The worship of the word must be pagan and polytheistic. It cannot endure one god. The Scots use blue brilliantly, for instance, and have their own term, blae, for gray blue, lead blue, and livid. The hedge-chanter is better known to them as the blue hafit, and if we pursue their names for the lumpsucker or sea owl, a fish of uncouth appearance, we come upon bluepaidle, or the even more common cockpaidle. The dictionary is as disturbing as the world, full of teasing parallels and misleading coincidence. The same fish is called a paddlecock on account of the tubercular skin which envelopes its dorsal ridge and which resembles the comb of that barnyard lord.
From William H. Gass’s On Being Blue.
Biblioklept 