Liffery T-V

The Petrus [pron `pi:trus
A fabled sarcophagus where they should inter Tony Robinson.

thistley green
A weak ingratiating smile adopted in order to counter a pedwardine (qv), made weaker by the fact that all explanations fall on deaf ears.

thriplow
Tiny malevolent insects that bite horses in the bum, causing them to cavort, snort, stampede and kick down barns in an amorous frenzy. A distillation of thriplows is available without prescription for those who do not qualify for Viagra.

thornage
The right, on certain feast days, to rid youself of annoying pricks providing you dispatch them without Schadenfreude.

thorney, adj
Descriptive of the gloom that descends on you when you realise that nobody really loves you. Wittgenstein famously wrote “Tonight I was the life and soul of the party. I came home and wept.” Poor thorney bastard..

thornhaugh (pron: thaw)
The disdainful reaction of posh people to those of us who call the knave the jack.

thurlow
A measure of the distance between eager anticipation and disillusioned reality, exemplified by the difference between the exotic aroma of roasting coffee and the tasteless sludge that ends up in your cup. Hence, the difference between Blair 1997 and Blair 2006.

thurning
Strictly speaking, trying more than a reasonable number of times to accomplish a failed task. Seeing
that you didn't succeed on the first three (or more) occasions, you could well be stubborn and try yet again. Hence Hitler's "Viertes Reich", Hollywood's "Five Horsemen of the Apocalypse" and, of
course, "The Magnificent Eight".

tipp's end
A paradox in Quantum Mechanics. Hans-Dieter Schroedinger-Tipp (1923-59) could not accept that once he was cremated he might still be both alive and dead, despite the lack of evidence to the contrary, as it were He was ignored by the best minds of the day.

toft adj
Intimidated by a wine waiter. "I was totally toft by the way he looked at me. I struggled to think of something to do with the cork that he had placed on the table before me. Finally I picked it up, sucked on it and pronounced it quintessentially Algerian, probably from the cork-oak woods above Annaba.." (Scott Fitzgerald)

toprow (pron. 'toprof)
A term in ballet for a dangerous manoeuvre, the double backflip arabesque and twist, named after its inventor, Anton Toprov (1840-1855).

tydd gote
An inadequate present, eg, the small box of Ferrero Rochet chocolates. You don't know it is a tydd gote till you have handed it to your loved one and seen the expression on her/his face. Shopkeepers understand this and have magnanimously taken to stocking only the large boxes of Ferrero Rochet.

upwell
An ecstatic state which you hope will go on forever. Until you think it might, at which point, you start to seriously consider an outwell (qv)

upware
An accusation of adultery in medieval times . Given the difficulty of proof, most transcripts of trials read:
"Did you?"
"No."
"Case dismissed. Don't do it again."

vipans
An embarrassing condition, known in Spanish as "meteorismo", in which the recommended 200gm stool actually emerges as a series of tiny rabbit-like pellets. The condition is said to have inspired pointillisme, but that could be a load of old cobblers.