Summary
HELL may have no fury like a woman scorned but a man seeking to protect his wallet runs her close. Alan Miller, a City fund manager, is appealing to the House of Lords against the award of Pounds 5 million to his ex-wife Melissa, describing his exinamorata as a "spendthrift termagant". The first half of this caustic phrase is simply defined, being a person who spends money in an extravagant manner.
A termagant, however, is a word of much more exotic origins. The current designation is of a scold, or shrewish woman, but it has achieved that precise pinnacle of meaning by a most circuitous route. Back in the early Middle Ages, the crusaders, profoundly ignorant of the ways of their enemies in the East, invented the Termagant, who was meant to be an Islamic god, a male deity in flowing robes. Since the crusaders and their opponents regarded each other as infidels, the Termagant was given to anger.See the full content of this document
Extract
And Incidentally
This ogre lived on in French (tervagaunt) and Italian (trivagante) folk tales. ...
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