Hmmm, I thought quaffed had something to do with hair. The dictionary's are coming up ...
quaff (kw¼f, kw²f, kwôf) v. quaffed, quaff·ing, quaffs. --tr. 1. To drink (a beverage) heartily. --intr. 1. To drink a liquid heartily. --quaff n. A hearty draft of liquid. --quaff“er n.
Has anyone heard of this word having something to do with hair, or am I creatively embellishing again
One good reason for memorizing and reciting poems can be an enhanced vocabulary. Aside from reciting them in context, we need never to utter the new words we acquire; they can be useful for recognition, serving as an aid to understanding what we read.
Here's an excerpt from "The Raven" with some rare words linked .....
"Wretch!" I cried, "Thy god hath lent thee, by these angels he hath sent thee respite! Respite and nepenthe. Quaff. oh quaff this kind nepenthe and forget the lost Lenore."
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This is word has an interesting etymology: from Greek νηπενθης φαρμακον (nēpenthēs pharmakon) 'grief-banishing drug', literally 'non-grievous drug'; it is an example of an adjective that originally modified a noun, coming to mean by itself, that which the phrase meant. is from PIE *kʷent(h)- 'to suffer' (link and link) and gives English pathos and its derivatives also via Greek.
I learned the word quaff from an old computer game. It was a first-person adventure game, back in the world where DOS was the only option, and when you had to drink a potion, the command was q for quaff. My sister and I found this sufficiently hilarious to keep us using the word as often as possible.
Now, if only I could remember the name of that game . . .
******* "Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions. ~Dalai Lama
English coif 'coiffure; tight-fitting cap wporn under a veil; a white scullcap formerly worn by English judges; a heavy scullcap of steel or leather worn under a helmet or chain mail' < Middle English < Old French coife < Late Latin cofea 'helmet' of Germanic origin. English quaff 'to drink with relish, drink copiously', origin unknown.
Some more info on the Colossal Cave Adventure (link). I didn't get to play it until the late '80s on a Sun3over a Wyse terminal. Earlier games I played in the early '70s were Hunt the Wumpus (link) on the first HP-3000 (at Lawrence Hall of Science) and Hamurabi (link) on a PDP-8 (at SRJC).
[Addendum: Nick Montfort has a good history of early interactive text-based games on his site (link). I recommend his book, Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction (MIT Press, 2003), to anybody who's curious about interactive fiction.]This message has been edited. Last edited by: zmježd,
