Friday 12 August 2011

'To apricot myself...'

'Just to sit in the Sun, to apricot myself like a fruit in its heat - this is one of my country recreations. And often I reflect what a thing after all it is, still to be alive and basking here, above all the buried people of the world, in the kind and famous sunshine...'
Thus Logan Pearsall Smith, beginning one of his Trivia pieces, Tu Quoque Fontium (which nimble-fingered Googlers will find is a quotation from Horace's Ode 3.13). 'To apricot myself' - how about that for a verb! It's surely a unique usage, though there's a related verb, to apricate, meaning to bask in the sun, which was once in use but has become obsolete. I intend to adopt them both - and, if the sun ever reappears in the remainder of this dismal summer, you may be sure that, circumstances permitting, I'll be out there apricoting myself.
'Kind and famous sunshine' is good too...

4 comments:

  1. 'to apricot' aka to 'judith chalmers'

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  2. Worm how can you lower the tone like that? Such a beautiful word until you spoilt it.

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  3. Or to lower the tone even more, but surely to bring it up to date: 'to apricot' is 'to Katie Price'.

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  4. Thank you for the article, very worthwhile material.

    ReplyDelete