 Welcome to the Endless None. Today's words are kenspeckel, bow, and bendisand. Writing of the meter of ancient Greek epic poetry, 19th century essayist Thomas de Quincey, most known for his first-hand account of addiction, Confessions of an English Opium Eater, wrote, the Homeric meter is certainly kenspec, to use a good old English word, that is to say, recognizable. His word kenspec, possibly from a Scandinavian source such as Old Norse kenspeckey, meaning power of recognition, now a Scottish and Northern English dialect word, may not be as recognizable as Quincey imagined his topic was. It's first recorded in the writings of keen huntsman Sir Thomas Cacain. The most bucks have some kenspec mark to know them by upon their heads. The suffix form kenspeckel, also meaning recognizable, was first used in print by 18th century playwright Susanna St. Lever in her play The Wonder, A Woman Keeps a Secret. Good troth, she's nake and speckle, she's all in a cloud. An earlier play by St. Lever called The Bow's Duel, or Soldier for the Ladies, tells the story of the aptly named Mrs. Plotwell, who disguises herself to trick the father of young Clarinda into marrying his daughter to Plotwell's lover, Colonel Manley. Bow in the title means phop, something of a stock character in such plots. A bow catcher is a curl of hair in front of the ear that a woman might adorn herself with to, I suppose, attract a bow. And a bow trap, according to Francis Gross's 1811 dictionary of the vulgar tongue, is a loose stone in a pavement under which water lodges and, on being trod upon, squirts it up to the great damage of white stockings. Also, a sharper, neatly dressed, lying in wait for a raw country squire or ignorant phops. A play by St. Lever's earlier contemporary, George Farquhar, called The Bow's Stratagem, tells the story of two phoppish rakes who scheme to marry rich country women. In this context, Farquhar is the first to use in print the adjective bedisand, meaning dressed up with vulgar finery. I took him for a captain he's so bedisand with lace. So, to use our words for the day in a sentence, a flashily bedisand man is Ken Speckle as a phoppish bow, as I'm sure you'll now easily recognize. Thanks for watching!