Dahl, Roald. Danny, The Champion of the World. Bantam, 1975: 198 p.
I think I read this once when I was small, but I read it again recently. For research for fiction, strangely enough—one of my characters is a Dahl fan. Dahl’s one of those few children’s book authors who never sells the children in his stories short—they’re fully as capable as adults—while not making all of the adults completely hopeless, either.
Dandyprat: OED tells me this is not a word. Poking about the internet, however, leaves me with the impression that it’s used to mean “a small, scrawny, worthless and/or insignificant person.”
“‘Cheating is a repulsive habit practiced by guttersnipes and dandyprats!’” (107)
Old Man’s Beard: “vigorous deciduous climber of Europe to Afghanistan and Lebanon having panicles of fragrant green-white flowers in summer and autumn” or “any of various plants having parts suggestive of a beard, as Spanish moss.” Here’s the former type in the winter, when it’s in seed pod form.
(Which leads to me looking up “panicle” – “a branched cluster of flowers in which the branches are racemes” — and then “raceme” – “an inflorescence having stalked flowers arranged singly along an elongated unbranched axis, as in the lily of the valley.” English, I love you. Those words are almost as good as “dehiscence” – which, I’ve just learned, can be used not just for a seedpod splitting open, but for “a rupture or splitting open, as of a surgical wound, or of an organ or structure to discharge its contents.” Mm. Pus!)
“In the fall she would pick branches of leaves, and in the winter it was berries or old man’s beard.” (123).
