Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2018 October 22

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October 22

Pandar

Rupert Brooke's poem "Mummy" (or "Mummia") starts with these words:

As those of old drank mummia

To fire their limbs of lead,

Making dead kings of Africa

Stand pandar to their bed; ...

I have no idea what the word pandar means, or what "Making dead kings of Africa stand pandar to their bed" means. Google has been zero help on this occasion. Can anyone shed light on this? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 02:45, 22 October 2018 (UTC)

Your best bet might be to write to the webmaster and see if they have a clue. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:55, 22 October 2018 (UTC)

wikt:pandar has as a definition "A person who furthers the illicit love-affairs of others; a pimp or procurer, especially when male." as a definition which makes some sort of sense. It’s marked as obsolete, but Brooke was writing 100 years ago and making classical allusions, so of course he was using obsolete and archaic language.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 02:57, 22 October 2018 (UTC)

A pandar is a person who furthers the illicit love-affairs of others; a pimp or procurer. Mummia is an aphrodisiac prepared with mummified human flesh (mummy), so I think that "they stand pandar" means that the Egyptian pharaohs are acting as procurers. —Stephen (talk) 05:47, 22 October 2018 (UTC)

Thanks, John and Stephen. I did of course check wiktionary, but came up with nothing. Weird. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 07:54, 22 October 2018 (UTC)

It seems (according to the OED) to be a variant of 'pander', which is still used today in the verbal sense, and in pandering to someone's whims or desires. The etymology is from Pandarus, 'a Trojan archer who is said to have procured for Troilus the love and good graces of Chryseis (or Cressida).' AndrewWTaylor (talk) 06:43, 22 October 2018 (UTC)

The modern English word which is still sometimes used in that meaning (especially in legal terminology) is "panderer"... AnonMoos (talk) 13:36, 22 October 2018 (UTC)

Murian

OK, here's another weird word from Rupert Brooke: murian.

He wrote to his ex-inamorata Noel Olivier in February 1913: You … can't in the dizziest heights of murian imagination, picture the life of glitter and gaiety I lead".

It is definitely not in Wiktionary. There's this: The murian shall infect all kine, And measles will destroy the swine. This tells me that murian is a leprosy of swine, but I can't see how that's relevant to Brooke's usage of the word. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 08:06, 22 October 2018 (UTC)

I think murian is an adjectival form of "mouse". You missed off the start of that sentence which begins "But you, poor brown mouse" which to me confirms it. The second quote also to me suggests the author is blaming mice.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 08:37, 22 October 2018 (UTC)

Again, it may be Brooke showing off his classical education. Muridae, the mouse family is named from the Latin for mouse, mus. But being Latin the adjectival form might well be "murian".--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 08:40, 22 October 2018 (UTC)

Murrain is the disease. Murine is the adjective for mouse (like ovine and bovine), according to the OED. Murex, however, is the genus of snails that were used to make the dye for Tyrian purple, so could it relate to that? Mikenorton (talk) 09:10, 22 October 2018 (UTC)

Murine is probably what I was thinking of. Pretty sure that’s what is meant by the Brooke quote, from context. Maybe an archaic or classical variant of it, but the same meaning of the adjective for mouse. I had not heard of Murrain, but that makes sense for the second quote which looks quite old so it could be an older spelling or a mis-spelling from when English spelling was less set in stone.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 09:57, 22 October 2018 (UTC)

• This all makes a lot of sense. Thanks. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 19:30, 23 October 2018 (UTC)

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