When the King visited Oxford in September 1687, there was a bit of a shambles in the Bodleian, where they had laid out a banquet for his breakfast. He ate some mutton and pheasant. When he had finished, there was a scramble for the many dishes left over. The University had paid £160 for this banquet or ambigue, noted the antiquarian Anthony Wood.
Ambigue, borrowed from French ambigu, meant a meal where all the dishes were served at once. It appears in the fifth index, “Words,” printed in 1900 in a 400-page volume of indexes to Wood’s Life and Times edited by the indefatigable Andrew Clark, who claimed “a little space for words and spellings characteristic of Wood,” and for “a few minor subjects” not in the other indexes.
Balcony: the first in England was made in about 1620 by Marc Antony de Dominis, the renegade Archbishop of Split, “on the backside of the Savoy” of which he was appointed Master. Stressed on second syllable until about 1825, says the Oxford English Dictionary.
Calash: a light carriage, as used by the Prince of Orange for his entry into St. James’s on December 18, 1688. It comes from Polish kołaska.
Fantasticks: fanciful compositions which, with rebuses and devices, were cut on the Warden of Merton’s dining-room windows, which Richard Lydall took down as soon as he came into office in 1693. In 1626, a sort of rural calendar was published called Fantastickes.
Noctivagation: wandering outside college by night. The Vice Chancellor fined two graduate members of St. John’s £2 each for being in the Crown after 10 p.m.
Shark: “Wright Croke of Merston, eldest son to Sir Richard Croke, was posted up for a shark and coward in Day’s coffey house.” A shark was a scrounger and sponger. The posting up was on paper or with chalk. The same word, posting, now thrives online.
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