Go
New
Find
Notify
Tools
Reply
  
Mome Login/Join
 
Member
Picture of Kalleh
posted
Mome
Has anyone heard of this word? I found it in my Novobatzky & Shea book, and it is defined as: "a nitpicking critic". I love that definition and was going to use it to describe CJ in that thread about places that start and end with "a".

However, I then looked it up on onelook.com and found that all the entries in fact defined it as a "blockhead or fool" from the Greek God of censure and mockery; or a "dull, silent person". Yet my book says that it is an Anglicized form of Momus, the Greek God of ridicule. confused
 
Posts: 24735 | Location: Chicago, USAReply With QuoteReport This Post
Member
Picture of arnie
posted Hide Post
I've only seen it before in Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky:
... the mome raths outgrabe...
 
Posts: 10940 | Location: LondonReply With QuoteReport This Post
Member
Picture of shufitz
posted Hide Post
I too had only heard the use arnie cites. but On checking, i found in Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (1898), on bartelby,

"Mome (French), says Cotgrave, is a Momus, find-fault, carping fellow. So called from Momus, the god of raillery."
 
Posts: 2666 | Location: Chicago, IL USAReply With QuoteReport This Post
  Powered by Social Strata  
 


Copyright © 2002-12