OK, I concede, it was a clever (though slightly convoluted) clue. And conceded only after looking up the answer in the dictionary.
Times crossword #25,202: Mother Brown, for nothing I fix up gallery opening.
How is that a clue to machicolate, a word of which I had never heard? I get the ma bit, but was misled by thinking of what is these days a rather tired cliché of a clue where gallery = Tate, so I was thinking they had changed the T to an L, instead of analysing the clue properly according to the rules.
A machicolation (with which the spellchecker is completely at home) is ‘a space between the corbels supporting a parapet, or an opening in the floor of a projecting gallery, for dropping missiles, molten lead, etc, on an attacking enemy’ & to machicolate (which the spellchecker does not recognise) is ‘to provide or build with machicolations’.
We learned about those in primary school – made visits to a Norman Castle even more thrilling! But I don’t remember ever learning the word. The dictionary says it’s a French word, so I guess we have the Normans to thank for that too.
Come to think about it we did learn the rudiments of Norman & Early English architecture – I remember drawing Norman arches, pointed Early English windows, columns & flying buttresses. There was also one of the I-Spy books where you could earn points by locating examples; but I still have no memory of the word machicolate.
While the dictionary was out I thought to check the origin of matriculation, that important & impressive- sounding thing a certificate of which we had to get if we wanted to go to university – basically just a confirmation that we had the right number & combination of GCE O & A levels & were old enough to cope with the undergraduate experience.
It is rather disappointing to learn that it means simply being entered on a register – nothing at all exciting to schoolchildren whose teachers checked them on the register every morning.
But I rather like the fact that it is a diminutive of matrix – some basic knowledge of mathematics required.
And I like even more the fact that matrix comes from the Latin for mother & was once used to mean the womb.
We could have had some real fun pointing that out to the boys who so outnumbered us in the matriculation stakes.
And I really like the idea of womb algebra – such a change from regimented rectangular arrays.
Links
Cancer of the matrix is difficult to cure. Guglielmo da Saliceto ca. 1250
