The summer was a heavy beam spanning the middle of a large room ... and it served as an intermediate support for the floor joists of the story above .... Hugh Morrison, Early American Architecture, 1952
The cross beams were known as girders, summers or somers, and dormants: one of them carried the chimney, and so was called the "bressummer," that is the breast girder. C. F. Innocent, The Development of English Building Construction, 1916
Too many prefer the charge of insincerity to that of insipience—Dr. Newman seems not to be of that number. Charles Kingsley, What, Then, Does Dr. Newman Mean? 1864
It has to be frustrating to know that you're surrounded by intelligent, earnest individuals who are prone to moments of public insipience, usually when their fingers are on the voting button. Richard Hellmann, "Plenty of room for city bed tax," The Courier, May 27, 1987
If you don't mind I'll shog on! I've got to walk fast now, or Gerda will be worrying. John Cowper Powys, Wolf Solent, 1929
Then shog along homeward, chat over the fight / And hear in our dreams the sweet music all night. Charles Kingsley, "Go Hark!" 1856
In classical rhetoric, epiphonema is a term for an exclamation or reflection that strikingly sums up a previous passage or discourse—a kind of moral of the story. It comes via Latin epiphōnēma from Greek epiphṓnēma “a witty saying,” from epiphōneîn “to mention by name, call out, address,” composed of a prefixal use of the preposition epí “upon, on” and phōneîn “to make a sound.” Phōneîn is derived from phonḗ “sound, tone, voice,” ultimately seen in a variety of English words, such as Anglophone, microphone, phonetics, phonology, polyphony, and (tele)phone. Oh, what euphonious words derive from ancient Greek!
To round off his argument, Montaigne reaches for an epiphonema ... "Oh, what a sweet and soft and healthy pillow is ignorance and incuriosity, to rest a well-made head!" Kathy Eden, "Cicero's Portion of Montaigne's Acclaim," Brill's Companion to the Reception of Cicero, 2015
When the Great Teacher wished to recall or rouse attention he employed an epiphonema, saying, "He that hath ears to hear, let him hear," "Verily, verily, I say unto you," "Hearken unto me every one of you." George Winfred Hervey, A System of Christian Rhetoric, for the Use of Preachers and Other Speakers, 1873
The caterpillars of the commonwealth, / Which I have sworn to weed and pluck away. William Shakespeare, Richard II, 1623
By dismissing the Hanoverians ... we shall only send away the caterpillars which devour our victuals ... Statement of the Earl of Chesterfield, January 31, 1744, The Parliamentary History of England, Vol. 13, 1812
In terms of art, Dada could be said to have had the most wide-ranging post-war impact, a fact which is paradoxical given Dada's anti-art inclinations. David Hopkins, Dada and Surrealism: A Very Short Introduction, 2004
... Scramsfield had manufactured enough Dada poetry to fill up the rest of the magazine by copying out random sections of a boiler repair manual into irregular stanzas, knowing that this should be sufficiently confusing to satisfy his patron ... Ned Beauman, The Teleportation Accident, 2012
... in the raspberry the separate fruitlets are all crowded close together into a single united mass, while in the strawberry they are scattered about loosely, and embedded in the soft flesh of the receptacle. Grant Allen, The Evolutionist at Large, 1881
... the eyes, or diamond fruitlets, on the surface have soft or smooth tips. Mimi Sheraton, "A Guide to Choosing a Ripe Pineapple," New York Times, April 21, 1982