[Sca-cooks] sops

[Gretchen Beck]

--On Monday, June 05, 2006 4:20 PM -0500 Jeff Gedney <gedney1 at iconn.net> 
wrote:

> (because in the 16th it clearly meant insect Larva:
> A quick check of Shakespeare yeilded this from
> Loves Labour Lost:
> Biron: Taffeta phrases, silken terms precise,
> Three-piled hyperboles, spruce affectation,
> Figures pedantical; these summer-flies
> Have blown me full of maggot ostentation:
> I do forswear them; and I here protest,
>
> According to my American Heritage Dictionary, here
> on my desk, MAGGOT is MIDDLE ENGLISH in origin,
> which predates your 18th century usage by some 400
> years at least.
>

>From  the Oxford English Dictionary:
2. a. A whimsical, eccentric, strange, or perverse notion or idea. Now 
arch. and regional
a1625 J. FLETCHER Women Pleas'd III. iv, in F. Beaumont & J. Fletcher 
Comedies & Trag. (1647) sig. Eeeeee2v/1, Are not you mad my friend?.. Have 
not you Maggots in your braines? c1645 J. HOWELL Epistolæ Ho-Elianæ (1688) 
II. 328 There's a strange Magot hath got into their Brain. 1680 DRYDEN Kind 
Keeper V. i. 57 What new Maggot's this? you dare not sure be jealous! 1685 
S. WESLEY (title) Maggots: Or, Poems on several subjects. a1692 T. SHADWELL 
Volunteers (1693) V. i. 51 M. G. Bl. Ha Fellow, what dost thou mean by a 
Maggot? Hop. Sir, a little Concern of mine in my way,a little whim, or so 
sir

I believe this meaning may be a sly reference to the older meaning of an 
insect larva. However, it may also be a reference to another definition -- 
Maggot as a pet name for the magpie.

toodles, margaret

> SO, Please tell me whence you have derived this
> assertion.