I came across two referemces to Nigeria recently. The first was from"Jacobson's Organ'
The second was a section found while going through an old notebook of essays that an ex-roommate from college, Akintunde Omitowoju, had written. The essay in question was titled 'The Engrained.'
'Jacobson's Organ and the Remarkable Nature of Smell' - Lyall Watson :
"People in different cultures don't necessarily share our traditional construct of there being five senses. [28] The Hausa of Nigeria divide the senses into two categories, with sight in one an everything else lumped together in the other. And in some Buddhist systems, mind is classified as the sixth sense. Even in the West, there is no real agreement about the number. Plato added senses of heat, cold, pleasure, discomfort, desire and fear to the list. Philo of Alexandria felt it was necessary to include a religious sense, one he called 'the Love of God'. And in early medieval Europe, speech was seen as a vital sense, a gift from God.
(28 - Classen, Constance, David Howes and Anthony Synott.
Aroma: The Cultural History of Smell. London: Routledge (1994))
'The Engrained' - Tunde Omitowoju
" . . . In Nigeria, there are three major languages/cultures: The Hausa, the Yoruba, and the Ibo. The Hausa people live mostlyu in the Northern parts of the country, the Yoruba (to which I belong) occupy mostly the Western, Mid-Western, and South Western parts of the country, while the Ibo occupy most of what of what is Mid-South adn Mid-South Eastern areas of the country. Where Nigeria boarders other countries, you get a mixture of both peoples from Nigeria and the country whcih she shares the boared with. "
pixilatedLed astray, as if by pixies; confused, bewildered. Also intoxicated.
-Mitford Mathews'
Dictionary of Americanisms, 1956
The Word
pixilated is an early American expression derived
from the word
pixies, meaning elves. They would say, "The
pixies have got him, " as we nowadays would say a man is
balmy. -
American Speech, 1936
To use the work in the sense of
crazy is not correct. A
Vermonter wouldnot hesitate to use crazy if that conveyed his
meaning. A pixilated man is one whose whimseys are not
understood by practical-minded people . . . More nearly a
synonym of 'whimsical.'
-Notes and Queries, Jan. 2, 1937
