A Confederacy Of Dunces*
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
These sunny-looking, innocent flowers look so pretty, but they carry an awkward burden...
They are called craspedia. It’s not hard to see why they have a variety of nicknames as well (billy buttons, billy balls, woollyheads).
Craspedia... a compendium of faux pas**
There’s been quite a few ideas lately of words that should exist, or of things that need words to exist for them, but this might be the first one I can remember of words that do exist, but really ought to belong to something else.
* The title of this post (and, very probably, this line of thinking) was prompted by Sarah Wilson, who came up with “A Municipal Council of Dunces” on the wonderfully distracting Twitter about “lesser books”.
** For some reasons, probably because I know it’s wrong, but find it entertaining, faux pas always feels like it should be said as “fox pass”. And repeat offences as “fox passes”. A bit like “horses’ doovers”.
