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“A unicursal bicircular quartic” says my weary old dictionary.  I cannot understand what this has to do with bicycling and suspect that Shade’s phrase has no real meaning.  As other poets before him, he seems to have fallen here under the spell of misleading euphony.

 

To take a striking example:  what can be more resounding, more resplendent, more suggestive of choral and sculptured beauty, than the word coramen?  In reality, however, it merely denotes the rude strap with which a Zemblan herdsman attaches his humble provisions and ragged blanket to the meekest of his cows when driving them up to the vebodar (upland pastures).

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