1. Gardening marked by an affected and elaborate style.2. Affected use of archaic language.
[From the line "A garden is a lovesome thing, God wot!" in a poem by Thomas Edward Brown (1830-1897).]
Now here is a word with a dual personality. Poet T.E. Brown unwittingly helped coin it when he wrote a poem describing his garden filled with all that came to his mind: grotto, pool, ferns, roses, fish, and more.
And when he needed a word to rhyme with the line "Rose plot," he came up with "God wot!" He used "wot", an archaic term that's a variant of wit (to know), to mean "God knows!" and it stood out among other contemporary words in the poem.
If you wish to create your own godwottery, we recommend: sundials, gnomes, fairies, plastic sculptures, fake rockery, pump-driven streams, and wrought-iron furniture. A pair of pink flamingos will round it out nicely.
-Anu Garg
"And an important thing about all this godwottery -- as Anthony Burgess calls it -- is that all types and classes embrace it." Paul Fussell; The Great War and Modern Memory; Oxford University Press; 2000.
This week's theme: words about words.
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http://wordsmith.org/words/godwottery.html