BARBOLA WORK ballot

[eLLioTT morEton]

Fictioneers!

Here, for your delectation, are eleven definitions of "barbola work". 
Only one of them is real.  You have a two-point vote and a one-point vote 
to bestow.  The ball is round.  The game lasts ... until ... let's say, 
Wednesday the 18th, at 5 p.m. EST.

As announced previously, ties will be broken in favor of definitions which 
attract poetry, ad-hoc awards, etc.

Uddn uddn!
em

__________________________________________________________________________
barbola work (n.) -- A type of tile arrangement used by the Romans in 
their baths. There was often much decoration using colored tiles and 
fragments, plus swirled patterns.  Barbola was originally a slave captured 
off the coast of Sicily, who found favor with Augustus Caesar for his 
splendid craft.

barbola work (n.) -- (colloq.)  A complicated task, "harder than 
untangling a wet beard".

barbola work (n.) -- Minor tasks assigned to new workers on a ranch, to 
give the animals a chance to gradually become accustomed to their smell.

barbola work (n.) -- Decorative work composed chiefly of flowers and fruit 
modelled in a plastic paste and colored, used to embellish small articles 
of wood, glass, pulp, etc.

barbola work (n.) -- In Jacobean and Restoration drama, interludes of 
flowery and witty but inessential conversation, introduced to lengthen a 
play and, often, to allow an older work to be republished and re-presented 
as a new production.

barbola work (n.) -- (metallurgy) - A surface hardening technique in which 
numerous small protrusions are repeatedly extruded from the surface of the 
piece and flattened out again.  See also "shot peening".

barbola work (n.) -- (obs.) Work performed by an inmate of a debtor's 
prison that does not accrue to the indebtedness, work performed by an 
indentured servant that does not reduce the indenture; substinence work.

barbola work (n.) -- (boxing term, after heavyweight Emilio Barbola) to 
knock out an opponent's teeth in the boxing ring.

barbola work (n.) -- Art done with a kind of enamel that forms bubbles as 
it dries.

barbola work (n.) -- A "cush job", involving a high salary and 
little-to-no expenditure of energy.

barbola work (n.) -- In the garment trade, decorative stitching on the 
rear pockets of a pair of pants, esp. blue jeans.  From Barbola S.p.A., an 
Italian manufacturer of automated embroidery machines from 1968 to 1973. 
Also used by industrial garment workers to refer disparagingly to 
less-demanding jobs in the factory.