Good Morning Digital Neighbors & Friends!! Merry Christmas & Happy Thursday! Day 6 for you gift counters, gotta love all those geese! Remember John & Agnes, if you don't know their story of love internet search for it, there are G and R version of their correspondence. Off to more vocabulary building from the Little Book of Lost Words!
Honeyfuggle verb / huhn-ee-fuhg-uhl / Nineteenth century English dialect
To compliment or flatter someone to get something you want
Honeyfuggle - flattery, brown nosing, sycophancy, bootlicking, toadyism and the list goes on and on for describing manipulative behavior that most of find distasteful. Honeyfuggling seems much more innocent, but perhaps it is just the same. Not all flattering or complimentary behavior is malicious or manipulative, it seems to be one of the ways for primates to build bonds and establish trust. Since we are no longer among the sit and pick bugs off of our neighbors crowd, perhaps the used of honeyed words has replaced our attentive and loving bug picking.
A little flattery goes a long way, a lot of flattery is nauseating, except to the people who live for it. For those insecure and fragile souls {I know that sounds harsh} there is rarely enough flattery and compliments to keep them satiated. It seems an awful bane on humanity that until you discover your own self-worth, your path, purpose or gifts, no amount of flattery will help you until you mistake it as genuine instead of just polite flattery.
That mistake is costly, to believe your own press, to mistake flattery for anything more than politeness and kindness. Politeness and kindness are good things, bug picking and family fun time for higher primates. For those who fail to find their path/purpose/worth I guess flattery becomes a suitable substitute.
In the world of friendship & dating honeyfuggling maintains its more honest nature of the give and take of relationships. I would like to say innocent, but that is too loaded of a word and presumes intention. Honey fuggle - A little honey for a little fuggling. 🤔🤣 Better among friends & associates but toxic in business, politics and a host of other professions. Ask Wormtongue!! Merry Christmas and Happy Thursday friends!