Overbrinuning

I'm reading Anne of Green Gables for the first time in my life, and just a few pages into the first chapter I came across the word "overbrinuning." I have a pretty big vocabulary, but I'd never heard of overbrinuning. I assumed the proper word would be the verb "overbrinune." So I did what any red-blooded American does these days -- I Googled it.

Nothing. Google politely asked me if I'd misspelled it and did I really want the word "overbrining?"

I did not, thank you very much.

I wanted overbrinuning, as in "One could have eaten a meal off the ground without overbrinuning the proverbial peck of dirt."

I wrote to my good friend, Ruth, who has a degree in Library Science and who is a purveyor of fine used books. I knew she'd have an old dictionary that would contain what must obviously be the very arcane word "overbrinuning" (Anne of Green Gables was written over 100 years ago, after all). As I waited for her response, I eagerly anticipated learning a new nugget of trivial information from the past.

The reply I got was: must be a typo. A typo? In my $5.99 stock paperback copy that of course had been carefully proofread before printing? Ruth suggested that her own copy utilized the word.... "overbrimming."

I thought it over. Then I searched amazon.com for a version of A of GG where they allow you to read the first few pages as a preview. Sure enough -- "overbrimming" is the correct word.

It's still a strange and stilted turn of phrase, though: "One could have eaten a meal off the ground without overbrimming the proverbial peck of dirt." The old proverb to which Montgomery refers is meant to be a consolation for when one accidentally eats something dirty -- specifically, that the average person unknowingly ingests a peck (two dry gallons) of dirt in their lifetime. Montgomery was saying that Marilla Cuthbert was such a zealous housekeeper of Green Gables that, even if you ate directly off the ground, you wouldn't be adding to your lifetime's quota of a peck of dirt.

My house and the surrounding postage-stamp sized grounds are definitely not up to that standard of clean. In fact, if you ate off the ground in my yard, you would definitely be overbrinuning overbrimming the proverbial peck of dirt.

I wonder if I could hire Marilla Cuthbert?

- Catherine