![]() How great a job would this be? Anyone wanting to pay me to attend their show and react dramatically, just give me a call. There were the commissaires, who committed the play to memory and noisily pointed out its merits, the rieurs, who laughed uproariously at the jokes, the pleureurs, mainly women, who held their handkerchiefs to their eyes during the emotional scenes, the chatouilleurs, who kept the audience in good humor with their quips and gestures, and the bisseurs, who cried bis (encore). I knew about the claque, which is basically the theater version of a laugh track, but I didn’t know there were so many specialties within it:Ĭlaque: A body of hired applauders, as at a theater… The manager ordered the required number of claqueurs and divided them into groups. At that time, it was unfashionable for a husband to associate with his wife in society or in public, and she was therefore accompanied by her cicisbeo. I guess it’s the price you pay to look this fabulousĪlso, apparently 18th-century Italy decided that husbands were necessary but so not fashionable.Ĭicisbeo: The escort or lover of a married woman, especially in 18th-century Italy. Bartholomew’s Day MassacreĬharles X spent a quarter of a century in exile, and after less than six years on the throne, fled for his life and died in exileĬharles the Bold of Burgundy lost his life at Nancy when he was routed by the SwissĬharles I lost Sicily and experienced many disastersĬharles II, the Lame, was in captivity at the time of his father’s deathĬharles III, his great-grandson, was assassinated at the age of 41 Thanks, Brewers.Ĭharles: Many rulers bearing this name have been afflicted with misfortune:Ĭharles Edward Stuart, the Young Pretender, died in povertyĬharles II, the Fat, reigned wretchedly, was deposed, and died in povertyĬharles IV, the Fair, reigned six years, married three times, and outlived all his children except one daughter, who was forbidden by the Salic Law to succeed to the crownĬharles VII starved himself to death, partly through fear of being poisoned and partly because of a painful and incurable abscess in the mouthĬharles VIII, the Affable, accidentally smashed his head against the lintel of a doorway and died in agony at the age of 28, leaving no issueĬharles IX died at the age of 24, stricken with remorse for the part he had taken in the St. I’m picturing bored villagers going to weddings to heckleĪlso, there’s this list, of everything bad that’s ever happened to a king named Charles. Judgmental reference sources are the best! Brewers can be pretty judgey itself sometimes.Ĭharivari: A French term for an uproar caused by banging pans and kettles and accompanied by hissing, shouting, and the like to express disapproval, especially at an unpopular wedding Middle-aged: between youth and old age, variously reckoned to suit the reckoner Jaywalker: a careless pedestrian whom motorists are expected to avoid running down ![]() He-man: a man of exaggerated virility, or what some women consider to be virility ![]() She was a phantom of delight (Wordsworth)īasically, I’ve discovered ancient sampling.Ĭhamberisms: Such may be called the idiosyncratic definitions that have regularly appeared in the various editions of Chambers Dictionary… the following remain in the 1998 edition: “Sleeping Place” makes it less creepy, “city of the silent” makes it moreĬento: (Latin, ‘patchwork’) Poetry made up of lines borrowed from established authors, an art freely practiced in the decadent days of Greece and Rome… An example of a stanza from a modern cento, with lines taken from 19th-century poets, is the following:
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