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The Times & The Sunday Times
The Times & The Sunday Times
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Word Watching answers: August 7, 2003

The Times
The Times

PLAGUENATION

(a) Edward Gepp’s Essex Dialect Dictionary, 1923: “Plaguenation — A barbarously formed substitute for damnation.”

MUSSURANA

(c) A Brazilian colubrid snake, Clelia clelia. An adaptation of the Tupi word. 1934: “A cannibal snake, known in Brazil as the Mussurana, though harmless to men and animals, lives entirely on other snakes to whose venom it is immune.”

REVOLERA

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(c) A word for the fluttering of the cape above the matador’s head. The more stereotypical bullfighting move of flapping the cape behind one’s back is called mariposa, Spanish for “butterfly”.

GARBOIL

(b) Confusion, disturbance, tumult. An instance of this, a brawl, hubbub or hurlyburly. Old French garbouil. Connected with the Latin bullire, to boil. 1891: “Far from the moiling crowd and garboil of this world.”