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howff [houf, ouf, hohf, ohf]

noun:
(Scottish, archaic) 1 an abode; a familiar shelter or refuge
2 A place of resort, a favourite haunt, a meeting place;

Examples:

It is a howff abundant in character but without renown and exists as a place for people to gather, wet their whistle, and have a blether. It is the perfect local. (Socialising in pubs 'boosts mens' mental health, The Scotsman, January 2014)

It has a romantic past, having been built in secret in 1952 by four climbers fed up with carrying the heavy tents of the day on the long walk into the Cairngorms. There's is a great tale of the building of this howff. (Who remembers this ? Howffs, Old mans thoughts and tales, July 2020)

Together they sought the shelter of a howff off the High Street. ( Janet Beith, The Corbies)

The brewster-wife at the howff near Loch Lomond mouth keeps a good glass of aqua. (Neil Munro, Doom Castle)

Yonder, overlooking Tibbie Shiel's 'cosy beild' - a howff of the Noctes coterie - stands the solitary white figure of the beloved Shepherd as Christopher North's prophetic soul felt that it must be some day. (W S Crockett, In the Border Country)

The office-bearers and Senatus of the University of Cramond - an educational institution in which I have the honour to be Professor of Nonsense - meet to do honour to our friend Icarus, at the old-established howff, Cramond Bridge. (Robert Louis Stevenson, St Ives)

The Globe Tavern here, which for these many years has been my Howff. (J de L Ferguson (ed), The Letters of Robert Burns)


Origin:
The earliest known use of the noun howff is in the early 1700s. OED's earliest evidence for howff is from 1711, in the writing of Allan Ramsay, poet. (Oxford English Dictionary)

First recorded in 1555–65; origin uncertain (Dictionary.com)

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hypothecate [hahy-poth-i-keyt]

verb:
1 pledge (personal property or a ship) as security for a debt without transferring possession or title
2 to allocate the revenue raised by a tax for a specified purpose

Examples:

The government dismissed calls to redirect existing revenues 'such as from the UK ETS or APD', arguing: "We generally do not hypothecate taxes to particular spending programmes as it can reduce flexibility in spending decisions and lead to a misallocation of resources with reduced value for money for taxpayers." (Ian Taylor, Levy to finance SAF revenue certainty will be passed on to carriers, Travel Weekly, May 2025)

People have always needed money for personal emergencies. If they had no property real or personal to hypothecate, they could borrow on their personal credit only from usurers, who charged 20% and more interest. (Tish Harrison Warren, Business: Loans, TIME, May 1928)

The defendant also undertook to hypothecate a piece of land measuring 5,000 square metres held under parent deed 3413/73, upon finalisation of the relevant paperwork by his legal practitioners, Zuze Law Chambers. (Suspected serial fraudster ordered to pay US$215k debt, The Zimbabwean, October 2024)

She would get Carmen to hypothecate her own interest in this new company, if necessary. (Charles Francis Stocking, Carmen Ariza)

He could buy certificates of city loan for the sinking-fund up to any reasonable amount, hypothecate them where he pleased, and draw his pay from the city without presenting a voucher. (Theodore Dreiser, The Financier)

Origin:
1680s, 'pledge (something) without giving up control of it; pawn; mortgage,' from hypothecat-, past-participle stem of Medieval Latin hypothecare, from Late Latin hypotheca 'a pledge,' from Greek hypothēkē 'a deposit, pledge, mortgage,' from hypo- 'beneath, under' + tithenai 'to put, to place,' from reduplicated form of PIE root dhe- 'to set, put.' (Online Etymology Dictionary)

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jollification [jol-uh-fi-key-shuhn]

noun:
lovely merrymaking; festivity

Examples:

Even the mascot that day celebrated with a raw passion that belied his novelty dragon costume and the manufactured family-friendly jollification expected from mascots. (Ben James, The seven greatest rugby moments the Principality Stadium has seen, Wales Online, June 2019)

Abstaining, for a moment, from the clamor of compulsive jollification, and instead leaning into the reality of human tragedy and of my own need and brokenness, allows my experience of glory at Christmastime to feel not only more emotionally sustainable but also more vivid, vital and cherished. (Tish Harrison Warren, Want to Get Into the Christmas Spirit? Face the Darkness, New York Times, November 2019)

He told about the midnight dances and how the Nymphs who lived in the wells and the Dryads who lived in the trees came out to dance with the Fauns; about long hunting parties after the milk-white Stag who could give you wishes if you caught him; about feasting and treasure-seeking with the wild Red Dwarfs in deep mines and caverns far beneath the forest floor; and then about summer when the woods were green and old Silenus on his fat donkey would come to visit them, and sometimes Bacchus himself, and then the streams would run with wine instead of water and the whole forest would give itself up to jollification for weeks on end. (C S Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe)

Now that Old Grandmother's birthday had come, the Lesleys had an excuse for their long-deferred jollification. (L M Montgomery, Magic for Marigold)

For a long, long time they have been staying in the caves and hiding away in the tops of the corners and crevices. But last night they had their first real jollification. (Mary Graham Bonner, Daddy's Bedtime Bird Stories)

Thomas Wilson, who spoke in a strain so ambitious and toploftical as to be scarcely intelligible to the magistrates, succeeded after much ado in making their worships comprehend that on the night previous he had had a jollification with a friend in Merrion-street. (Freeman's Journal and Daily Commercial Advertiser (Dublin), 21 March 1842)

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pecuniary [pi-kyoo-nee-er-ee]

adjective:
1 of or relating to money
2 consisting of or given or exacted in money or monetary payments
3 (of a crime, violation, etc.) involving a money penalty or fine

Examples:

By night, she lives alongside four other young women on the top floor in the May Of Teck club which 'exists for the Pecuniary Convenience and Social Protection of Ladies of Slender Means below the age of Thirty Years, who are obliged to reside apart from their Families in order to follow an Occupation in London'. (Claire Wood, Poignant, punchy staging captures Spark’s smart, sassy girls of slender means, The Wee Review, April 2024)

As a result, the claimant requested that a pecuniary sanction be imposed on the respondent for its continued refusal to comply with the arbitral tribunal's order. (Oliver Cojo and Angela Portocarrero, Fine line? A New Case on Arbitrators' Power to Impose Sanctions, Kluwer Arbitration Blog, May 2022)

But to deliberately throw up roadblocks that prevent easy comparisons is to turn up an institution's collective nose at anyone with even the mildest pecuniary concerns. (Ron Lieber, Concealing the Calculus of Higher Education, The New York Times, January 2016)

In Nevada, 'no person actively engaged or having a direct pecuniary interest in gaming activities shall be a member' of the Nevada Gaming Commission, according to state law. (Dana Gentry, Murren's donning of multiple hats may prove problematic, Nevada Current, December 2024)

But they, Exalted Creatures! scorned to reflect a moment on their pecuniary Distresses and would have blushed at the idea of paying their Debts.--Alas! (Jane Austen, Love and Friendship)

I had passed over the manner in which this person had remarked that I was more than twenty-one, and that I had no pecuniary interest in my aunt's Will. (Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone)

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Pecuniary first appeared in English in the early 16th century and comes from the Latin word pecunia, which means 'money.' Both this root and Latin peculium, which means 'private property,' are related to the Latin noun for cattle, pecus. Among Latin speakers (as among many other populations, past and present) cattle were viewed as a trading commodity, and property was often valued in terms of cattle. Pecunia has also given us impecunious, a word meaning 'having little or no money,' while peculium gave us peculate, a synonym for embezzle. In peculium you might also recognize the word peculiar, which originally meant 'characteristic of only one' or 'distinctive' before acquiring its current meaning of 'strange.' (Merriam-Webster)