I'm finally reading Gogol's Dead Souls in Russian, and a few pages into Chapter Four I encountered the following line (addressed by the cheerful scoundrel Nozdryov to the protagonist, Chichikov, who has just refused to join him because of pressing business):
— Ну вот уж и дело! уж и выдумал! Ах ты, Оподелдок Иванович!
Like much of Gogol's dialogue, this is more or less untranslatable, but the first two exclamations can be prosaically rendered "'Business'! You just made that up!" The last one, however, baffled me; word for word, it means "Oh you, Opodeldok Ivanovich!" Opodeldok was clearly not an actual Russian name, so I looked it up in my trusty Oxford dictionary (where it is listed under the more usual spelling оподельдок), and there it was—helpfully defined as "opodeldoc." I let out a bellow of rage at the perfidy of the lexicographers who had taken the easy way out, refusing to give the user the slightest actual help, requiring an additional trip to the OED. There I found:
opodeldoc, n.It's easy to see why this remarkable word caught on; its magniloquent pseudo-onomatopoeia was catnip to the linguistic sense of nineteenth-century America, with its love of sonorous rodomontade, and it seems to have been preserved in regional dialects until fairly recently (and perhaps survives to this day—anybody know?). At any rate, I'm glad to have discovered it, and I hope you will be too. If only I knew what the hell Gogol meant by "Opodeldok Ivanovich," my joy would be complete.Forms: 16 opodeldoch, oppodeltoch, 17-18 opodeldock, 17- opodeldoc, 18 opodeltoch; U.S. regional 18 appodell-dock, ophodelac, opodildoc, opydildock, 19- opadilldock, opedildoc, opedildock. [< post-classical Latin oppodeltoch (see quots. a1541), prob. coined by Paracelsus; perh. < ancient Greek opós vegetable juice (see OPIUM n.); for the ending, perh. cf. post-classical Latin nostoch NOSTOC ['A gelatinous mass consisting of filamentous colonies of cyanobacteria of the genus Nostoc... embedded in mucilage... The gelatinous mass was formerly believed to be an emanation of the stars: see star-jelly, etc'] n. Cf. French opodeldoch (dated 16th cent. in Robert Dict. Alphabétique et Analogique (1986); also as opodeltoch (1758)).
a1541 PARACELSUS Bertheonea (1603) 90 Descriptio oppodeltoch. {jup}. De quatuor seminibus incarnatiuis {ounce}f. Ceræ Colophoniæ ana {ounce}ij. Picis naualis {ounce}iij. Reduc in emplastrum. a1541 PARACELSUS Bertheonea (1603) 97 Descriptio oppodeltoch. {jup}. Colophoniæ lib.j. puluerum chelidoniæ, aranciarum ana {ounce}iiij. Visci de botin, quantum satis est ad incorporationem.]†1. A medical plaster. Obs.
1646 SIR T. BROWNE Pseud. Epidemica II. iii. 73 The Opodeldoch and Attractivum of Paracelsus. 1656 tr. Paracelsus' Dispens. 305 Now you must apply the Oppodeltoch Plaister. 1658 W. JOHNSON tr. F. Würtz Surgeons Guid II. vi. 62 In case the Wound doth not bleed.. lay a Headplaister to it, after the manner of an Opodeldoch. 1733 J. ALLEYNE New Eng. Dispensatory 353/1 Emplastrum Opodeldoc. 1857 R. G. MAYNE Expos. Lexicon Med. Sci. (1860), Opodeltoch, the name of a plaster.. referred to by Paracelsus.
2. An alcoholic solution of soap (or oleic acid) and camphor with some added essential oils; soap liniment; (also) a preparation made from this, esp. by mixing with laudanum; now arch. In extended use: (U.S. regional) any medicine; alcohol.
Steer's opodeldoc, a soap liniment composed of soap, camphor, oils of marjoram and rosemary, alcohol, and ammonia solution.
Opodeldoc appeared in the 1722 Edinburgh Pharmacopœia (Pharmacopœia Coll. Reg. Medicorum Edinburgensis 134) as Unguentum opodeldoch; in the 1744 ed. (Pharmacopoeia Coll. Reg. Medicorum Edinburgensis 121) it is called ‘Balsamum Saponaceum, vulgò Oppodeltoch’, and in 1745 the London Pharmacopoeia (Plan New London Pharmacopœia 113) entered it under Linimentum Saponaceum (cf. quot. 1996).
[1650 Chymical Dict. Paracelsus, Oppodeltoch in Paracelsus is an ointment.] 1733 G. CHEYNE Eng. Malady II. xii. 243 Warm and active Oils and Ointments, especially the Opodeldoc. 1746 SIR A. WESTCOMB in Mrs. Delany's Autobiogr. & Corr. II. 440 Tell my aunt that I use oil of earthworms with opodeldoc to endeavour to dispel the lump. 1774 ‘J. COLLIER’ Musical Trav. 19 He rubbed it with opodeldock or arquebusade water. 1826 SCOTT Jrnl. 25 Dec. (1939) 295 By dint of abstinence and opodeldoc I passed a better night. 1830 in M. H. Gardiner & A. H. Gardiner Chron. Old Berkeley (1938) 310 Bought 1 vial of appodell-dock at 25 cents. 1842 R. H. BARHAM Black Mousquetaire in Ingoldsby Legends, Her delicate fingers are charred With the Steer's opodeldoc, joint oil, and goulard. 1842 Invoice in Mississippi Valley Hist. Rev. (1950) 37 455, 2 phials Liquid ophodelac whitwell. 1851 J. J. HOOPER Widow Rugby's Husband 91 He axed me if I had enny opydildock in the wagin box, that he could rub his side with. 1857 T. HUGHES Tom Brown's School Days I. vi. 126 Leaving East better for those few words than all the opodeldoc in England would have made him. 1890 Chambers's Encycl. VI. 644 Soap Liniment, or Opodeldoc, the constituents of which are soap, camphor, and spirits of rosemary. 1904 ‘O. HENRY’ Heart of West 33 Rub the place between your shoulder-blades with opodeldoc the same as ever. 1913 C. JOHNSON Highways & Byways Great Lakes (new ed.) 77 They went to town last night and took a little too much opedildoc. c1965 in Dict. Amer. Regional Eng. (1996) III. 890/2 A long time ago my husband.. would say whenever he had to take any medicine.. ‘Wall, I will take a little opadilldock.’ 1996 Martindale: Extra Pharmacopoeia (ed. 31) 2287/2 Soap Liniment has sometimes been known as Lin. Sap. and Opodeldoc.
Now if you'll excuse me, I think I'll go rub some opodeldoc on my aching shoulder.
Posted by languagehat at December 31, 2004 03:12 PMDon Marquis uses it in an archy poem. See http://www.donmarquis.com/readingroom/archybooks/maxims.html.
Posted by: Dorothea Salo at December 31, 2004 04:23 PMthe old fashioned
grandmother who used
to wear steel rimmed
glasses and make
everybody take opodeldoc
has now got a new
set of ox glands and
is dancing the black bottom
Excellent! And that page has all manner of wonderful things, like:
prohibition makes you
want to cry
into your beer and
denies you the beer
to cry into
Don Marquis is always a good read. Thanks!
Posted by: language hat at December 31, 2004 05:10 PMFrom your own reference on the right (Dal')
Have you ever smell camphor oil? If you did, you'd never forget. I'd loosely - and very subjectively - interpret thus addressing as to somebody annoying, irritating, an unpleasant surprise - opodel'dok, in other words.
And now we interrupt our proggramme, wish you the best new year ever, and return to the spectacular table and Italian sparkling wine (I know, but it was my son's present)
Happy NY, everyone!
Posted by: Tatyana at December 31, 2004 10:53 PMLucky you -- I didn't even get sparkling wine! (I think it's the first time in my adult life I've seen in the new year without any bubbly -- but I did have a nice cabernet sauvignon with the beef Stroganov, so I can't complain.) Happy New Year to you too!
Posted by: language hat at January 1, 2005 10:43 AMMarvellous word! You may be interested to know that Gogol was not the only 19th century writer to have used it. I found this rather interesting article on Edgar Allan Poe's Literary Use of "Oppodeldoc" and Other Patent Medicines at the site of The Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore.
Posted by: Dave at January 1, 2005 05:36 PMIn the very first page of Hasek's Good Soldier Svejk (at least in the Finnish translation) it is told that Svejk applied Opodeldok ointment to his knees when his landlady Mrs Müller came to tell him the news that Ferdinand has been killed.
Isn't it reasonably clear that the intended meaning is something like "Oh, you Stick-in-the-mud Johnson!"?
Posted by: ACW at January 3, 2005 04:07 PMWell, sort of, but I'm not entirely clear how you get 'stick-in-the-mud' from opodeldoc. But then perhaps you'd have to ask a Russian of the 1830s, or even Gogol himself, to know for sure.
Posted by: language hat at January 3, 2005 05:10 PMI let out a bellow of rage at the perfidy of the lexicographers who had taken the easy way out, refusing to give the user the slightest actual help, requiring an additional trip to the OED.
Use Lingvo much? I use it for quick checks of words when I'm translating, and I become enraged every time I happen to paste in a perfective verb and the only thing listed in the entry is "pfv. of [imperfective form of the verb]".
As for New Years, I had champagne with a scoop of lime sherbet, which was a new one for me. ;-)
Posted by: Chris at January 4, 2005 12:33 AMHave you considered asking a native Russian speaker?
Not being one, I looked in my Academy Tol'kovj Slovar' and found not the word. Nor is it in the recent Kuznetsov, which goes from opoganit'sja to opodlet' which means "stat' podlim ili poldee."
Consider it a Russian malapropism. The character is misuing the word, using hifalutin speach.
Or a pun.
A number of native speakers read LH, including Tatyana, who guessed (above) that it referred to "somebody annoying, irritating, an unpleasant surprise." That's probably as close as we're going to come. As for dictionaries, the word is too out of date for the ones you're looking in; you need Dahl for this kind of thing.
Posted by: language hat at January 4, 2005 08:25 PMSee http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opodeldok
How about 'Old Man Ivanovich'.
It was a cure/relief for rheumatism.
Still in contemporary usage, sort of. See 'Der Dativ ist dem Genitiv sein Tod'. Chapter on 'Stop Making Sense'. Probably also available on the Zwiebelfisch web page.
Posted by: Carl at January 20, 2005 07:46 AMOpodeldok is mentioned in the Czech original of Hasek's Good Soldier Svejk (Osudy dobreho vojaka Svejka) as well. The name of the medicine is very well-known in the Czech republic (I'm Czech), not that is used in today's medical praxis;), but almost every Czech knows this passage (among other famous ones) from Sve
For me opodeldoc is a stinking substance of questionable character and effect.
Posted by: Adam at February 2, 2005 12:08 PM