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By Anatoly Liberman
I wish I could write something called “The Walrus and the Carpenter,” but, unfortunately, a similar idea occurred to someone who lived before me. So I’ll write “The Curmudgeon and the Catawampus” instead. Who is a curmudgeon? The word has been around in English books since 1577 (OED). Samuel Johnson, the author of a famous 18th-century dictionary, defined the gentleman in question as “avaricious churlish fellow,” but in British usage a curmudgeon’s first quality (love of money) is more prominent than the second (lack of social mores). A British curmudgeon is preeminently a miser. Nearly all lexicographers agree on that point. Only Henry Cecil Wyld, in his A Universal English Dictionary, says “a churlish, cross-grained, surly, ill-tempered, cantankerous fellow.” (more…)
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