Mysteries of vernacular: Gorgeous - Jessica Oreck and Rachael Teel
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From whirlpools and ravines to superlative beauty, what is the
trajectory of the word gorgeous? Jessica Oreck and Rachael Teel reveal
the surprising variations in meaning (and what turtleneck-like fashion
has to do with it).
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A wimple is a garment worn around the neck and chin, which usually covers the head. Its use developed among women in early medieval Europe. At many stages of medieval culture it was unseemly for a married woman to show her hair. A wimple might be elaborately starched, creased, and folded in prescribed ways, even supported on wire or wicker framing (cornette).Gorgeous is beautiful on a mild dose of prescription speed. Gorgeous's eyes are a little wider, the curves a little more pronounced, the skin a little more even, the hair a hint more lustrous. It is more difficult to quibble with gorgeous, with a code still broad enough to let in a variety (though anything but garden-variety) but its fences a bit more structured, perhaps a bit higher. Gorgeous can be cultivated, painted on, but not merely approximated. It's easy enough to approximate pretty, or the bombshell, or hot, but gorgeous? From afar, I wish you luck.Beauty is a characteristic of a person, animal, place, object, or idea that provides a perceptual experience of pleasure or satisfaction. Beauty is studied as part of aesthetics, sociology, social psychology, and culture. An "ideal beauty" is an entity which is admired, or possesses features widely attributed to beauty in a particular culture, for perfection.

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...its French ancestor gorgias had described an article of clothing worn only by commoners?
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