Daily Lexeme: Limmer
Today’s word, in association with the remarkableOxford English Dictionary, is
limmer(n. & adj.)
n. (1) A rogue, scoundrel. Obs.
(2) Applied to a woman.
(a) A light woman; a strumpet.
(b) In weaker sense: A jade, hussy, minx.
adj. Knavish, scoundrelly.
Used in a sentence in 1828 by Walter Scott:
“There have been a proper set of limmers about to scale your windows, father Simon.”
Click on the word for further information, and here for theDaily Lexeme archive.
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Schott’s Vocab is a repository of unconsidered lexicographical trifles — some serious, others frivolous, some neologized, others newly newsworthy.
Each day, Schott's Vocab explores news sites around the world to find words and phrases that encapsulate the times in which we live or shed light on a story of note. If language is the archives of history, as Emerson believed, then Schott’s Vocab is an attempt to index those archives on the fly.
Ben Schott is the author of “Schott’s Original Miscellany,” its two sequels, and the yearbook “Schott’s Almanac.” He is a contributing columnist to The Times’s Op-Ed page. He lives in London and New York.
His Web site can be viewed atbenschott.com, and his Opinion pieceshere.
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