{"id":1659,"date":"2008-01-21T07:00:16","date_gmt":"2008-01-21T12:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.net\/?p=1659"},"modified":"2008-01-21T07:00:16","modified_gmt":"2008-01-21T12:00:16","slug":"on-blackadder-vocabulary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=1659","title":{"rendered":"On Blackadder Vocabulary"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It is no secret that one of my all-time favorite television series is <i>Blackadder<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>I go back and forth.  Sometimes <i>Blackadder II<\/i> (that being the Elizabethean <i>Blackadder<\/i>) is tops.  But usually, it&#8217;s <i>Blackadder the Third<\/i> (that being the Regency <i>Blackadder<\/i>).<\/p>\n<p>And my top three episodes &mdash; though all six are simply sublime &mdash; would be:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Ink and Incapacity<\/li>\n<li>Sense and Senility<\/li>\n<li>Duel and Duality<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In the first, &#8220;Ink and Incapcity,&#8221; Blackadder matches wits with Dr. Samuel Johnson, author of the famed dictionary.  Robbie Coltrane is hilarious as the pompous wordsmith.<\/p>\n<p>The second, &#8220;Sense and Senility,&#8221; has Prince George taking acting lessons from Kenrick and Mossop, two Shakespearean fops.<\/p>\n<p>The third, &#8220;Duel and Duality,&#8221; has the Prince challenged to a duel by the Duke of Wellington, and Blackadder and the Prince switch places.  (The scene where Wellington repeatedly punches the Prince, pretending to be a butler, is hilarious.)<\/p>\n<p>I bring this up, not to talk about my love of <i>Blackadder<\/i>, but because &#8220;Ink and Incapacity&#8221; features a wonderful scene where Blackadder attempts to rile Dr. Johnson by inventing words on the spot and using them in sentences:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Allow me to be the first to offer Dr. Johnson my most sincere contrafibularities! I am anaspeptic, frasmotic, even compunctuous to have caused him such pericombobulation.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>What wonderful language!  Frasmotic!  Compunctuous!  Words that should be used every day.<\/p>\n<p>If only we knew what they meant&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Fortunately, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.reviewers-choice.com\/blackadder_the_third.htm\">I found a website that defines these obscure, 18th-century words<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Unsurprisingly, I feel that work last week has made me a bit frasmotic.  And occasionally I <i>do<\/i> feel compunctuous.<\/p>\n<p>Use these words in health!<\/p>\n<p>While I go and watch some <i>Blackadder the Third<\/i>.  Well, not right <i>now<\/i>, as I have to go to work.  But later, definitively later&#8230; \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It is no secret that one of my all-time favorite television series is Blackadder. I go back and forth. Sometimes Blackadder II (that being the Elizabethean Blackadder) is tops. But usually, it&#8217;s Blackadder the Third (that being the Regency Blackadder). And my top three episodes &mdash; though all six are simply sublime &mdash; would be:<a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=1659\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">&#8220;On Blackadder Vocabulary&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[131],"tags":[4137,360],"class_list":["post-1659","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-television","tag-blackadder","tag-language","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1659"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1659\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}