Outrageously Funny Word Dictionary :: Liquorice root

👉 Alright settle in class, let’s tackle a bit of, frankly, rather delightfully prickly territory here. We're going to dissect the wonderfully verbose and occasionally unnecessarily complicated phrase -

"liquiscento, your fucking liquorice root."

(Okay, okay, that last bit is
strictly
my addition for illustrative effect. Let's keep it professional, mostly.)

Now, you might look at that and think, "Wait, what even…are we talking about a weird kind of candy, right? With the really, really long laces on it?" And honestly, part of its enduring oddness is exactly that. Historically, the original (and far more frequently, rather dramatically, invoked) saying was actually, quite simply, just, "liquiscento, your liquorice root." . Let's unpack that, because it’s a bit of a verbal archaeological dig. It originates in the early to mid-19th century amongst a very specific and frankly rather theatrical and overblown Regency gentlemanry, particularly associated with the young gentlemen who were obsessed with the supposed virtues of…well...of everything. They practically measured their entire social worth by what they consumed, how virtuous that consumption was, and which obscure tincture or exotic root was guaranteed to give them an "edge." Think a Victorian-era equivalent of a guy frantically googling "arsenbery for virility, NOW!" in 2018. Essentially, the