All entries for Thursday 10 March 2005

Bescrew

'Bescrew' is a lovely word with the right balance of passion, tenderness, and feeling. A quick search on Google shows that it is used just a little. It doesn't seem to be in the OED online. I'm sure I've come across it before but it was in a semi-recent game of Scrabble that it came up again. It's like a one word private joke and, if for nothing else, it is special.

(As there were children playing, I wasn't actually allowed to put down the 'be' in front of 'screw'.)

beshrew in the transitive usage in the online version of OED:

1. trans. To make wicked or evil; to deprave, pervert, corrupt. Obs. 
 
c1325 Poem temp. Edw. II, 45 is world is al beshrewed.
1382 WYCLIF Prov. x. 9 Who forsothe beshrewith
[1388 makith schrewid; Vulg. depravat] his weies, shal be maad opene.
1 Kings xi. 4 The herte of hym is beshrewid bi wymmen.
1393 GOWER Conf. I. 63 His herte is all beshrewed.
1556 ABP. PARKER Psalter lvi. 161 What flesh can do, though all beshrowd, I feare no whit at all.

The 'screw' part was fairly important in the context of the game of scrabble and bescrew different from beshrew. ;) Although beshrew is a nice word in its own right and with a nice history too.

: 10 Mar 2005 10:50 |  Tags: Language |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem