capernosity

English

Etymology

Coined by Brendan Behan, using the learned suffix -osity. Augustine Martin suggests Blend of capability +‎ generosity. Barry Baldwin suggests a link with Scots capernoity (“befuddled”) or Latin caper (“goat”).

Noun

capernosity (uncountable)

1. (humorous, literary, Ireland) The meaning of this term is uncertain. Possibilities include:
   • 1953 Easter, Brendan Behan, "The Confirmation Suit"; in The Standard p.5; reprinted in Brendan Behan's Island; An Irish Sketchbook, Hutchinson, (London), 1962, page 148:

     Besides, my grandmother, who lived at the top of the next house, was a lady of capernosity and function. She had money and lay in bed all day, drinking porter or malt, and taking pinches of snuff, and talking to the neighbours that would call up to tell her the news of the day.

   • 1955 June 4, Brendan Behan, "It's Torca Hill for beauty" The Irish Press, reprinted in Hold your hour and have another (1963), pages 142-3:

     [...] in Howth they have a paper of their own, in which is reported the wedding of a girl from the Hill. The affair was carried out with function and capernosity, by all accounts [...]

   • 1955 September 3, Brendan Behan, "Nuts from the Crimean War" The Irish Press, reprinted in Hold your hour and have another (1963) page 70:

     Myself and my brothers joined in this [singing], with function and capernosity, as true little Republicans [...]

   • 1965, Brendan Behan, Confessions of an Irish Rebel, Lancer, New York, page 60:

     I would have liked to have helped him for he was a good skin and I knew his mother and father, brothers and sisters as well as I knew my own, and we fought the same battles together, on the playground and elsewhere, with great function and capernosity.

   • 1990 January 31, Michael Noonan, “Financial Resolutions, 1990. - Financial Statement, Budget, 1990”, in Dáil Éireann Debates:

     It is bad enough to listen to his putative successor and having serious doubts about him ... but to listen to a pretender from the Opposition benches must be frightful on the Taoiseach. [...] A man of his “capernosity” and function must be horrified to have to put up with me.

   • 1991, Sydney Bernard Smith, Flannery, Brandon, published 2004, →ISBN, page 47:

     I knew if ever I was underneath I'd get it from you — it's the red hair and the awkward loins gúngaire they called us at home, the man with the flange in his hips but by the ghost of Mick Collins there's more function about me than capernosity!

   • 2004, Bryan MacMahon, Hero Town, page 137:

     Full of capernosity and function at 6 p.m. Homeless at 8 p.m. And no insurance.

   • 2008, Tom MacIntyre, Find the Lady, page 18:

     Ragged embers, horn of an anvil, hovering bellows, a tongs of function and capernosity.

   • 2017, Neil Jordan, Carnivalesque‎^[1], Bloomsbury USA, →ISBN, page 166:

     'And other forms of complaint more pernicious—'
     'Deleterious—'
     'More capricious—'
     'Meretricious—'
     'And if not done with capernosity and function, is it worth doing at all?'

   1. capability and generosity
   2. competence, flair
   3. peevishness, ill temper

Usage notes

Used, by and in allusion to Brendan Behan, in collocation with function.