crink-crank

Now you may wonder  why I am writing about an obscure word of the New Forest dialect in the UK. It is a departure from the concerns of Australian English I admit.  But a friend mentioned it as a word to enjoy and I agreed.

A crink-crank is a word of elevated or literary language, often a long word.  A crink-crank can be described as sesquipedalian, another word which points out in its own formation the polysyllabic nature which is often a feature of such words.  The origin of sesquipedalian lies in the description given by the Roman poet Horace, sesquipedalia verba, that is, words that are a foot and half long. They didn’t like this kind of highfalutin language in Roman times either.  Sesquipedelian breaks down into sesqui- a Latin prefix meaning 'a half again of the given measure’ and pedal- from pes foot.

Back to crink-crank.  It could be related to crinkum-crankum, a word which appears in a number of dialects neighbouring the New Forest for any ingenious device or contrivance, any mechanical gadget or toy which is an oddity or curiosity.  This is the application of the same idea to language. A crink-crank is a word which is unusual to the point of being arcane, an intriguing ornament of the language but possibly one that is not commonly understood, as can be seen in the following example of its use:

1865    Them crink-crank words is beyond me. Moy head be awl wivvery wi' ‘em.

[R. D. Blackmore Cradock Nowell xxiii, in Macmillan's Mag. Sept. 427/1 ]

It has been recorded by a historian of the New Forest, John Wise, writing in 1867, and included in a modern survey of old words still in use in the New Forest dialect.  Would it be fun to borrow it into Australian English?