"Horribles" (and a 1792 instance)

Victor Steinbok aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM
Wed Jan 26 23:08:01 UTC 2011


One more from 1822 and this one does not involve humor or a particular
exercise in rhetoric.

http://goo.gl/sAH3X
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine. November 1822
The Man-of-War's-Man. Chapter 7. p. 650/1
> Edward was therefore no way surprised to hear the never-ending merry
> stories of mine landlady of Deptford, or my fancy girl of Gosport,
> with all the intervening critiques on the marvels of gunnery,
> musketry, pikes, cutlasses, and tomahawks, in broadsides, boardings,
> &c. &c. laid calmly aside, and as rich a treat of horrors and
> horribles served up to his ears, as ever his eyes had been blessed
> with in the witching pages of that ghosting, rawhead-and-bloody-bones
> fraternity, years before led on by that redoubted and popular
> personage, yeleped Monk Lewis.

     VS-)

On 1/26/2011 4:58 PM, Victor Steinbok wrote:
> ...
>
> There is a one-off 1822 appearance where "horrible" is just one
> adjective turned into noun, with the phrase repeated several times:
> "Not seven Xs; but one X." (X= Insatiable, Inexorable, Hideous,
> Execrable, Horrible)
>
> http://goo.gl/HvdnL
>
>
>     VS-)

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