griffonage
Mar. 22nd, 2013 07:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
prettygoodwordgriffonage (grif-uh-NAHJ) - n., careless or illegible handwriting.
And not, alas, a place for breeding griffons. The word is now rare if not outright obsolete, which is a pity as looking at usage examples, the early Victorians used it for nicely weighty effects. Borrowed in the early 19th century from French, from griffonner, to scribble or scrawl -- and so related to graffiti, though that's the root borrowed through Italian -- ultimately from Greek graphos, writing.
---L.
And not, alas, a place for breeding griffons. The word is now rare if not outright obsolete, which is a pity as looking at usage examples, the early Victorians used it for nicely weighty effects. Borrowed in the early 19th century from French, from griffonner, to scribble or scrawl -- and so related to graffiti, though that's the root borrowed through Italian -- ultimately from Greek graphos, writing.
---L.
