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Monday, December 22, 2008

Querk and Twank

Thomas Hardy, letter to Joseph Wright, quoted in Dennis Taylor, Hardy's Literary Language and Victorian Philology (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), p. 122:
To "querk" is to complain without good cause; to "twank" is to complain with real cause.
Most of my complaining is querking, not twanking.