glimpse at - to cast a passing glance + glypho (fut. tense glypso) (gr) - to carve, cut out with a knife + glyphe (gr) - a carving, cut-out inscription.
scribbler - one who scribbles or writes hastily or carelessly; hence 'a petty author; a writer without worth'.
vocative case - that case of nouns, adjectives, or pronouns, which in inflected languages is used to express address or invocation.
lapse - a 'slip' of the memory, the tongue, the pen, or the understanding; a slight error, a mistake; a decline to a lower state or degree, a fall.
accusative - the case which follows prepositions implying motion towards, and expresses the object of transitive verbs, i.e. the destination of the verbal action
aphasia - loss of speech, partial or total, or loss of power to understand written or spoken language, as a result of disorder of the cerebral speech centres.
slip - a mistake or fault, esp. one of a slight or trivial character, inadvertently made in writing, speaking, etc. + step by step
slipper - a light and usually heelless covering for the foot; one who slips
misnomer - to misname
ar - "r" + Sullivan, The Book of Kells 47: 'A preference is also shown for the capital R - obviously for greater clearness'.
bellical - pertaining to war, warlike + ars bellica (l) - the art of war.
hieroglyph - a hieroglyphic character; a figure of some object, as a tree, animal, etc., standing for a word.
oddsbobs - a mild oath (god’s body) + God's bones! (phrase) - (oath).
wrast = wrest
red handed - fresh from the commission of murder or homicide; having the hands red with blood.
hallowed - sanctified, blessed, consecrated, dedicated
rubric - written in red, a direction for the conduct of divine service inserted in liturgical books (printed in red).
truce - cessation or absence of hostilities; peace + truth
booty - plunder, spoil, gain; a prize + beauty
oremus pro Romulo (l) - let us pray for Romulus
fane - a temple
pinnacle - a small ornamental turret, usually terminating in a pyramid or cone, crowning a buttress, or rising above the roof or coping of a building.
porter - a person whose employment is to carry burdens
aim - the act of aiming, or pointing the course of anything, the direction of a missile.
within an ace of - on the very point of, within a hair's breadth of + within an aim's ace (Anglo-Irish) - very near, almost (from Middle English ambs ace: double ace, lowest throw in dice).
quatrain - a set of four persons (nonce-use.); a stanza of four lines, usually with alternate rimes.
Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (Persian: رباعیات عمر خیام) - the title that Edward FitzGerald gave to his translation of a selection of poems, originally written in the Persian language and of which there are about a thousand, attributed to Omar Khayyám (1048–1123), a Persian poet, mathematician andastronomer. A Persian ruba'i is a two line stanza with two parts (or hemistechs) per line, hence the word "Rubaiyat", (derived from the Arabic root word for 4), meaning "quatrains".
arse - ass, buttocks; sexual intercourse + are + Rubaiyat, page 1 (Fitzgerald's translation): And if the Wine you drink, the Lip you press, / End in the Nothing all Things end in--Yes- / Then fancy while Thou art, Thou art but what / Thou shalt be--Nothing--Thou shalt not be less; (Literal): If with wine you are drunk be happy, / If seated with a moon-faced (beautiful), be happy, / Since the end purpose of the universe is nothing-ness; / Hence picture your nothing-ness, then while you are, be happy!
ROE'S DISTILLERY - Roe and Co, distillers, were at 157-159 Thomas Street; the premises are now incorporated in Guinness's Brewery. There seems to be no record of a major fire at Roe's.
jig jog - to bounce jerkily up and down in proceeding
dicebox - the box from which dice are thrown in gaming, usually of the form of a double truncated cone.
whang - a loud sharp vibrant or resonant sound; to attack vigorously, to strike or beat vigorously, to lash + Whang the Miller - character in 'The Citizen of the World' by Oliver Goldsmith.
royal - noble, splendid, first-rate. Also (chiefly U.S. colloq.) used as an intensifier.
bluid - blood + blyad' (Russian) - whore.
ooman - woman + 'Queen'
rouge - a fine red powder prepared from safflower, and used as a cosmetic to give an artificial colour to the cheeks or lips; the red colour in the game of rouge et noir (a game at cards, so called because the table at which it is played has two red and two black diamond-shaped marks, upon which the players place their stakes according to the colour they favour).
lock - a tress. In pl. often = the hair of the head collectively
rossy = rosy (a.) + rossy (Anglo-Irish/Hiberno-English) - impudent girl, brazen woman.
O'Mara, Joseph - Irish tenor, sang Tristan
villain - deficient in courtesy or good breeding, boorish + King William II of England was known as William Rufus due to his red face.
rufus - a countryman; a nickname for a red haired person.
spoil five - a round game of cards which is said to be 'spoiled' if no player wins three out of a possible five tricks + Matthew leads a red six, Mark plays a red queen, Luke plays a red king, but Johnny trumps it with the five of spades, the highest trump in spoil five.
spud - a digging or weeding implement of the spade-type + spade - ª
trump - a playing-card of that suit which for the time being ranks above the other three, so that any one such card can 'take' any card of another suit.
whack - a vigorous stroke with a stick or the like
kisser (Slang) - mouth
aisle - a passage-way in a building (esp. a theatre, cinema, etc.)
cruciform - of the form of a (right-angled) cross; cross-shaped
basium (l) - a kiss + basia (l) - kisses (of a passionate sort)
oscula = osculum - a kiss + Joyce's note: 'osculum (cheek)'.
overcarefully - excessively careful
to scrape away - to remove (an outer layer or something adhering) by drawing across the surface the edge of some instrument.
tenebrous - dark, mysterious, obscure
tunc (l) - than + Tunc page (Tunc cruciferant XPI cum eo duos latrones (l)) - Then were crucified CHRI with him two thieves (Mark 27:38): wording of the Tunc page of the Book of Kells + XPI[CTOC] = CHRI[STOS] (gr) - "Anointed": Christ + The Tunc page of the Book of Kells (Sullivan, The Book of Kells plate XI) is composed a serpentine capital T followed by UNCCR and a smaller U (top third), a line reading CIFIXERANT (centre quarter), and the words XPI CUM EO DU-OS LATRONES arranged in two triangles with apexes touching to form a Saint Andrew's Cross (bottom half).
Book of Kells - illuminated gospel book (MS. A.I. 6; Trinity College Library, Dublin) that is a masterpiece of the ornate Hiberno-Saxon style. It is probable that the illumination was begun in the late 8th century at the Irish monastery on the Scottish island of Iona and that after a Viking raid the book was taken to the monastery of Kells in County Meath, where it may have been completed in the early 9th century.
squad - a small number of men, a subdivision or section of a company, formed for drill or told off for some special purpose + On the Tunc page of The Book of Kells (Sullivan, The Book of Kells plate XI) there are three small rectangular panels cut into the margins, each containing the heads and shoulders of five figures in profile.
crucial - very important + cruciarius (l) - pertaining to the cross + Rosicrucians
panel - a distinct piece or portion of some surface usually contained in a frame or border.
column - a vertical line or square bracket in painting + The Book of Kells (also known as The Book of Columba: Saint Columba (7 December 521 - 9 June 597), sometimes referred to as Columba of Iona, or, in Old Irish, as Colm Cille or Columcille (meaning "Dove of the church")) + Sullivan, The Book of Kells 4: 'the famous Book of Kells, or as it is often called the Book of Colum Cille'.
chug - to move with a sound characteristic of a steam engine + choked
ballot box - a box in which voting ballots are deposited, or from which, in drawing lots, small balls are taken out.
set apart - to lay aside; to get rid of, to dismiss from one's consideration
hanging committee - a committee having charge of the managing of pictures in an exhibition.
degree awarded with distinction - acknowledgement of excellence awarded to candidates in some examination.
proverb Two's company, three's a crowd
labio - - the lips + lingua (l) - tongue + labiolingualis (l) - pertaining to the lips and tongue.
basium (l) - a (passionate) kiss
suavium (l) - a kiss + Joyce's note: 'basium (lips) suavium (tongue)'.
with tongue in one’s cheek - saying something that one does not seriously mean
embracer - one who embraces, one who adopts (a doctrine, religion, etc.)
droop - to hang or sink down + (notebook 1924): 'lines drooping ends' → Crépieux-Jamin, Les Éléments de l'Écriture des Canailles 185: 'The line begins to droop and droops more and more until the end of the letter'.
dwindle - to become smaller and smaller, to shrink + Joyce's note: 'droopadindle' ('a' not clear).
slope - upward or downward inclination; deviation from the horizontal or perpendicular.
Joyce's note: 'blarned'
scrawl - something scrawled; a hastily and badly written letter, a careless sketch.
imperfectible - incapable of being made perfect + Joyce's note: 'imperfectible' → Crépieux-Jamin: Les Éléments de l'Écriture des Canailles 271: 'handwriting specimens of a girl of 13, depraved enough to disturb all who come close to her. Her character is one of the worst and people bitterly complain of her laziness, her disobedience, her lies and her stubbornness, which make her appear incorrigible'
Joyce's note: 'morally blind *C*' → Crépieux-Jamin: Les Éléments de l'Écriture des Canailles 301: (after discussing physical blindness) 'Intellectual or moral blindness is no less essential to help us form our judgements of character'.