26 November 2012

potvaliancy

[POT-val-yuhn-see]

noun

– Brave only as a result of being drunk.

Example sentences:

Obed looked over his shoulder, peering at me with his little short—sighted pig’s eyes, into which, in my potvaliancy, I immediately chucked half a tumbler of very strong grog, and under cover of it attempted to bolt through the scuttle.
— Michael Scott, Tom Cringle’s Log

His bursts of potvaliancy (the male side of the maiden Panic within his bosom) are awful to his friends.
— George Meredith, Beauchamp’s Career, Volume 1

Potvaliancy combines the original sense of pot as ‘drinking cup’ with valiancy, which derives from the verb valere, ‘to be strong’.

Today’s aphorism

‘I may be drunk, Miss, but in the morning I will be sober and you will still be ugly’.

– Winston Churchill (to Lady Astor who accused him of being drunk at a public function).

On this day

26 November 1922 – British archaeologist Howard Carter and Lord Carnavon enter the tomb of Egyptian Pharaoh Tutankhamen which Carter had discovered a few days earlier. Legend held that the tomb was protected by the ‘Mummy’s Curse’. Within 7 months of entering the tomb, both Carter and Carnavon were dead.

26 November 1942 – world premiere of iconic film ‘Casablanca’, starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman. The movie was nominated for 8 Oscars, winning 3 of them.

26 November 1992 – The Queen begins paying income tax and the number of royals receiving tax-payers funds is reduced to the Queen, the Duke of Edinburgh and the Queen Mother.