Shani Naylor]

I'll go with legend: 7 & 12

 7.  in saxon legend, a lesser genius loci with a malevolent bent.

12.  (var. Lairwight or Laerwight) a small mischievous and sometimes malevolent creature in Celtic mythology.

--

[Tim B]

1 and 3, please.

Best wishes,
Tim Bourne.

[Johnb - co.uk]

#6 and #13 please

JohnnyB

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[Judy Madnick]

13 and 14, please.

  

Judy Madnick

Albany, NY

[Efrem G Mallach]

Many decades ago, my route from home to university (about two hours by car) included a stretch that was part of both U.S. Routes 1 and 9 in northern New Jersey. That may not be a good enough reason to pick those definitions, but, for lack of a better one, it will have to do.

On Jun 17, 2020, at 5:38 PM, Tim Lodge <d...@timlodge.co.uk> wrote:

Here we have 14 creative defs of the word LAIRWITE, only one of which came from my dictionary.  Please vote for your two favourites by public reply to this message,  before the deadline of:

          10:00 BST on Friday 19th June, which is:
          11:00 CET
          09:00 GMT/UTC
           5:00 AM EDT
           2:00 AM PDT
          21:00 NZST in New Zealand

New players are welcome - just don't look up the word until after you've voted.

--  Tim L

 *** LAIRWITE ***

 1.  a recluse or hermit.

 9.  the raw skin of a sheep or goat, stripped and ready for tanning.

[France International/Mike Shefler]

I'll vote for 6 and 7.

[Tony Abell]

The interesting 6 and plausible 13, please:

> 6. a fine for fornication or adultery, esp. with a bondwoman.

[nancygoat]

I'll take 1 and 4.

Nancy

[Ryan McGill]

Nickel and Dime. 5 & 10

[amal...@comcast.net]

I’ll go with 5 and with 11, because the latter is too wacky not to potentially be real.

Alan

--

[Paul Keating]

Tim,

In reply to your Google Groups post of 2020-06-17 23:38 CET

A lot of these defs rely on the NE phonetic identity of -ite and -ight. Defs claiming an OE or Saxon origin should take into account that wight meant 'creature', but wite didn't, even if 600 years later they came to be pronounced alike. If I leave them out I don't have much left. I vote for 3 and 9.

Regards

--
Paul Keating
Soustons, Les Landes, France
  

[Johnb - co.uk]

Comment to Paul

while I agree with you that  back then  (¿when?) originally wight meant 'creature' and that wite meant something different (either 'wise-man' or 'fine' or 'painful punishment') my  problem with your comment is so what?  for in 600 or more years spellings can and do change and in particular, phonetically similar sounds regularly interchange and often change quite quickly (early) so any of the claims  to which you refer could well be true = or, given the context, the invention of modern humanity!

JohnnyB

Tim,

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