Greetings-
As I have trouble deleting interesting email, here's a blast from the
past. I'd love to know if there's been new information found in the last
12 years which changes things! :>
Cheers,
-Yasamin
in the Outlands till this summer; no clue about what happens after that
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 15 Jul 2002 06:12:09 -0600
From: Fiskr <[log in to unmask]>
Reply-To: Historical Recreation in the Kingdom of Calontir
<[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [CALONTIR] Cars, dragons, and sunglasses, oh my!
>From the Artemesian list:
****************
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 21:13:18 -0600
From: "Brian L. Rygg or Laura Barbee-Rygg" <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: SMALLS -- just for the record
Subject came up on the Rialto, and since it has come up before within
our fair Kingdom, I decided to copy my response onto the Aerie as well:
There is a persistent myth that, in period, no child would be called a
small. There is a persistent co-myth that, in period, any reference to
smalls would be understood to mean underwear.
In English, at least, both are incorrect.
In the Oxford English Dictionary -- which lists meanings not by primacy
of their current use, but in the chronological order each meaning developed
in the language -- definition 1 for the noun form of small is:
"Persons or animals of small size or stature; little ones, children. (Now
only with *the*.)"
The citations for that meaning date back as far as 1220.
Definition 9.a -- "Small clothes; breeches." -- has as its earliest
citation an 1837 Dickens quotation.
Small-clothes, also listed as smallclothes, is defined as breeches or
knee-breeches. The first citation, from 1796, is, I think, amusing enough
to quote:
"The immensity of their breeches, (for, in spite of the fashionable phrase,
it would certainly be a perversion of terms to call them small-clothes).
Your honours in dutie.
Brendan Pilgrim
Cognitio et Cogitatio Vitae Pennas Dant
************
Channelled by Fiskr
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