Words: scrolloping, adj. or v.

THE HON Vera Benedicata never knew that she would appear in a dictionary. She was described in Virginia Woolf's 1923 diary as detesting "the scrolloping honours of the great, calls her family dull and stupid". Apparently Mrs Woolf's word - a lolloping, florid ornament - she plugged it in The New Dress, Orlando ("cucumbers came scrolloping across the garden to his feet") and The Waves.

Unrecorded, however, is its appearance in an 1893 letter by Edward Fitzgerald, translator of Omar Khay-ym: "I somehow detest my own scrolloping surname." This was published after Mrs Woolf's death, but oral use across the Victorian intellectual aristocracy is more than possible, and its use should be more frequent. Heaven knows, there's reason enough.