word of the week: Nudiustertian
From Latin nudius tertius, from the phrase nunc dies tertius est (“now is the third day”). Coined by Nathaniel Ward (1578–1652) in The Simple Cobler of Aggawam in America (1647).
Pronunciation:
Because I don’t have much more to say about Nudiustertianisms, I’ll share some biographical information about the word’s coiner:
Nathaniel Ward (1570 – 1653) was a Puritan clergyman and pamphleteer in England and Massachusetts. As an aside, I’m pretty sure that “pamphleteer” was the 17th century’s version of having a podcast.
He was nearly excommunicated for his Puritan beliefs in 1631, so emigrated/fled to Massachusetts in 1634, where in 1638 he wrote The Body of Liberties, the first code of laws established in New England.
In 1647, Ward published the Simple Cobler of Aggawam in America, Aggawam being a town in Mass. (As even a further digression, Agawam's ZIP code, 01001, is the lowest in the contiguous United States.)
As for the book:
The Simple Cobbler is a small book, which "in spite of its bitterness, and its lack of toleration" is "full of quaint originality, grim humor and power", according to the anthology Colonial Prose and Poetry: The Transplanting of Culture 1607–1650 (1903)
A very Massachusetts sense of humour, in the end.
Anyway, Nathaniel Ward returned to England in 1647, criticized the government for a couple of years, and died in Shenfield in Essex in 1653.
You can find his collected works at the Gutenberg Project, from which I am sourcing some of the materials for this bio.
Until next week,
