A Dictionary of Cont..

for lunch one day. The annual luncheon was
held at the Brown Hotel. The restaurant offered
a very good three-course luncheon for a dollar).
Brunch, a portmanteau combination of breakfast
and lunch, is now accepted as standard for
a mid-morning meal that serves both as breakfast
and lunch but, whether the artificiality of
the coinage is too obvious, whether it is used too
exclusively by ladies’ clubs, or whether the meal
it describes is too uncommon, the word, somehow,
seems slightly affected. The common man
would be appalled to hear it used seriously in
his company.
lure. See allure.
lustful and lusty both convey a sense of vitality,
but lustful is restricted to a vitality of sexual
desire. It means full of or imbued with lust and
is not in most polite circles regarded as a complimentary
term (Lustful Tarquin was the ignoblest
Roman of them all). Lusty, however,
suggests vitality of physical condition. One who
is lusty is full of or characterized by healthy
vigor and a delight in his own being. The term
has favorable connotations for most people,
especially pediatricians, poets like Browning and
Whitman, and physical education instructors
(Those lusty lads who work all day/ And dance
all through the night). The adverb of lustful is
lustfully, of lusty is lustily.
luxuriant and h~xurlous both derive from luxury,
but after a long history in which they have fre-
mackerel. The plural is mackerel or mackerels.
mad; angry. Though mad in its basic sense means
disordered in intellect, insane, or, in special reference
to dogs, afflicted with rabies (Mad as a
March hare. The dog, to gain some private
ends,/ Went mad, and bit the man), its familiar
sense, “moved by anger,” has been in use so
long and so universally that it would unquestionably
be accepted as standard had not purist
teachers made it the special target of their disapprobation.
They have done their job so well,
however, that although it is used a million times
every day in our speech (I’m so mad I could
spit) and is lodged in a score of phrases (mad as
a wet hen), it is not often encountered in formal
writing. Angry is the formal word. And since the
stigma has been put on mad, one uses it in writing
at his peril.
mad as a March hare, mad as a hatter. The wild
frolicking of the buck hare in March, its breeding
season, has made the creature a trope of
giddy recklessness and lunacy for centuries. The
hatter is a more recent comparison, though the
phrase as mad as a hatter antedates Alice in
Wonderland by almost thirty years. Some say
the phrase is a corruption of as mad as an adder.
285 madam
M
quently mingled they have achieved separate
meanings. Luxuriant now means abundant or
exuberant in growth (He parted the luxuriant
jungle foliage for a glimpse of the sea. Leonardo’s
luxuriant genius, efflorescing in painting,
sculpture, mechanics, and the arts of war). Luxurious
means characterized by luxury, ministering
to or conducing to luxury (After a month in
the trenches the simple life of the village seemed
luxurious). The words are most commonly
confused in their adverbs luxuriantly and luxuriously.
lyceum. The plural is lyceums or lycea.
lyric and lyrical are both adiectives that can be
used of -poetry having the* form and musical
quality of a song, or of one who writes such
poetry, or of something sung to the lyre. This
last was the original sense. However, lyric is
now the established form for most uses (lyric
poetry, lyric poets, the lyric muse). It classifies
definitely while lyrical describes vaguely (He
was positively lyrical in your praises) or survives
only in certain titles (The Lyrical Ballads).
The use of the noun lyric for the words of a
song (It’s got a swell tune but the lyric’s no
good) is slang.
lyricist; lyrist. A lyrist is one who plays on the
lyre or a lyric poet. In England lyricist is sometimes
used to refer to the poet; in the United
States it is mainly used to refer to the author of
the lyrics for a musical comedy.
Others believe that it grew out of an occupational
disease of hatters, characterized by jerky,
involuntary movements, brought on by their
handling of mercurial compounds.
Both phrases are more used in England than
in America. Both are hackneyed.
Madagascan; Malagasy. Madagascar, the French
colonial island in the Indian Ocean off the southeast
coast of Africa, has the noun and adjective
Maduguscan; but the more specific term Malagasy
is also used as a noun and adjective to
describe a native of Madagascar or the Austronesian
language of Madagascar.
madam; madame; ma’am. Madam, as a polite
form of address, was used originally to a woman
of rank or authority. It is a fine thing, Chaucer
says, speaking of an alderman’s wife, “to be
called ma dame” and to take precedence of
others in church. Today it is addressed to any
woman and is to be preferred to lady as a form
of address (see woman). A madam or the
madam, and sometimes just madam if the context
makes the meaning plain, is the woman in
charge of a brothel (Sal, of “My Gal, Sal” was
the madam of a sporting house in Evansville,
Indiana).