Enhancing Vocabulary

SUVENDIBLY

"The Brown Family" in My granddaughters are combing out their long hair by Colleen Thibaudeau (Coach House Press, 1977).

In the same manner as her Old man: For Mr. Brown's heart was pure glossy gold
By tender handling, of all that's drossy, slowly, suvendibly, rendered down.

Not in the Oxford English Dictionary. Found it in a listing of Trillick dialect.

suvendibly [adj.] – exceedingly (with malice)

and in the American Sentinel of December 13, 1894 (a parable of attempts to force dogs to act as sheep (and eat grass) which originally appeared in 1821 as an article against compulsory Sabbath observance)

they inveigled him or compelled him into the fold, then they surrounded him and "thumped him suvendibly" until the poor dog took a few mouthfuls of grass, which sat so badly upon his stomach, he soon served an ejectment upon it.

Back to Mrs. Brown. She declares "What I can touch and take up in these two hands is what I trust." And the poet supplies a listing which leads to the concluding image of the repeated gesture: "All lovingly hers tangled. And all could be taken up, stroked, cajoled / In the same manner as her Old Man [...]". In the vicinity of "cajoled" and "stroked", "suvendibly" takes on a miserly hue...

And so for day 2204
25.12.2012