Monday, 27 November 2017

"Senatucked"

If my grandmother had been sitting for  long time, when she got up she might groan and say that she had got "senatucked".  It meant to get stiff through staying in one position for too long.

I have no real idea where this word comes from, or even whether the above spelling is anywhere near "correct".  Of course, since many dialect words don't appear in any dictionary and may never be seen written down, their spelling may not be fixed at all.

If you search the internet for the word "senatucked" you'll get only about 10 hits.  One of them suggests that "senatucked" derives from "Senectus", the Roman deity of old age.  From "Senectus" comes the noun "senectūte", also meaning old age.  The word "senectus" was sometimes used on death certificates to indicate the cause of death as old age.

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