aureole - a glorifying halo; the radiant circle of light depicted around the head
Kopf (ger) - head + neck and crop (phrase) - entirely, bodily.
heavy sugar - 'big money' (U.S. slang) + heavy sugar papa (U.S. slang) - sweet old man with fat purse.
sweetmeat - pl. preserved or candied fruits, sugared nuts, etc.; also, globules, lozenges, etc. + Joyce's note: 'the parent / offers sweetmeat' → The Passing of the Phantoms, 24-5: "Let us now examine the same faculties, viz. sorrow and joy under different conditions, and see how the Brain machinery is called forth into action. The child trips over the door-mat and falls in its eagerness to reach the sweetmeat held up in the parent's hand at the other end of the room."
gift - to bestow as a gift, to make a present of + at gifte os (Danish) - to marry.
uns - ounce (obs.) + us
Nobel prize (T.S. Eliot won) + NOBLETT, LEONARD AND CO - Confectioners, around the turn of the century at 34 Lower Sackville Street, and 72 Grafton Street.
abnegation - denial (of anything) to oneself; self-denial; renunciation (of rights, claims, or things esteemed)
adaptation - the action or process of adapting, fitting, or suiting one thing to another
laudable - praiseworthy, commendable [(notebook 1923): 'same laudable purpose' → Flood: Ireland, Its Saints and Scholars 4: 'to perfect themselves in the practices of an ascetic life under Irish directors, and to study the Sacred Scriptures... At a later period the Anglo-Saxons passed over to Ireland in great numbers for the same laudable purpose'].
loud - clamorous, noisy; Also, in more favourable sense, emphatic or vehement in expression + Laudabiliter (l) - "Laudably": Pope Adrian's bull.
signified - indicated + singultus (l) - a sobbing + satisfied + single (become one) + FDV: With this same laudable purpose in laudability let us be singlified!
betwixt - between + Genesis 31:48-9: 'between me and thee... Mizpah' (city in Gilead).
go to Hong Kong - to go away, to go 'to hell'
Mizpah - an expression or token of association ('The Lord watch between me and thee'), esp. used attrib. to designate an ornament with 'Mizpah' inscribed upon it, as given by a lover. Several "Mizpah"s are referred to in the Old Testament, but particularly Mizpah of Gilead (Gen 31:49) where Jacob and Laban marked their reconciliation by setting up a pillarstone, called Mizpah (that is, "watchpost") and by the "Mizpah benediction," "The Lord watch between thee and me, while we are absent one from the other" + end of Mass: 'Ite, missa est'.
hobgoblin - a mischievous, tricksy imp or sprite; a bogy + "LYNCH: (deeply) Enter a ghost and hobgoblins" (Ulysses).
doodle - to draw or scrawl aimlessly
dawdle - to idle, waste time
mug - a mug with its contents, the liquid in a mug; a stupid or incompetent person
grub - food or provender of any kind + Mookse/Gripes (motif).
oikea (Finnish) - right (hand) + O.K.
divvy - colloq. abbreviation of dividend + divvy (World War I Slang) - division + devil
babbling - chattering, prating, foolishly talkative + Bible + babbling brook (World War I Slang) - cook.
brook - a small stream, rivulet + book
auntie - a familiar, endearing form of aunt
emma-emma-esses - (From the signal alphabet, MMS) Men may smoke + Eames, Emma - 19th-century American operatic soprano.
studiavimus (l) [correctly, studuimus or studivimus] - we have studied + Roman soldiers' song: Mille Mille Mille Mille Mille Decollavimus.
secures gubernant urbis terrorem (l) - axes govern the city's terror (O Hehir, Brendan; Dillon, John M. / A classical lexicon for Finnegans wake)
manducabimus (l) - we shall chew
strike off - to cancel by or as by a stroke of a pen; to remove from a list or record + Thomas Moore: The Night Dance (song): 'Strike the gay harp! see the moon is on high' [air: The Nightcap].
nightcap - a covering for the head, worn especially in bed
on high - in or to a height, above; spec. up to or in heaven + "The hat - generally described as bucket-shaped affair - is as such perhaps the primary source of the pot-on-pole insignia already mentioned, and the readiest way of accounting for it is to conclude that HCE, like many men, has hung his hat on the handiest vertical, one of his knob-topped bedposts. The four posts are most often identified with the four apostles, north, south, east and west as Matthew, Mark, Luke and John respectively, an identification traceable to the sleeper's remembrance of the old childhood prayer 'Matthew, Mark, Luke and John / Bless the bed that I lie on / Four corners to my bed / Four angels overhead'. What is more natural than that a child with a four-poster bed should imagine its knobby finials as those four watchers, named nightly as he drifts off to sleep? Or that when grown up, lying in a similar four-poster, reliving his childhood, he should look up at the posts and see the same four figures?" (John Gordon: Finnegans Wake: a plot summary).
going, going, gone (auction phrase)
trivium (l) - (1) place where three roads meet; (2) lower division of seven liberal arts in educational curriculum: grammar, logic, rethoric (O Hehir, Brendan; Dillon, John M. / A classical lexicon for Finnegans wake).
quadrivium (l) - (1) place where four roads meet; (2) upper division of seven liberal arts in educational curriculum: arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, music (O Hehir, Brendan; Dillon, John M. / A classical lexicon for Finnegans wake).
intermezzo - a short dramatic, musical, or other performance, of a light and pleasing character, introduced between the acts of a drama or opera
SOUTH CITY MARKET - The block bounded by South Great George's Sreet, Exchequer Sreet, Drury Sreet, and Fade Sreet. The Market was opened in 1881, almost entirely destroyed by fire, 27 August 1892 + Thom's Directory of Ireland/Dublin, Dublin Annals section 1892: 'August 27. - The South City Market almost entirely destroyed by fire'.
Cato, Marcius Porcius - great-grandson of Cato the Censor and a leader of the Optimates (conservative senatorial aristocracy) who tried to preserve the Roman Republic against power seekers, in particular Julius Caesar + Cato was a determined advocate of war with Carthage. Every time he gave his opinion in the senate, he ended with the famous words ceterum censeo delendam esse Carthaginem ("Besides which, my opinion is that Carthage must be destroyed").
Nero - the fifth Roman emperor (AD 54-68), rumoured to have instigated fire that destroyed half of Rome
Saul - first king of Israel (c. 1021-1000 BC)
banshee - a supernatural being supposed by the peasantry of Ireland and the Scottish Highlands to wail under the windows of a house where one of the inmates is about to die.
Civil Service - a collective term for all the non-warlike branches of the public administrative service of the state, including the diplomatic intercourse, the working of the post office and telegraphs, the educational institutions controlled by the state, and the collection of the revenue, etc.
disengaged - unemployed
nettle rash - an exanthematous eruption on the skin, appearing in patches like those produced by the sting of a nettle
nyamnyam - to eat, esp. with relish + Jespersen: Language, its Nature, Development and Origin 158 (VIII.8): 'breast... obsolete E. bubby... Inseparable from these words is the sound... which expresses the child's delight over something that tastes good; it has by-forms in the Scotch nyam or nyamnyam'.
Domitian - Roman emperor (AD 81-96), known chiefly for the reign of terror under which prominent members of the Senate lived during his last years.
Sphinx is often depicted sitting on a column whilst confronting Oedipus
indulgence - the practice or habit of indulging or giving way to one's inclinations; self-gratification, self-indulgence + FDV: Devotion of the Little Loaves the feast of Portiuncula (this word, crossed out here, was used in the next version) S. Anthony.
Ajax - son of Telamon, king of Salamis. In the Iliad he leads Salaminian contigent against Troy; of enormous size, a byword for physical strength. Ajax fought Ulysses at funeral games for Patroclus.
portiuncle - a small portion (of land), a pendicle + portioncula (l) - portion.
BALLSBRIDGE - District, South-East Dublin; site of Royal Dublin Social grounds, site of the August Horse Show and of athletic meetings. The locality is named after the bridge which carries the ancient highway from Dublin to Blackrock over the Dodder River.
homely - unsophisticated, simple; plain, unadorned
Anglian - of or pertaining to the Angles (one of the Low-German tribes that settled in Britain, where they formed the kingdoms of Northumbria, Mercia, and East Anglia, and finally gave their name to the whole 'English' people.)
monosyllable (Slang) - euphemism for 'cunt'
Marcus Aurelius - Roman emperor (AD 161-180), best known for his Meditations on Stoic philosophy. Marcus Aurelius has symbolized for many generations in the West the Golden Age of the Roman Empire. Marcus Aurelius' death is often held to have been the end of the Pax Romana.
Hesperus - the evening star + "The Wreck of the Hesperus" (a poem by American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) is a story that presents the tragic consequences of a sea captain's pride. On an ill-fated voyage in the winter, he had his daughter aboard ship for company. The disaster came when the captain ignored the advice of one of his experienced men, who feared that a hurricane was approaching. When the hurricane arrives, he ties his daughter to the mast to prevent her from being swept overboard; she calls out to her dying father as she hears the surf beating on the shore, then prays to Christ to calm the seas. The ship crashes onto the reef of Norman's Woe (a reef on Cape Ann, Massachusets, US) and sinks; a horrified fisherman finds her body, still tied to the mast, drifting in the surf the next morning. The poem ends with a prayer that we all be spared such a fate "on the reef of Norman's Woe".
Diarmaid elopes with Gráinne (Grace), a king's daughter whom Finn, as an old man, wishes to marry.
Catechism: 'Really distinct and equal in all things'
Alcibiades - brilliant but unscrupulous Athenian politician and military commander who provoked the sharp political antagonisms at Athens that were the main causes of Athens' defeat by Sparta in the Peloponnesian War (431-404 BC).
Lucretius - Latin poet and philosopher known for his single, long poem, De rerum natura (On the Nature of Things). The poem is the fullest extant statement of the physical theory of the Greek philosopher Epicurus; it also alludes to his ethical and logical doctrines. Lucretius went mad from a love potion made of Spanish Fly.