ROTFL

I don't usually break out into uncontrollable laughter while teaching, but William Beckford drove me to it this afternoon.  We were looking at an excerpt from Beckford's satire Modern Novel Writing, and I called the students' attention to this--ah--remarkable paean to love:

And surely he well merited this faithful testimony at her hands, for it must be owned, that the arrows of true passion, when sharpened by the sceptre of disappointment, envelope the heart with a weight of woe, and forcibly obumbrate the finest feelings of the soul.

Never mind politely mixing your metaphors; this one has been stirred, shaken, violently blended, and then pureed.  It's "obumbrate," though, that really puts the whole thing over the top. 

(And then I laughed again when I realized that GoogleBooks has catalogued the novel's second volume only under Beckford's pseudonym, "Harriet Marlow," but that's another issue altogether.) 

 

Comments

[D. Des Chene]

Thanks for this. I had a good laugh too, obumbrated under the dogwood tree. The OED missed this occurrence; to judge from its citations, I’m not sure the word has been used with a straight face since 1654.