About: The “Turn Out” is excellent—a second edition of Miss Edgeworth’s “Barring Out,” and full of fine touches of the truest humor. The scene is laid in Georgia, and in the good old days of fescues, abbiselfas, and anpersants—terms in very common use, but whose derivation we have always been at a loss to understand. Our author thus learnedly explains the riddle. / “The fescue was a sharpened wire, or other instrument, used by the preceptor to point out the letters to the children. Abisselfa is a contraction of the words ‘a, by itself, a.’ It was usual, when either of the vowels constituted a syllable of a word, to pronounce it, and denote by its independent character, by the words just mentioned, thus: ‘a by itself, a, c-o-r-n corn, acorn’—e by itself e, v-i-l vil, evil. The character which stands for the word ‘and’ (&) was probably pronounced with the same accompaniment, but in terms borrowed from the Latin language, thus: ‘& per se (by itself) &.’ ‘Hence anpersant.’”       Sponge   NotDistinct   Permalink