I don't feel any particular obligation to answer this question, which is, at face value, a little obnoxious. Does it bother you that I maintain a list of the word- and language-related books that I own, and that I might periodically update this list?
If I choose to add a comment that links to a review of the book in question at some later point, should I be expected to "justify" that as well?
This list is useful to me. I find your question to be out of line, though I'm sure you didn't mean to give offense.
I have the same difficulty. In addition, the ability to view whole swaths of content that were previously accessible has now been taken away. To mention just one example, I can no longer read back through the list of comments that have been left on my profile.
Over the last six weeks, the most basic functions on the site -- creating lists and adding words to them -- have undergone a significant deterioration. At times it's altogether impossible to add words; if it is possible, the response time has slowed to a glacial pace, so that there is little incentive to add new words.
Then, as other users have already remarked, the ability to contribute to, or benefit from, what used to be a fairly lively discussion among the site's most committed members has continued to diminish, to the point of being close to impossible at this point. I have no idea whether or not this is the result of a deliberate effort by the site administrators to shut down what they seem to regard as commentary that is extraneous to the site's overall mission. This is partly because I no longer understand what that mission might be. But it's hard to avoid the impression that user comments are no longer valued, given that almost every one of the recent changes has made it harder, not easier, to conduct any kind of meaningful exchange.
Even the utility of the site as a reference resource has deteriorated since the change from Wordie -- useful links that were previously immediately accessible have been hidden or taken away altogether.
It's all just a tiny bit soul-crushing, to be honest.
I have always believed that Daingean Uí Chúis was the proper designation for the capital of Kerry. The link suggests that the current name is actually An Daingean. Also, that not everybody is happy about it.
The most concise word to describe the relationship between Siegmund and Sieglinde in Wagner's Ring Cycle. The offspring of their incestuous coupling is the "hero" Siegfried, who is - perhaps not surprisingly - stupid to a degree that borders on mental retardation.
Of course, the only "hero" in the entire cycle is Bruennhilde, and not just because of the vocal pyrotechnics that her role demands.
By alluding to your extensive learning, I was paying you a compliment
Pretty words, which might be considered extenuating, if they were true . But it is a simple matter to check their patent falsity. They butter no parsnips with me.
Yes. What mollusque wrote is a more precise description of the issue, and what I should have written in the first place. It's an HTML implementation issue, not one of access.
Foxy-Loxy got into a bit of Argy-Bargy with the riff-raff down at the Chilly-Willy skating rink. The upshot is that he had to spend the night dixie-fixie down at the stationhouse.
Any reasonable person must still have some doubt about this word, as all occurrences on the web of the "definition" given below seem to be traceable to the Grandiloquent Dictionary as the only source. It is a valid word in Scots Gaelic, where it can mean anything from a trip to a stroll to a scratch or scrape.
Wiktionary suggests that duais-scriob, meaning 'sweepstakes' comes from the word duais, a prize, and scriob meaning 'to sweep'.
Finally, someone called "muckefuck" over somewhere else on the web suggests, citing a reference called Dwelly:
There is a Scots-Gaelic word sgrìob which has the basic meaning of "scratch", but can also refer to "Itching of the lip, superstitiously supposed to portend a kiss (sgrìob-pòige), or sgrìob-dìghe (or sgrìob-drama), a dram." So the full expression should be sgrìob-dìghe ("drink-itch") or sgrìob-drama ("dram-itch").
Erin: Thanks for the clarification about using the reverse dictionary. It comes back to me that I used to use the Onelook RD feature in much the same way -- when I couldn't think of the exact word I needed in a pretty well-defined category.
Reynard is back on U.S. soil. Enjoying a day in YOUR NATION'S CAPITAL before heading back to San Francisco for WAGNER WEEK. (Eine ganze Woche vollgestopft mit Wotan, Walkueren, und anderem wagnerischen Ungeziefer)
Not that I'm a fan of Strunk and White, the Tweedledum and Tweedledee of eccentric prescriptivism, but their thoughts on reviewerspeak are worth quoting:
The world of criticism has a modest pouch of special words (luminous, taut), whose only virtue is that they are exceptionally nimble and can escape from the garden of meaning over the wall. Of these critical words, Wolcott Gibbs once wrote: '...they are detached from the language and inflated like little balloons.' The young writer should learn to spot them -- words that at first glance seem freighted with delicious meaning but that soon burst in air, leaving nothing but a memory of bright sound.
Putting my weakest books to the wall last night I came across a copy of 'Howards End' and had a look into it. Not good enough. E.M. Forster never gets any further than warming the teapot. He's a rare fine hand at that. Feel this teapot. Is it not beautifully warm? Yes, but there ain't going to be no tea.
And I can never be perfectly certain whether Helen was got with child by Leonard Bast or by his fatal forgotten umbrella. All things considered, I think it must have been the umbrella.
I don’t think Robert Browning was very good in bed. His wife probably didn’t care for him very much. He snored and had fantasies about twelve-year-old girls.
I grow bored in France — and the main reason is that everybody here resembles Voltaire…the king of nincompoops, the prince of the superficial, the anti-artist, the spokesman of janitresses, the Father Gigone of the editors of Siecle.
Miss Austen’s novels . . . seem to me vulgar in tone, sterile in artistic invention, imprisoned in the wretched conventions of English society, without genius, wit, or knowledge of the world. Never was life so pinched and narrow. The one problem in the mind of the writer . . . is marriageableness.
Reading Don Quixote can be compared to an indefinite visit from your most impossible senior relative, with all his pranks, dirty habits, unstoppable reminiscences, and terrible cronies. When the experience is over, and the old boy checks out at last (on page 846 — the prose wedged tight, with no breaks for dialogue), you will shed tears all right; not tears of relief or regret but tears of pride. You made it, despite all that ‘Don Quixote’ could do.
Here are Johnny Keats’ piss-a-bed poetry, and three novels by God knows whom… No more Keats, I entreat: flay him alive; if some of you don’t I must skin him myself: there is no bearing the drivelling idiotism of the Mankin.
Thanks, zeke. That's very encouraging news. And please know that some of the new features look very promising, and are appreciated. And when we whine, it is out of misplaced zeal. Because we love wordnik. (At least I do).
So ruzuzu can have her tweets, and yarb & I can live in an impoverished tweet-free world. yeah!
I think I've probably said enough about the vile tweets. But for the record, I'm with yarb. Not a fan of the images either. If I were looking for images, I'd go to google image, or to Flickr. (If I were looking for tweets, I could, Lord knows, subscribe to Twitter). When I come to Wordnik, I'm not really looking for either.
On a more positive note, I am very much enjoying the 'hypernyms' and 'words used in a similar context' features. Still not so sure about the 'reverse dictionary' -- it seems as if it should be useful, but I'm not sure I understand how.
You know, the lower case 'b's don't look too hot either in that font.
dontcry: You can expand the comment box, you just have to go to the bottom right hand corner and drag diagonally. It's just a pain in the butt to have to keep doing it.
Excuse me, 'zuzu, but I beg to differ. Your argument is akin to saying "having bowel cancer isn't really all that bad, because at least the cancerous lesions aren't visible". The remainder of your argument is, of course, obviously facetious.
Wonders what the hell is wrong with the lower case t in the font used in the text describing my list...
Thank you!! I was beginning to think I was the only one bothered by this.
In some other manifestation of the new interface, the lowercase 'g's are buggy too. And why isn't this comment box expanding automatically - I have to go drag on the corner myself. Sigh.
The "blockquote" html code appears not to have worked just now, assuming I invoked it correctly, which I think I did. Sigh.
on edit: the blockquote shows up properly on the main Community pageview, just not on this particular page.
Dostoevsky’s lack of taste, his monotonous dealings with persons suffering with pre-Freudian complexes, the way he has of wallowing in the tragic misadventures of human dignity — all this is difficult to admire.
I agree with bilby's earlier comment, that the Feedback page is quite difficult for an uninitiated user to find. Come to think of it, I pretty much agree with all of bilby's recent comments about the new interface. (This worries me, at some level.)
It's hard to avoid the conclusion that development of the new interface was done in a way that didn't give high priority to the wishes of the users. This is a bit disappointing, as one would hope that the administrators of a site as wonderful as this one might have learned that failure to take adequate account of a site's most faithful users' wishes is never a good idea.
I wish I weren't quite so negative about this change. But every time I look at the ridiculous tweets on, for instance, the page for ATM machine, I just get irritated all over again.
I'm writing separate comments here, as some are technical glitches and some, like this one, are more along the lines of an emotional/aesthetic reaction to the new interface. I think I understand the thinking behind mixing everything out there related to a given word on the same page, and some of the new features, such as synonyms and related words, seem undeniably useful. However, the same cannot really be said for the "examples", and the "tweets" not only add no value, they take up valuable space, and tend in general to be illiterate, often obscene, mindless and incredibly annoying.
To me, the most interesting content related to a given word or expression has always been the comments of regular users of the site -- what one saw in the old system if one hit the "Comments" button. If possible, I think it would be highly desirable to reinstate the ability to view only the content of one's choice, whether it be comments, definitions, images, or even - God forbid - tweets. With the current display, which tries to include everything, the interesting material is drowned out by "content" that is often worse than useless.
Thanks. I do appreciate all the work it must have taken to smarten up the interface. Obviously, this is just my reaction - I have no way of knowing how other regular users feel about the changes.
There are aspects of the new interface that still require some working out. For instance, in the page that now constitutes the main viewing page for any given word or expression, I am invited to add the word in question to any of my most recent lists, or if that is insufficient, "to view all of my 50 lists". But I have more than 50 lists. It's not that I can't get at them; they are accessible from my profile page. But it used to be a simple matter to add words to any list; now, if that list is not among one's most recent 50 lists, it is distinctly more difficult.
Apparently the designers of the new interface think I enjoy reading illiterate, obscene, xenophobic tweets about as much as I enjoy reading comments from other Wordnik users. This is not the case.
Please do not put user comments and tweets on the same page. It is not an improvement. Perhaps the thought might have crossed your minds that some of us log into Wordnik as a way of getting away from the drivel that permeates the rest of the web. Now you're forcing us to look at the drivel anyway.
Once again, Doctor Jamieson leads us straight down the lexicological garden path into the filthy bog at the end, like the malign etymological will-o-the-wisp that he is. Is there no end to this demon's twisted fiendish malevolence?
hauf and snake has two distinct meanings in the lowlands dialect:
1. a variant of "haufin' snake" (sample usage - "When that young feyboy Billy Elliott was out there prancing around in them tights o' his, sure there was a line of wee lassies strainin' their necks just to get a glimpse of his haufin' snake").
2. a variant spelling of "hoff and sneak", meaning to scoff and run, or leave an eating establishment without paying the bill.
Would it be possible to do some kind of dynamic linking between Doctor Jamieson and the medical dictionary you are apparently currently browsing. For instance, it would be really fun to hear Doctor Jamieson's words for pyemesis and omphalorrhea? Or ... ponders ... maybe we could just make them up ourselves.
dotheboys, as in Dotheboys Hall is a near-miss for this list, I fear. Not sure about do-nothing, as in Truman's "do-nothing congress". The German word for nitrogen, Stickstoff, (chokestuff, or chokematerial) would be a nice addition, if foreign words were accepted. Actually, scratch that last one, as 'stuff' is not a direct object in the term.
It is simply impossible to "grow a pair" at the sudden and vociferous behest of others.
This seems like an unassailable proposition. One could, however, make the superficially plausible case that a truly vociferous behest might have some effect on the cremaster muscle, resulting in the rapid descent of "a pair", which might be confused with "growing" a pair. This is not the case. Further investigation reveals that the resulting cremasteric response is more likely to be one of contraction:
Contraction can also occur during moments of extreme fear, possibly to help avoid injuring the testes while dealing with a fight or flight situation.
Where's Matthew Barney when you need him?
The final sentence of hh's comment is frankly baffling. Speaking personally, I have never been tempted to confuse neutropenia and anorchism.
Hmmm. Bridge trolls can be annoying, as can obtuse bridge players. But they don't fit on this list. But, since I'm in France, where anal insertion is the preferred mode of drug delivery, maybe I can add suppositories. Yes, that's the ticket!
Doctor J. was clearly a little fifish when he wrote this "definition". Other terms come to mind, but their grossness precludes their inclusion here, on a fambly website.
'zuzu: I'm sorry to hear about your grandmother's death. Your last comment below reminded me of this wonderful poem I came across, shortly after my own mother had died of cancer. I think the link below should still work (it's to a Word document, with the text of the poem, on my website). Mary Jo Salter, the author, is one of my favorite American poets (her husband, Brad Leithauser, is also a poet, and a fiction writer). I hope that the link works, and that you like the poem. It was first published in "The New Republic", probably around 1986.
The Santa Fox assures me, his Parisian representative, that he is honored to be on this list. Indeed, he is deeply honored. He is currently a wee bit exhausted, having spent far too much of the night out dancing with the sweet tooth fairies, and some of their less reputable brethren.
By an amazing twist of fate, tomorrow and Tuesday turn out to be two of the four days a year that the Santa Fox sets aside for such "old media" activities as "sending postcards to friends". By today's loose definition of "friend"ship, pretty much everyone on Wordnik is my friend and eligible to receive a lovely postcard from Paris. Some of you even met the older, more demanding, criteria for friendship, in my humble opinion. You know who you are.
Anyway, if anyone wants to receive a lovely Paris postcard from the Santa Fox (which could be worth millions to your children after his demise), all that is required is to send him the necessary information* care of my e-mail address on gmail. This takes the form myfirstnamemymiddleinitialmylastname followed by the usual gmaildotcom ending. My middle name is Michael.
*: this would be your name, your address, and whether or not you would like your lovely postcard to include the Eiffel Tower. Feel free to send me a private message on Facebook with the information, if you prefer, but given Facebook's general laxness about privacy, gmail might be the better option.
How true, how true! And many of them carry that distinctive cabbagey smell around with them for ever. That's why we always keep a landscape goat grazing in our yard, to remain vigilant at all times.
or possibly, "Sir Galahad a little lambskin condom on when he rescued the Hoover damsel in distress"; though I think that constitutes more of a stream-of-consciousness fairy.
The 19th century French painter Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres's well-known passion for playing the violin gave to the French language a colloquialism, "violon d'Ingres", meaning a second skill beyond the one by which a person is mainly known. The American avant-garde artist Man Ray used this expression as the title of a famous photograph portraying Alice Prin (aka Kiki de Montparnasse) in the pose of the Valpinçon Bather.
I think there's sufficient overlap between Scythia and the former U.S.S.R. to support the notion of the barometz falling into the Slav sphere of influence.
*Hears munching sound in the background. Looks around nervously.*
Raoulia is a genus of flowering alpine plants in the daisy family that exhibit very fine and dense growths. These compact growths form large amorphous cushion-like masses with only the growing tips visible. Due to their shape and form, the plant clusters resembles sheep from afar, this giving them their alternate name, vegetable sheep.
From pickle switches to cornballs to cucumber in condoms, there seems to be an over-representation of vegetables on the 'most-commented' list. It's a veritable cornucopia of veggie goodness, I tell you.
Glad you enjoyed it, rolig. I got to visit the Hermitage in the summer of 1978 -- it is indeed a special place. At the time, only some fantastically low percentage of the paintings they had were on display (something like 5 to 10%); I wonder if that has changed now, or what their rotation schedule might be.
Surely this is a typo for 'heatshed cuke'; though where I live we call heatsheds 'greenhouses'.
If beets are so goddamned dignified, why do they blush constantly like giggling hormonal teenagers? Plus, have you ever read "The Beet Queen"? A book chocked to its little bookish gills with lascivious behavior.
My money is on the kohlrabi, because men of the Torah are always dignified, even those who work in kohlmines.
Dear God. Whatever could this be? Wikipedia to the rescue:
It is characterised by nausea and vomiting exacerbated by the sight or smell of food and, unlike the usual gastro-intestinal infections, by constipation rather than diarrhoea. Fever and myalgia are also symptoms. Severe cases develop inanition and even death.
It is postulated that the disease is due to ingestion of cyanobacterial (blue-green algal) toxins, in particular cylindrospermopsin, a toxin from Cylindrospermopsis raciborskii and other cyanobacteria, which is a hepatotoxin.
Inanition: not a good thing, apparently. Also, apparently only Australians get barcoo disease.
bilby, are you there? Not feeling any symptoms of inanition, I hope?
This opens a whole Pandora's box of questions, not the least of which is "Which vegetable is most dignified?". And is this ranking invariant, or does it change with the times? Vegetable popularity does - witness the recent Irish infatuation with mangetout, which duly ran its course, only to be replaced by rocket lettuce, aka arugula.
The victim asked, "Why are you carrying a weasel?" Police said the attacker answered, "It's not a weasel, it's a marten," then punched him in the nose and fled.
Speaking of cranberries, they seem to me to be the DSK of the orchard. One imagines the scenes of dismay down in Fruitville when the cranberries move into the neighborhood, with each of the other fruits nervously anticipating the inevitable rape scenario under which they will be forced to submit to the voracious sexual appetites of some marauding band of cranberries, to produce, in due course, some appalling bastard hybrid, the juice of which will inevitably end up taking up space on our supermarket shelves.
Ask any apple or raisin. They can tell you what it's like. Grapes and peaches too. It's like post-war Berlin down in the fruit groves, I tell you. Nobody is safe from the rapacious cranberry clan.
This hurts my eyes, and gives me a vile earworm of someone closely resembling the Church Lady enunciating this heinous blot on the linguistic landscape with mincing smugness.
I am not a person who favors the outlawing of any form of speech, but if I were, this would be top of my list. Right up there with cremains.
Don't miss the final 20 seconds of the 3-minute video, as the soul of Siegfried, decked out in his best ABBA outfit, crawls up the Venetian blinds like a cancerous moth ! No wonder the producer was roundly booed when he appeared on stage at the end.
I know that bilbies can be a little annoying at times, but boiling them seems a little excessive.
*Wonders if the downunda version of "Fatal Attraction" was modified to have Glenn (Sheila) Close boil a bilby instead of a bunny. After all, bunnies are considered a nuisance down there, so boiling a bunny would be considered a public service*
Speaking of literary phrases, some possibilities might be "madding crowd", "budding grove", "darkling plain". But these strike me as being a bit too literary to be considered of general interest. Besides which, open up the list in that way, next thing you know, half of Shakespeare will have elbowed its way in.
Even after bouncing around over on Wiktionary, I'm not entirely sure I understand this term correctly. There is a lack of examples. Would writing "coff" for "cough" be considered an example of "eye dialect".
*Coffs nervously, feeling stewpid, hoping that someone will provide further clarification*
The comment feature on my Whipping Cats blog should now be fixed, so that there should no longer be any difficulty in posting comments. Please let me know (e.g. by sending me a message here, or by e-mail) if you encounter problems.
Even anonymous marsupials should be able to comment.
This seems to be stretching the rules of proof just a little bit, Pro. The only thing that your link establishes is that you have placed it on your prime numbers in songs list, which seems like a classic example of affirming the consequent.
Or did I miss the part where you explained how "apparently" appeared in your recent post? Personal charm is not a substitute for solid substantiating evidence, Professore.
Note that I am not questioning the validity of your conclusion, just your method of argument. :-)
I think this probably should read Weissnichtwo, assuming the reference is to Carlyle's work. It is literally translatable from German as "don't know where". Apparently Walter Scott also wrote something along these lines about a place called Kennaquhair, though that sounds more like a location in a Stephen King work.
You know, I don't really care what Jack and Stephen get up to in the bath -- they can amuse themselves by farting in the bathwater and attempting to bite the bubbles, as far as I'm concerned.
But I am horrified by the type of writing exemplified by Jack's ridiculous question, which makes no sense at all, at any level, real or metaphoric.
I will don my pointy pedant-hat to make two points:
1. the word is "sleave", not "sleeve" (sleave = a woven or threaded skein of yarn)
2. "sore labour's bath" is a reference to sleep, so the conjunction 'and' makes no sense, unless they plan to attempt the D minor double sonata in their sleep. Is Stephen agreeing to a little night music, or to getting some beauty rest? *
I call shenanigans on Mr O' Brian's faux-erudition. If he wants to lard his writing with Shakespearean references, he should take the trouble to get them right.
*: OK, granted that Jack might be proposing a little night music, followed by 40 winks, but given O' Brian's propagation of the 'sleeve' error, I'm inclined to think it's just another example of sloppy writing.
Thanks, Bill B. I'm hoping to come back here in the autumn because, indeed, there is something about Paris that lifts my foxy spirits. Plus, I love learning French, which is a step above Thpanish in difficulty. But I intend to subdue it and bend it to my will. Because until that is done I can't move on to Italian.
I would post this on your profile, but you are invisible to us all here in the material world. Do marsupials ever leave the DUMPP (down-under marsupial protection program)?
Ahem! First chained bear has taken to calling me "big ears' over on Facebook; now reesetee appears to be confusing me with bilby.
I am not a marsupial. Sure, I've fantasized about it a little, even dabbled in marsupialism in my wild college years. But I would like to assure all of my fans, on either side of the placental divide, that this fox is 100% placental*. Those "birthers" who argue to the contrary are shapeshifting eco-terrorists, in the pay of big agribusiness.
*: physical evidence is, naturally, difficult to produce as, in accordance with the best prevailing vulpine midwifery practices at the time, my mother ate it in a delicious casserole.
It is more common (and more useful) to add comments pertaining to individual words on a list to the words themselves (just click where it says 'x comments', next to the word).
I am guessing that if this spelling were given in the final round of the spelling bee, it would be an automatic FAIL. Surely the word you are looking for is volkerwanderung?
Existence is not something which lets itself be thought of from a distance: it must invade you suddenly, master you, weigh heavily on your heart like a great motionless beast --- or else there is nothing more at all.
During the last century a famous controversy took place between Charles Kingsley and Cardinal Newman. It began by Kingsley suggesting that truth did not possess the highest value for a Roman Catholic priest; that some things were prized above truth. Newman protested that such a remark made it impossible for an opponent to state his case. How could Newman prove to Kingsley that he did have more regard for truth than for anything else, if Kingsley argued from the premiss that he did not? It is not merely a question of two persons entertaining contradictory opinions. It is subtler than that. To put it baldly, Newman would be logically 'hamstrung.' Any argument he might use to prove that he did entertain a high regard for truth was automatically ruled out by Kingsley's hypothesis that he did not. Newman coined the expression poisoning the wells for such unfair tactics...The phrase poisoning the wells exactly hits off the difficulty. If the well is poisoned, no water drawn from it can be used. If a case is so stated that contrary evidence is automatically precluded, no arguments against it can be used.
the pigs into which Jesus cast the demons that had possessed a madman, and which as a result ran down a steep cliff into the sea and were killed; from this, gadarene means involving or engaged in a headlong or potentially disastrous rush to do something.
I don't think tea chest belongs on this list, at least not the way I understand this list. I don't know whether such set phrases as "flotsam and jetsam" belong or not. Then there are phrases like lily-livered poltroon, which might just be natural juxtapositions in my head, but not in anyone else's. :-)
This list seems to have some partial overlap in its intent with my own "amber words" list.
I'd favor rolig's first hypothesis, if only on the basis that Spanish engages in this kind of metathesis all the time, e.g. milagro for miracle, or - my personal favorite - regaliz for "licorice".
Though we tend to associate swine with impossibility, "when pigs fly", cows tend to feature more prominently in this context in other cultures: "when cows fly", "at Easter of the horses and at the wedding of the cows", "when the cow coughs".
French also is quite fond of cows when it comes to expressions, e.g. "La vache !" (Dammit!); "vachement" as an adverbial intensifier, etc. An interesting discussion of this phenomenon is found here .
Personally, I agree with she/her on this one; pastiche has too many inescapable pejorative connotations for me ever to consider it a positive designation. Instead of hodge-podge, how about salmagundi? Or the ever-pleasing gallimaufry?
This year's national bilby day falls on the 10-year anniversary of the September 11th attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon. I imagine this will give the conspiracy theorists something to dig into, so to speak.
The breathtakingly arrogant, dismissive, phrase used by Jean-Francois Kahn, one of France's best-known intellectuals of the left (co-founder of the leftist weekly magazine "Marianne" and no relation to Dominique Strauss-Kahn, though a longstanding friend of his wife, Anne Sinclair), to describe what he "felt sure must have happened" in that hotel suite in Times Square.
It can be roughly translated as "lifting the skirt of a domestic", evoking the kind of "droit du seigneur" behavior of those golden days when the right of the (male) ruling class to engage in unconsensual sex with the help went unquestioned.
I am pleased to relate that this particular remark triggered a firestorm of criticism here in France, to the extent that this week's edition of "Marianne" contains a blathering, self-pitying column by Monsieur Kahn, wherein he claims to have been the victim of a witch-hunt, and - sadder, but one hopes a little bit wiser - announces his retirement from writing his weekly column for the magazine.
The misogynistic arrogance of the the caste that constitutes France's "intellectual elite" is, as I said, just breathtaking. There was also the public pronunciation by former culture minister, Jacques Lang, to the effect of "why jail a man, it's not as if anyone was killed", not to mention the nauseating special pleading of douchebag Henri-Bernard Levy, complaining that the American justice system was corrupt, because of its failure to recognize the special status of his VIP buddy, Strauss-Kahn.
It all makes me sick to my stomach.
Google-translate misses the point as usual, rendering the phrase "un troussage de domestique" as "of a sweeping domestic". But then it translates "droit de seigneur" as "law lord", so what can you expect?
I have favorited this list, and anxiously await future additions. In fact, you could say I await them with baited breadth. But then you would expose yourself to the mockery of others.
I could keep a Beretta in my biretta. Though, actually, as far as cardinal garb is concerned, it's the red socks that interest me more. But then I've always harbored a weakness for ecclesiastical haberdashery.
My dream is to be the guy in the Vatican whose job it is to make up new Latin words for modern things/phenomena that didn't exist in Roman times. I might have to kill a few cardinals to accede to the position, though. :-)
My cousin, the black sheep of the family, was caught up in a bit of an embezzlement imbroglio at work and had to emigrate to Australia to escape the wrath of the authorities. Now we refer to him as Sin-Oz-Mick.
After my mother died, in 1985, I inherited one of her china services. It was all packed up and shipped to New Jersey, where I was living at the time, in a tea chest. Because back in those days, that was what one used to ship things in. I still have the entire set, fully intact. It's been used maybe a total of five times. Guess I don't throw enough dinner parties for twelve people.
It's another one of Foxy's infamous grammar rants , this time about the hideosity of prepositional verbs in general, with special attention given to the ludicrosity of Russian verbs of motion, and the mondo bizarro of the infamous bog of Irish prepositional pronouns.
You're entirely welcome. Though sionnach would like to point out that this delightful illustration was really brought to us by the Paschal bilby. I just lifted it from the kopi luwak page, where the big-eared marsupial of Easter first deposited it. Santa Fox can claim no credit here.
"Ibsen's positively abominable play entitled Ghosts....An open drain: a loathsome sore unbandaged; a dirty act done publicly....Gross, almost putrid indecorum....Literary carrion.... Crapulous stuff" - Daily Telegraph
"Lugubrious diagnosis of sordid impropriety....Characters are prigs, pedants and profligates....Morbid caricatures.... Maunderings of nookshotten Norwegians" – Black and White
"As foul and filthy a concoction as has ever been allowed to disgrace the boards of an English theatre....dull and disgusting....Nastiness and malodorousness laid on thickly as with a trowel." – Era
"Ninety-seven percent of the people who go to see Ghosts are nasty-minded people who find the discussion of nasty subjects to their taste, in exact proportion to their nastiness" – Sporting and Dramatic News
"The socialistic and the sexless....The unwomanly women, the unsexed females, the whole army of unprepossessing cranks in petticoats....Educated and muck-ferreting dogs.... Effeminate men and male women..... They all of them–men and women alike–know that they are doing not only a nasty but an illegal thing.... The Lord Chamberlain (the censor) left them alone to wallow in Ghosts.... Outside a silly clique, there is not the slightest interest in the Scandinavian humbug or all his works.... A wave of human folly" – Truth
(And, no, thank you, Wordnik genie, I was not looking for the English press reaction to ibsen's ghost)
Refers specifically to the fingering used to play a piece of music, but it also has the extended meaning of "skill" or "finesse"; equivalent of the German Fingerspitzengefühl.
"Diving into Strindberg is a descent into Hell. The Hell of class struggle and the battle between the sexes. The Hell of paranoid delirium and complete breakdown... a long day's journey into night, into the heart of darkness ..."
From the program notes for "Mademoiselle Julie", which I saw earlier this evening.
A phrase that has been ubiquitous this past week, generally in reference to the fall from grace of Dominique Strauss-Kahn. But see also Mademoiselle Julie.
"I'm just now working on a book about a Confederate general, and his corps is on its way to Gettysburg in search of shoes".
You see, I'd been reading this as "his corpse is on its way to G." and thinking this was just another one of them zombie civil war novels that reesetee is always toiling away at. But now I realise that was just a hilarious misunderstanding. By the way, I hope it was reesetee's comment that earned this entry a place on Pro's "Wordies talk about themselves" list. Because, let's be clear, Sharny McSquibals is entirely fictional, and is not meant to be a stand-in for me.
Personally, I drink coffee prepared only from the finest unicorn fewmets:
So, I says to him .... "How dare you come to the door like that in your dressonion?" . And do you know what the caffler has the cheek to say to me next? He says to me, 'When I want your ipingowne, I'll ask for it'! The bloody nerve of some people!!
Not to be confused with dump-gutteral, the term used to describe the flesh of a beast found on the side of the road.
Or stump-guttural, the term used by linguists to describe the odd fricative-plosive snort made by (certain) Wordniks in response to Doctor Jamieson's more bizarre flights of fancy.
Of course, as part of the revolting media circus surrounding what the French refer to as l'Affaire DSK, we are all being treated to salacious re-interpretations of the singing nun's only hit: "Dominique-nique-nique-nique-nique-nique-nique-nique.."
Several varieties of so-called coffee are made from fewmets and other coprological preparations. The best of these in our estimation is moose nugget coffee. This is made from dried moose excrement, which are roasted, like the genuine coffee berry, ground, mixed with egg, and prepared for the table exactly in the same manner, and in like proportions as the best Java or Mocha. If prepared with the care and skill usually bestowed on coffee making, it is a most palatable and nutritious beverage, and has won the praises of many reformed coffee drinkers who would not now exchange it for their old-time drink charged with caffeine.
Other former caffeine addicts maintain that the best brew is made with buffalo chips. Sharny Mc Squibals swears by it:
"After I've dropped the kids off at the pool, there's nothing I like better than to sit back, light up a Bondi cigar, and snack on a piece of delicious tappen pie, accompanied by a steaming hot cup o' buffalo chip coffee. Sometimes I'll add some cowblakes to the brew, for a little extra flavour, though you have to get the mix just right, else you'll have yourself a pot of fizzy gravy!"
On edit, after reading rolig's astute comment: the very regular pattern of change from one form to the other between 1840 and 1940 is still striking, and suggests that the American usage was well-established by 1940. I wonder when the AP Style guide was first published.
In France, censorship is personified by the ugly old woman Anastasie, generally portrayed wielding an enormous pair of scissors (les ciseaux d'Anastasie). This personification became popular in the second half of the 19th century; the caricature by Andre Gill (above) was particularly influential. The word is probably derived from the name of Pope Anastasios I, who was known for the fervor with which he attempted to suppress the publication of books he considered did not conform adequately to Catholic dogma.
Try typing in anything beginning with 'ana' into google search and this is what comes to the top of the autocomplete queue. It's an anagram of 'anagram', evidemment.
This list raises the interesting question - what was the first word you listed?
Now, it appears that this question may be easier for some Wordies to answer than for others. Because if, like me, you were a lazy slob back in the early days, your first list may be your default catchall list and have more than 3,000 words in it. It used to be that one could list one's words in the order added; now it seems that one can only list them in the reverse order added. Which means I would have to scroll through 30+ screens to get to my very first word. Which I am not interested enough to do.
Tries desperately to assemble clever play on words involving the phrases "le Duc D'Orleans", "New Orleans", "N'awlins", and "gawlins", but fails miserably...
No, I was not. And I speak as someone who actually used a functional analytical version of the Brouwer Fixed Point Theorem to prove one of the major* results in my dissertation.
*: well, it was major to me. And it seemed to impress the committee members.
I suppose it would be enormously politically incorrect to interject a remark involving the term "Saudi prostitutes" at this point.
But, honestly, so many items on this list sound so ... dirty what goes on between them dutch strickle sheets ... know what I'm sayin', rosina boi? nudge, nudge, wink, wink
g'shtupaful lew'r yourself, you salacious bawd! and keep your feelthy mitts off my kartoffel ballen.
Oh, wait, this is actually a SNL sketch starring Alec Baldwin
"Who decided all this, and why couldn't they have used a logical system?"
They tried that after the French revolution. Didn't work out so well for them, as I recall. But then they were trying to incorporate 10-day weeks and 10-hour days as well; so much for the Enlightenment. Napoleon scrapped it all eventually and went back to the old system.
My first thought was "dord", but the thought process underlying the parallelism is different. Along the lines of "inadvertent inaccuracy versus deliberate inaccuracy designed to ferret out copyright cheaters".
This was really more fun than the proverbial barrel-o-monkeys. Kudos to gangerh for the exciting, Eurovision-style, nailbiting countdown. And those fiendishly effective cred herrings. And congratulations to yarb and ruzuzu and ptero!
I guess I will just have to console myself by buying some kind of tacky mug with the Eiffel Tower on it. Because I will be here in Paris for another 7 weeks. Not that I would ever gloat about it; no, not me!
It's got the same cheesiness factor. But the prestige of entire nations is at stake. Purists like myself prefer the old days before the breakup of the Soviet union added about a dozen new entrants.
The voting is notorious for countries voting either for their neighbors, or deliberately slighting ancient enemies. And Luxembourg always seems to have an inordinate number of votes, given that nobody actually lives there, and the whole country can be rented out for parties. (Or is that Liechtenstein?)
on edit: Oh, poor sweet innocent 'zuzu, I don't think there's much ambiguity there.
This is more long-drawn-out than the finale of "Top Chef, France". And that went on until midnight. It's 10:50pm here now, and I have to be in class by 9am tomorrow. He is tormenting us....
Oooh! This is like watching the results of the Eurovision Song Contest, except that the stakes are much higher.
*Still remembers fondly the year (1970) when sweet, innocent, gap-toothed Dana, from County Derry, won it for Ireland with the heart-rendering (sic) ballad, "All Kinds of Everything":
Well, yarb, I think this question comes up every year, and I believe the probability of getting none right approaches 1/e (where e is the base for natural logs) as n gets larger and larger. So the answer to your question is 1 - (1/e) = roughly 63.2%
Well, if frindley isn't alexis, bury me in a bog and call me sphagnovulpine. Y'all are obviously not reading my frogblog, because if you were, you'd know I was staying in the Marais, which means the marsh. I am a boggy froggy right now.
All my other choices were pure guesswork and/or following ze herd. Except for tear-resistant, which may be a very clever cred herring indeed. And heartstringplucker, which had enough of the STF about it to remind one of gangerh. mediaeval was tempting for chained_bear, but seemed too obvious.
Installs self next to telephone to await notification of being declared winner, munching on cupcakes and fufluns...
I still think there should have been a rule preventing Wordnikoyennes who are really just birds trained to hunt and peck on the keyboard (you know who you are Madame R.T. Distingue) from passing themselves off as, you know, real virtual people.
(Written with the bitterness of someone who has wasted countless hours trying to teach Boris and Natasha to type with their little kitty-paws -- they always end up just chewing their little kitty-booties to shreds.)
Would it help anybody's decision to change anything, or not, if I told you that a brief scan of entries revealed that all of you were mostly wrong, or mostly right? Mwahahahaha!
Oh, you see that's just plain silly. It's quite sufficient to have the verb "to neigh"; there's no conceivable reason to have a special verb for starting the process. One can just say "Gluebones cleared his horsey throat, because he was feeling a bit catarrhy ...."
Thanks, db: I think "burrowing" is a correct, but unimaginative, translation of rataconniculation, as it fails to capture the animal connotations of the latter,having to do with rats, puppies & bunnies. "Cannicula" is, according to Webster's, a common misspelling of "Canicula", another name for Sirius, the dog-star, and related to the Latin word for puppies; "Karnickel" is also a German word for "bunny", which is derived from the word "cunicula", which I think means "rabbit" in Latin.
By the way, though I don't necessarily agree with you on the particular instance, I greatly admire the passion of your lexicological rant over on gasometer. As somebody else mentioned, everyone is entitled to a few particular pet peeves (see discussion under data, for instance), and what is Wordnik for, if not to allow one to vent one's frustrations about one's word-related peeves?
The name given to the ridges or grooves often found on the sides of parsnips:
assumed by cryptozoovegetologists to be the result of the fanged depredations of the dreaded Bunnicula as it lays waste to Farmer McGregor's carrot patch.
The process of producing aforementioned ridges or grooves.
In the French text, the word robidilardicque is footnoted as appearing as robilardique in some versions. The latter word seems more consistent with the coinage that duckbill suggests.
Suprême NTM (or simply NTM) is a French hip hop group formed in 1989 in the Seine-Saint-Denis département. The group comprises rappers Joey Starr (born Didier Morville) and Kool Shen (born Bruno Lopès). Their six albums were released by Sony Music Entertainment.
The group takes its name from the French slang "NTM", an abbreviation for "Nique Ta Mère" ("Nique" is derived from the shortening of the French word "forniquer" (fornicate)) meaning "F*** Your Mother". NTM is known for their hostility towards the police, violent lyrics, and legal battles with the French authorities. Their musical style is predominantly hardcore rap, although later albums include funk, soul and reggae influences.
The group is outspokenly critical of racism and class inequality in French society, and while their earlier music is violent, some of their later work, such as "Pose ton Gun" ("Put down your Gun"), is explicitly anti-violent.
In 1998, the group released its last album of original material under the NTM moniker, as both Joey Starr and Kool Shen started their own labels, promoting new bands and branching out in other fields such as the clothing industry (2High is Kool Shen's brand, Com-8 is Joey Starr's).
While officially the band still exists, and its well-known name was used in 2001 to promote a 'duel' album pitting the two label's artists against each other, Kool Shen was quoted in 2004 saying "on a fini avec NTM en 98" ("We were done with NTM in 1998").
The group is known for its gritty, dark and sometimes violent lyrics, as well as for the contrast between the two rappers' styles. While Joey Starr (also known as Jaguar Gorgonne and Double-R) has a relatively slow flow, aggressive lyrics and a deep, booming voice (which he sometimes uses to yell such as in "Pose ton Gun"), Kool Shen has a funkier flow as well as witty and rather melancholic lyrics.
adjective meaning French, in a slightly self-mocking kind of way; can have connotations of old-time traditional French (if applied to music), or pertaining to cliched French images, such as baguettes, berets, and camembert.
I think the last two comments do a grave injustice to the advertising geniuses at Denny's. Paraphrasing from their website:
"At some point Baconalia sizzled out. Bacon historians contend that this could have been the result of a simple spelling mistake. Baconalia, the celebration of swine was misspelled "Bacchanalia", and confused with the Roman celebration of wine, which people then began to mistake for the original feast."
It's things like this that make me regret my career choices. Instead of co-authoring a book that causes me to receive e-mail from earnest pharmacokineticists in Uganda and Sweden, I could have made a real contribution by going into advertising and coining words like "Baconalia". Which is sheer bloody genius, I think you'll agree.
"do not comment on your intentions anywhere on this site as most of the words submitted have been published and the sharper participants will pick up on the fact that your word is in the last few listed".
I'm betting all of the sharper participants have seen "The Princess Bride" and will get totally bogged down in their own mental reverse-reverse-reverse psychology games if they attempt to follow that line of reasoning. Or do I mean reverse-reverse-reverse-reverse psychology games?
No, there is nothing antropophagic going on here. My trusty visual French-English bilingual dictionary is quite clear that le diplomate is the word for everyone's favorite delicious dessert, trifle. This fact appears not to have made it to the synapses of the magnificent neural network that lurks within the heart of Google-translate, which insists on rendering the sentence above as: "Nous avons mangé la bagatelle". But that's what you get when you settle for the soulless machine-translation approach to life.
Note, however, that le diplomate can also mean "the diplomat", so if you find yourself travelling among, say, the Fore tribe of New Guinea, you might want to provide sufficient context to avoid any possible ambiguity.
Well, that's the interwebs for you. It's still a mystery why the AT&T support guy in Bangalore can get into my Yahoo e-mail account with the new password, but I can't access it from here, using the same password.
I had to fiddle with it for a while, but eventually what seems to work is to go to the list in question, then find its exact address in your browser and copy that exactly into the href= part of the relevant HTML syntax. I think the reason that this works, where other possibilites don't, is that Wordnik replaces spaces in the list names with hyphens, as well as possibly making some other changes. If that makes sense ...
Our boy Vardenis made it into the list description, but somehow not onto the list itself. I will rectify this when I have more time (and am less exhausted).
No, I would look for Seachtain na Gaeilge; last time I checked, the genitive form of Gaeilge was still Gaeilge. Gaelige is not an admissible form; try running "Seachtain na Gaelige" through google's fine translating machine and you will be given the gmail address of some entity called "Groundwork muirmaid", which I think we can all agree is more than a little fishy
So, I get it. You've entered the witness protection program somewhere theredownunda (where women glow and men chunder). But aren't those big floppy leather ears a dead giveaway in the WPP?
Prolagus is just playing a belated April fool's joke on us. Nothing he, or anyone, can say can convince me that ingegnosità is an actual word. It looks like the kind of furball a cat might throw up on one's freshly carpeted apartment.
While this list remains one of my all-time favorites, I must confess to being baffled by its title. And who the hell is "Parker Smith", and what has he done with uselessness?
Ah, those were the good old days, weren't they? The halcyon days of "about 4 years ago".....
Because a certain antipodal marsupial never visits my new blog. Is it the lack of candy-pooping animals? The absence of posts related to Operation Baked Goods? One tries one's very best. But nothing seems interesting enough to attract the attention of a certain chocolate-bearing marsupial.
One of my favorite scientific papers that I read while in graduate school was on the estimation of trunk volume of loblolly pines based only on serial measurements of tree circumference. An important topic if you care about forestry inventory management, apparently.
Continuing on the them of impressive words, there is something about the word bulbul that is very appealing. Or the sound that nightingales traditionally make - jugjug. But perhaps these ruminations already exist in the comments for philomelian.
Then there's the word Banba, an old designation for Ireland. Seems relatively unremarkable, until you consider that its genitive singular form is Banban, which confers on it a kind of lurking charm, all the more impressive for being initially hidden.
What happens to unsuccessful contestants on "The Amazing Race". Like certain other TV-spawned words (e.g. cheftestants for competitors on "Top Chef"), this term fills me with inordinate delight, bordering on glee.
That guy at the bottom of the Perdue link seems to have unnaturally large fingers. One imagines a company-wide egg-holding contest for the honor of being featured on the homepage...
I can't believe it's "about 3 years" since I added this. I had so many more brain cells back then. Sigh.
I would like to clarify that the preceding post is in no way meant to imply that Prolagus is not clever. Having met P. in person, I can attest to the fact that he is not only super-smart, but also even more charming in real life than on the interwebs.
I think that having an anagram that uses all the letters and gives the same meaning as the original word is pretty special. Even if one doesn't feel such a word is worthy of the designation "perfect", maybe it deserves a lesser designation, e.g. "impressive". What numbers might be considered impressive?
No, because words don't have factors. The words that can be formed by the letters within a word aren't essential properties of the word.
# 21 days ago Prolagus said
From marco_nj's profile:
In mathematics, a perfect number is defined as a positive integer which is the sum of its proper positive divisors, that is, the sum of the positive divisors excluding the number itself. Is there a linguistic equivalent?
Mollusque is, of course, technically correct here. Words don't have factors. Nonetheless, is it wise to discard the whole idea, which seems at the very least to have the germ of an interesting question, out of hand?
I am reminded of the delightful chapter in Hofstadter's "Le Ton Beau de Marot" in which he takes the initially unpromising question of how one might play chess on a board with hexagonal "squares" and develops it in a way that turns out to be extremely intellectually satisfying.
Is there a re-interpretation of the definition of "perfection" that makes sense, even if only by distant analogy? I am reminded of the idea of kangaroo words, where a particular word contains a shorter word with the same meaning (the joey). Extending this idea, one might imagine a perfect word to be defined as one whose letters can be anagrammed into a word or phrase with the same meaning as the original word (excluding the trivial case). I can't think of a good example offhand, but I'm sure somebody can.
Say it ain't so! Some of my most inspired bullshit was on the mi-vox page. "What is that noise?", you ask. It is the agonized screaming of hideous deformed flipper-people as they vanish into a wordhole, never to be heard from again.
Right now, on Sunday February 20th (or 21st if you live in bilbyland) 2011, you can find the following on a certain leather-eared marsupial's profile:
about 3 years ago bilby said
I'll be scarce on Wordie for the rest of January 2007 ... global crossings, unbroadbanded parents, temporal dislocation and all that kind of thing. Hope to be the careless match in your box of firecrackers again too soon!
*mwah*
Note the odd discrepancy in dates. What happened to that other year? Bilbo's use of the phrase "temporal dislocation" seems oddly prescient.
This is, of course, just a very extreme instance of a previously noted phenomenon. Those of us who suffer from an addiction to words and reading are indeed subject to bizarre temporal dislocations - the sudden inexplicable loss of a whole afternoon, in extreme cases, even a three-day weekend. The vanishing of an entire year confirms my suspicion that regular users of Wordie are at a considerable elevated risk for a more severe type of temporal anomaly. My working theory is that Wordie, in its function as a portal to the great wide world of words, tempts regular users - logonauts if you will - to venture farther and farther afield in the lexiverse. This exploration is not risk-free - sometimes an intrepid logonaut may stumble, or be lured, into a wordhole. Though the phenomenon is not fully understood, a wordhole may be thought of as a type of singularity, or tear, in the fabric of the chronolexiverse, sometimes known as a vanwinklerip*. Falling into a wordhole is not necessarily fatal, but the few cases documented in the literature suggest that it is a life-transforming experience -- in addition to the time distortion experienced by survivors, glossolalia is a common side effect, as well as a baffling tendency to identify with small burrowing animals, and a need to hibernate in cold weather. Instances of distorted perception of one's own body size have also been reported (e.g. Swift, Carroll), though care should be taken to distinguish between genuine travel across the chronolexiverse and mere hallucinations following the ingestion of psychoactive agents (Coleridge, Thompson, Castaneda).
Bilby is one of the lucky ones. Regular site users should be cognizant of the risks associated with extensive, unsupervised wandering in the chronolexiverse. Logonauts beware!
* as described, e.g. in Irving, W. (1819).
(I've copied this comment over from the Zeitgeist page)
Right now, on Sunday February 20th (or 21st if you live in bilbyland) 2011, you can find the following on a certain leather-eared marsupial's profile:
about 3 years ago bilby said
I'll be scarce on Wordie for the rest of January 2007 ... global crossings, unbroadbanded parents, temporal dislocation and all that kind of thing. Hope to be the careless match in your box of firecrackers again too soon!
*mwah*
Note the odd discrepancy in dates. What happened to that other year? Bilbo's use of the phrase "temporal dislocation" seems oddly prescient.
This is, of course, just a very extreme instance of a previously noted phenomenon. Those of us who suffer from an addiction to words and reading are indeed subject to bizarre temporal dislocations - the sudden inexplicable loss of a whole afternoon, in extreme cases, even a three-day weekend. The vanishing of an entire year confirms my suspicion that regular users of Wordie are at a considerable elevated risk for a more severe type of temporal anomaly. My working theory is that Wordie, in its function as a portal to the great wide world of words, tempts regular users - logonauts if you will - to venture farther and farther afield in the lexiverse. This exploration is not risk-free - sometimes an intrepid logonaut may stumble, or be lured, into a wordhole. Though the phenomenon is not fully understood, a wordhole may be thought of as a type of singularity, or tear, in the fabric of the chronolexiverse, sometimes known as a vanwinklerip*. Falling into a wordhole is not necessarily fatal, but the few cases documented in the literature suggest that it is a life-transforming experience -- in addition to the time distortion experienced by survivors, glossolalia is a common side effect, as well as a baffling tendency to identify with small burrowing animals, and a need to hibernate in cold weather. Instances of distorted perception of one's own body size have also been reported (e.g. Swift, Carroll), though care should be taken to distinguish between genuine travel across the chronolexiverse and mere hallucinations following the ingestion of psychoactive agents (Coleridge, Thompson, Castaneda).
Bilby is one of the lucky ones. Regular site users should be cognizant of the risks associated with extensive, unsupervised wandering in the chronolexiverse. Logonauts beware!
I, for one, certainly hope that this list is working up to a grand finale of casu marzu. Perhaps served with a delicious glass of baby mice wine.
Anyone who looks up baby mice wine on google image should be sure to have made prior preparations for the projectile vomiting that is the likely result.
I just recently learned that the "Happy California Cows" ad that runs so frequently on TV was, in fact, filmed in New Zealand, with NZ cows. I feel deceived, disillusioned, and disappointed.
Is that one of them dreaded Croissanwich atrocities?
It's still not too late to agitate for the return of the Burger King sausage biscuit, whose cruel and sudden discontinuation in August 1983 almost proved fatal to the completion of my doctoral dissertation. The final section, fueled by demonstrably inferior Hardee's biscuits, is perceptibly more stupid than the rest of the document.
I imagine that elevation above sea-level might have a substantial impact on the boiling temperature of bagels as well. For the same reason that making a decent cup of tea on Mount Everest is well-nigh impossible.
You might think this is due to Boyle's Law. You would be only tangentially correct.
hernesheir encourages me to make some kind of comment here, asserting precedence of coinage, but as noted below, there are other coinages of which I am more proud. Still, I know that there is a diligent cohort of Wordnikians for whom panvocalics hold a certain fatal fascination - God bless 'em.
I always thought that mithridatism referred to the practice of building up a tolerance to a specific poison by successive ingestion of larger and larger doses.
Fortunately I have no need to stand in line at the apothecary's -- I just look to Boris and Natasha** to provide me with bezoars as needed.
** who naturally feast on a diet of unripe persimmons.
Chained_bear expressed the hope this list would be comprehensive. A little research shows this to be a forlorn hope indeed. But for anyone interested in tracking down complaints not listed here there is the mother of all resources:
St. Roch, as previously noted. But you can hedge your bets by requesting the intercession of the following: St. Beuno, St. Sebastian, St. Erhard of Regensburg.
The Fourteen Holy Helpers are a group of saints venerated together in Roman Catholicism because their intercession is believed to be particularly effective, especially against various diseases. This group of Nothelfer ("helpers in need") originated in the 14th century at first in the Rhineland, largely as a result of the epidemic (probably of bubonic plague) that became known as the Black Death.
The basic 14 are:
Saints-
Agathius, Barbara, Blaise, Catherine of Alexandria, Christopher, Cyriacus, Denis, Erasmus, Eustace, George, Giles, Margaret of Antioch, Pantaleon, Vitus (Guy)
For one or another of the saints in the original set, Anthony the Anchorite, Leonard of Noblac, Nicholas, Sebastian, Oswald the King, Pope Sixtus II, Apollonia, Dorothea of Caesarea, Wolfgang of Regensburg, or Roch were sometimes substituted. In France an extra "helper" is added, the Virgin Mary.
There's something very weird going on with this entry. It seems to have generated a phantom entry without the "hemorrhages in general" part after the "end". Comments show up on the phantom entry page. I'm guessing it has to do with the quotes.
I have an Italian question for you? Does "ad horas" mean "at short notice"?
I am making preparations for the big French adventure, scheduled to launch in March. Paris, here I come. Le renard va s'ébattre dans l'ombre de la Tour Eiffel.
I hope all is well chez Prolagus - I have fond memories of our visit to the Morgan Library. I do worry about the possibility of your getting mauled as you trap assorted critters in Central Park. Be sure to wear a pith helmet.
A confidence trick used to finagle a free meal for a man and a dog. From Grose's Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (1811):
This rig consists in feeding a man and a dog for nothing, and is carried on thus: Three men, one of who pretends to be sick and unable to eat, go to a public house: the two well men make a bargain with the landlord for their dinner, and when he is out of sight, feed their pretended sick companion and dog gratis.
By extension the term came to mean general trickery and skullduggery, see e.g.
The most notorious jump in horse racing, Becher's brook is part of the most demanding steeplechase on earth, the (British) Grand National at Aintree. The jump actually has to be negotiated twice during the race – as the sixth and twenty-second fences.
It takes its name from Captain Becher, who famously took refuge in the small brook running on the landing side of the fence. This was during the very first Grand National, when he was unseated by his horse, Conrad. The brook is now concealed under a line of cast iron drain covers.
A milliard is the European term for what wimpy Americans call a billion, that is, one thousand million, or 10 to the 9th power. In recent years, the British have also adopted the American terminology, rendering the term milliard essentially obsolete in English. (It still appears in French and German).
The divergence becomes self-perpetuating. In English, 10**9 is a billion, 10**12 is a trillion, and 10**15 is a quadrillion. In the European system you need 10**12 to be called a billion, and 10**18 to be considered a trillion. And the word for that intermediate case of 10**15? You've guessed it, that number is called a billiard.
A hobbet was originally a Welsh unit of capacity, later redefined as a unit of mass. Actual numerical values for the amount it represented appear to have varied by exact geographic location (and possibly the particular commodity being measured).
Hobbitses, as is well known, live in New Zealand, have furry feet, and a marked predilection for secreting things in their pocketses.
A mutchkin is a "a Scottish unit of liquid measure equal to slightly less than one pint".
A munchkin is a diminutive resident of Munchkin County (or, if you prefer, Munchkinland) located in the kingdom of Oz. Some well-known munchkins are Algernon Woodcock, Nick Chopper, Jinjur, Ojo the lucky, and Queen Orin of the Ozure Isles. On November 20, 2007, the Munchkins were given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Having a specific region of one's brain permanently dedicated solely to monitoring all input for the possible occurrence of a new specific excrement term. Because we live in hope.
Academic "hotshot" Richard Quinn, exposed as being too lazy to develop his own exams, does a little "strategic management" of the situation by accusing his students of cheating. Warning: the hypocrisy in the linked video may cause emesis.
Discussion of the fermented herring starts at around the 10-minute mark, but the first part of the clip is also worth watching, for the discussion of hybristophilia (Bonnie and Clyde syndrome), the origins of heckling and, of course, the hilarious Kate Winslow dream and tomato-and-spider-pizza segments.
November 19th might indeed be World Toilet Day, children, but did you know that the Japanese Toilet Association has designated November 10th as National Toilet Day, because 11/10 in Japanese sounds like the characters for "clean toilet"? *
Here on Wordnik we bring you the news that matters.
*: source - "The Big Necessity" by Rose George, one of the most under-appreciated nonfiction works of 2008. No bathroom should be without a copy.
Gosh, this new modem I was forced to buy to stop the red flashing light and get access to the interwebs is having all kinds of unexpected side effects. My phone line has developed a background wheeze suggestive of Darth Vader with pleurisy, and now it appears to be redacting out key on-screen text, in a disturbingly primitive cold-war kind of way.
Pssst! Prolagus is even more charming in person than online. Hard to believe, I know. But those are the facts. I just report them.
The only slight imperfection in my otherwise most delightful recent sojourn in New York City was my failure to win BIG in the Cash Cab. Possibly related to the Cash Cab's negligence in not picking me up in the first place.
It was nonetheless reassuring to know that, had I been in the C.C., risking everything to come up with the term guyliner for "the kind of eye makeup favored by emo kids and Captain Jack Sparrow", my guess of manscara would also have been considered acceptable.
got your message. In case we don't reach each other by phone, 12:30 on Thursday by the entrance to the Empire State Building sounds fine. I will be there.
I met Debussy at the Cafe Riche the other night and was struck by the unique ugliness of the man. His face is flat, the top of his head is flat, his eyes are prominent, the expression veiled and somber and, altogether, with his long hair, unkept beard, uncouth clothing and soft hat, he looked more like a Bohemian, a Croat, a Hun, than a Gaul. His high, prominent cheek bones lend a Mongolian aspect to his face. The head is brachycephalic, the hair black ...
Again I see his curious asymmetrical face, the pointed fawn ears, the projecting cheek bones- the man is a wraith from the East; his music was heard long ago in the hill temples of Borneo; was made as a symphony to welcome the head-hunters with their ghastly spoils of war.
Comments by sionnach
Show previous 200 comments...
sionnach commented on the word foyle's further philavery (christopher foyle)
How is this phrase of benefit to our community?
I don't feel any particular obligation to answer this question, which is, at face value, a little obnoxious. Does it bother you that I maintain a list of the word- and language-related books that I own, and that I might periodically update this list?
If I choose to add a comment that links to a review of the book in question at some later point, should I be expected to "justify" that as well?
This list is useful to me. I find your question to be out of line, though I'm sure you didn't mean to give offense.
August 5, 2011
sionnach commented on the word disfluency
Ooh. It's Michael Erard. Author of possibly the dullest book I have read in the last five years.
August 5, 2011
sionnach commented on the word new interface
bilby
Jul 31, 2011
I can't comment on lists or profiles, only words.
I have the same difficulty. In addition, the ability to view whole swaths of content that were previously accessible has now been taken away. To mention just one example, I can no longer read back through the list of comments that have been left on my profile.
Over the last six weeks, the most basic functions on the site -- creating lists and adding words to them -- have undergone a significant deterioration. At times it's altogether impossible to add words; if it is possible, the response time has slowed to a glacial pace, so that there is little incentive to add new words.
Then, as other users have already remarked, the ability to contribute to, or benefit from, what used to be a fairly lively discussion among the site's most committed members has continued to diminish, to the point of being close to impossible at this point. I have no idea whether or not this is the result of a deliberate effort by the site administrators to shut down what they seem to regard as commentary that is extraneous to the site's overall mission. This is partly because I no longer understand what that mission might be. But it's hard to avoid the impression that user comments are no longer valued, given that almost every one of the recent changes has made it harder, not easier, to conduct any kind of meaningful exchange.
Even the utility of the site as a reference resource has deteriorated since the change from Wordie -- useful links that were previously immediately accessible have been hidden or taken away altogether.
It's all just a tiny bit soul-crushing, to be honest.
August 1, 2011
sionnach commented on the user sionnach
Bilby:
Have you tried looking it up under "Quatsch"? It's a perfectly common word, quite legit, meaning -- as you surmised -- "Rubbish!"
Here is a link: flubdub and taradiddle
July 26, 2011
sionnach commented on the word flay the fox
Ouch!
July 26, 2011
sionnach commented on the word daingean
I have always believed that Daingean Uí Chúis was the proper designation for the capital of Kerry. The link suggests that the current name is actually An Daingean. Also, that not everybody is happy about it.
July 17, 2011
sionnach commented on the word kafee-klatsch
Actually, I think it would have to be "a social event at which people drink cofee".
July 13, 2011
sionnach commented on the word Head of patron saint of genital diseases to be auctioned in Meath
Read all about it in the article here
July 10, 2011
sionnach commented on the word twincest
I think we all know the Ring Cycle doesn't exactly end well for all concerned.
July 1, 2011
sionnach commented on the word twincest
The most concise word to describe the relationship between Siegmund and Sieglinde in Wagner's Ring Cycle. The offspring of their incestuous coupling is the "hero" Siegfried, who is - perhaps not surprisingly - stupid to a degree that borders on mental retardation.
Of course, the only "hero" in the entire cycle is Bruennhilde, and not just because of the vocal pyrotechnics that her role demands.
July 1, 2011
sionnach commented on the user biocon
Hi biocon:
I have been enjoying your lists as well. A belated welcome to Wordnik!
July 1, 2011
sionnach commented on the word umbrage
Pretty words, which might be considered extenuating, if they were true . But it is a simple matter to check their patent falsity. They butter no parsnips with me.
I'm holding on to this fine dollop of umbrage*.
Smiley-face. LOL
*: which is, of course, entirely phony. Because it's been a long time since we've had a good marathon of phony umbrage taking
July 1, 2011
sionnach commented on the word umbrage
I'm taking me some umbrage over a gratuitous drive-by snark by yarb a few days back, where he made a comment along these lines:
"Wrong, sionnach, and not for the first time, either" (my emphasis).
Was it really necessary to add that last part, smarty mac yarbles? Huh?
July 1, 2011
sionnach commented on the word patefy
I have to disagree, Pro. It would mean "to turn into paté", in a transitive sense. Not intransitively, as your suggestion would imply.
June 30, 2011
sionnach commented on the word Is not the mounted liger
y el mayor bien es picante
There is something syntactically suspect about this "mayor bien" business. Even for a dream quesadilla.
June 29, 2011
sionnach commented on the word fell swoop
I'm with rolig on this one; yarb and reesetee seem misguided in their belief that serial ruthlessness is not an option.
June 28, 2011
sionnach commented on the user biocon
Yes. What mollusque wrote is a more precise description of the issue, and what I should have written in the first place. It's an HTML implementation issue, not one of access.
June 28, 2011
sionnach commented on the word ucalegon
This word joins sgriob and qualtagh as being highly likely to be some lexicographer's idea of a practical joke. And paddymelon, of course.
June 27, 2011
sionnach commented on the user biocon
The links you provide in your comments don't work.
June 27, 2011
sionnach commented on the user shenzhenelectronic
Go away.
June 27, 2011
sionnach commented on the word Idirlíon
an Gréasán Domhanda : the world wide web
June 26, 2011
sionnach commented on the word dixie-fixie
Foxy-Loxy got into a bit of Argy-Bargy with the riff-raff down at the Chilly-Willy skating rink. The upshot is that he had to spend the night dixie-fixie down at the stationhouse.
June 26, 2011
sionnach commented on the word serviceteam
SPAM
June 26, 2011
sionnach commented on the word sgriob
Any reasonable person must still have some doubt about this word, as all occurrences on the web of the "definition" given below seem to be traceable to the Grandiloquent Dictionary as the only source. It is a valid word in Scots Gaelic, where it can mean anything from a trip to a stroll to a scratch or scrape.
sgrìob-cheangail is a hyphen (a "connecting scratch")
Sgrìob Chlann Uisnich is the Milky Way
Wiktionary suggests that duais-scriob, meaning 'sweepstakes' comes from the word duais, a prize, and scriob meaning 'to sweep'.
Finally, someone called "muckefuck" over somewhere else on the web suggests, citing a reference called Dwelly:
There is a Scots-Gaelic word sgrìob which has the basic meaning of "scratch", but can also refer to "Itching of the lip, superstitiously supposed to portend a kiss (sgrìob-pòige), or sgrìob-dìghe (or sgrìob-drama), a dram." So the full expression should be sgrìob-dìghe ("drink-itch") or sgrìob-drama ("dram-itch").
June 26, 2011
sionnach commented on the word bikeshedding
Is it related to yakshaving or featherbedding? Is it about a bicycle?
June 26, 2011
sionnach commented on the word drower
Interesting visual!
June 26, 2011
sionnach commented on the word Գ
So the paradox seems to be back in action.
June 26, 2011
sionnach commented on the word pananxiety
An excellent word. Though I can imagine the Twitter crowd shortening it to "panxiety".
A more specific worry is, of course, manxiety, fear of cats without tails.
June 24, 2011
sionnach commented on the user feedback
Erin: Thanks for the clarification about using the reverse dictionary. It comes back to me that I used to use the Onelook RD feature in much the same way -- when I couldn't think of the exact word I needed in a pretty well-defined category.
June 22, 2011
sionnach commented on the user sionnach
Merci, 'zuzu!
Reynard is back on U.S. soil. Enjoying a day in YOUR NATION'S CAPITAL before heading back to San Francisco for WAGNER WEEK. (Eine ganze Woche vollgestopft mit Wotan, Walkueren, und anderem wagnerischen Ungeziefer)
June 22, 2011
sionnach commented on the list this-intriguing-novel-is-a-taut-lyrical-tour-de-force
Book Review Bingo : More Book Review Cliche Fun Than You Can Shake a Riveting Unputdownable Stick At
June 21, 2011
sionnach commented on the list this-intriguing-novel-is-a-taut-lyrical-tour-de-force
Not that I'm a fan of Strunk and White, the Tweedledum and Tweedledee of eccentric prescriptivism, but their thoughts on reviewerspeak are worth quoting:
The world of criticism has a modest pouch of special words (luminous, taut), whose only virtue is that they are exceptionally nimble and can escape from the garden of meaning over the wall. Of these critical words, Wolcott Gibbs once wrote: '...they are detached from the language and inflated like little balloons.' The young writer should learn to spot them -- words that at first glance seem freighted with delicious meaning but that soon burst in air, leaving nothing but a memory of bright sound.
June 21, 2011
sionnach commented on the word Katherine Mansfield on E.M. Forster
Putting my weakest books to the wall last night I came across a copy of 'Howards End' and had a look into it. Not good enough. E.M. Forster never gets any further than warming the teapot. He's a rare fine hand at that. Feel this teapot. Is it not beautifully warm? Yes, but there ain't going to be no tea.
And I can never be perfectly certain whether Helen was got with child by Leonard Bast or by his fatal forgotten umbrella. All things considered, I think it must have been the umbrella.
June 21, 2011
sionnach commented on the word jelly shoes
Still trending, that's a relief. But it's gonna be hard to beat "cat".
June 21, 2011
sionnach commented on the word Evelyn Waugh on Proust
I am reading Proust for the first time. Very poor stuff. I think he was mentally defective
June 21, 2011
sionnach commented on the word Virginia Woolf on James Joyce
Ulysses is the work of a queasy undergraduate scratching his pimples.
June 21, 2011
sionnach commented on the word W.H. Auden on Robert Browning
I don’t think Robert Browning was very good in bed. His wife probably didn’t care for him very much. He snored and had fantasies about twelve-year-old girls.
June 21, 2011
sionnach commented on the word Charles Baudelaire on Voltaire
I grow bored in France — and the main reason is that everybody here resembles Voltaire…the king of nincompoops, the prince of the superficial, the anti-artist, the spokesman of janitresses, the Father Gigone of the editors of Siecle.
June 21, 2011
sionnach commented on the word Ralph Waldo Emerson on Jane Austen
Miss Austen’s novels . . . seem to me vulgar in tone, sterile in artistic invention, imprisoned in the wretched conventions of English society, without genius, wit, or knowledge of the world. Never was life so pinched and narrow. The one problem in the mind of the writer . . . is marriageableness.
June 21, 2011
sionnach commented on the word Martin Amis on Cervantes
Reading Don Quixote can be compared to an indefinite visit from your most impossible senior relative, with all his pranks, dirty habits, unstoppable reminiscences, and terrible cronies. When the experience is over, and the old boy checks out at last (on page 846 — the prose wedged tight, with no breaks for dialogue), you will shed tears all right; not tears of relief or regret but tears of pride. You made it, despite all that ‘Don Quixote’ could do.
June 21, 2011
sionnach commented on the word Gertrude Stein on Ezra Pound
A village explainer. Excellent if you were a village, but if you were not, not.
June 21, 2011
sionnach commented on the word lord byron on john keats
Here are Johnny Keats’ piss-a-bed poetry, and three novels by God knows whom… No more Keats, I entreat: flay him alive; if some of you don’t I must skin him myself: there is no bearing the drivelling idiotism of the Mankin.
June 21, 2011
sionnach commented on the word H. G. Wells on George Bernard Shaw
An idiot child screaming in a hospital.
June 21, 2011
sionnach commented on the user feedback
Thanks, zeke. That's very encouraging news. And please know that some of the new features look very promising, and are appreciated. And when we whine, it is out of misplaced zeal. Because we love wordnik. (At least I do).
So ruzuzu can have her tweets, and yarb & I can live in an impoverished tweet-free world. yeah!
June 21, 2011
sionnach commented on the user feedback
I think I've probably said enough about the vile tweets. But for the record, I'm with yarb. Not a fan of the images either. If I were looking for images, I'd go to google image, or to Flickr. (If I were looking for tweets, I could, Lord knows, subscribe to Twitter). When I come to Wordnik, I'm not really looking for either.
On a more positive note, I am very much enjoying the 'hypernyms' and 'words used in a similar context' features. Still not so sure about the 'reverse dictionary' -- it seems as if it should be useful, but I'm not sure I understand how.
June 20, 2011
sionnach commented on the word t
blaghhh . -__- twitter isn't updating my timeline
This kind of thing needs to stop showing up on the comment page. PLEASE MAKE IT STOP.
June 20, 2011
sionnach commented on the list random-acts-of-wordness
You know, the lower case 'b's don't look too hot either in that font.
dontcry: You can expand the comment box, you just have to go to the bottom right hand corner and drag diagonally. It's just a pain in the butt to have to keep doing it.
June 20, 2011
sionnach commented on the user feedback
Excuse me, 'zuzu, but I beg to differ. Your argument is akin to saying "having bowel cancer isn't really all that bad, because at least the cancerous lesions aren't visible". The remainder of your argument is, of course, obviously facetious.
June 20, 2011
sionnach commented on the list random-acts-of-wordness
Thank you!! I was beginning to think I was the only one bothered by this.
In some other manifestation of the new interface, the lowercase 'g's are buggy too. And why isn't this comment box expanding automatically - I have to go drag on the corner myself. Sigh.
The "blockquote" html code appears not to have worked just now, assuming I invoked it correctly, which I think I did. Sigh.
on edit: the blockquote shows up properly on the main Community pageview, just not on this particular page.
June 20, 2011
sionnach commented on the word bezaubernd
Appears in the title of Tamino's aria in "The Magic Flute" : Das Bildnis ist bezaubernd schön
(I would like to express my parenthetical disgust at being accosted by semi-pornographic German tweets, during the writing of this comment)
NO TO TWEETS ON THE COMMENTS PAGE
June 20, 2011
sionnach commented on the user ruzuzu
Your postcard from Paris is winging its way toward you even as I type these words.
Myself, I'll be winging my way back to the U.S. tomorrow, stopping off in DC, then on to SF on Thursday.
June 20, 2011
sionnach commented on the word Mark Twain on Jane Austen
Every time I read ‘Pride and Prejudice,’ I want to dig her up and hit her over the skull with her own shin-bone.
June 20, 2011
sionnach commented on the word Gore Vidal on Truman Capote
He’s a full-fledged housewife from Kansas with all the prejudices.
June 20, 2011
sionnach commented on the word Vladimir Nabokov on Ernest Hemingway
As to Hemingway, I read him for the first time in the early ‘forties, something about bells, balls and bulls, and loathed it.
June 20, 2011
sionnach commented on the word Vladimir Nabokov on Fyodor Dostoevsky
Dostoevsky’s lack of taste, his monotonous dealings with persons suffering with pre-Freudian complexes, the way he has of wallowing in the tragic misadventures of human dignity — all this is difficult to admire.
June 20, 2011
sionnach commented on the word Friedrich Nietzsche on Dante Alighieri
A hyena that wrote poetry on tombs.
June 20, 2011
sionnach commented on the word Robert Louis Stevenson on Walt Whitman
like a large shaggy dog just unchained scouring the beaches of the world and baying at the moon.
June 20, 2011
sionnach commented on the word Gustave Flaubert on George Sand
A great cow full of ink.
June 20, 2011
sionnach commented on the user feedback
I agree with bilby's earlier comment, that the Feedback page is quite difficult for an uninitiated user to find. Come to think of it, I pretty much agree with all of bilby's recent comments about the new interface. (This worries me, at some level.)
It's hard to avoid the conclusion that development of the new interface was done in a way that didn't give high priority to the wishes of the users. This is a bit disappointing, as one would hope that the administrators of a site as wonderful as this one might have learned that failure to take adequate account of a site's most faithful users' wishes is never a good idea.
I wish I weren't quite so negative about this change. But every time I look at the ridiculous tweets on, for instance, the page for ATM machine, I just get irritated all over again.
June 20, 2011
sionnach commented on the user feedback
Very interesting article - thanks for the link, Erin!
June 19, 2011
sionnach commented on the user feedback
Something weird happens to the way lower-case 't' is displayed for the particular font chosen for the new display.
June 18, 2011
sionnach commented on the user feedback
I'm writing separate comments here, as some are technical glitches and some, like this one, are more along the lines of an emotional/aesthetic reaction to the new interface. I think I understand the thinking behind mixing everything out there related to a given word on the same page, and some of the new features, such as synonyms and related words, seem undeniably useful. However, the same cannot really be said for the "examples", and the "tweets" not only add no value, they take up valuable space, and tend in general to be illiterate, often obscene, mindless and incredibly annoying.
To me, the most interesting content related to a given word or expression has always been the comments of regular users of the site -- what one saw in the old system if one hit the "Comments" button. If possible, I think it would be highly desirable to reinstate the ability to view only the content of one's choice, whether it be comments, definitions, images, or even - God forbid - tweets. With the current display, which tries to include everything, the interesting material is drowned out by "content" that is often worse than useless.
Thanks. I do appreciate all the work it must have taken to smarten up the interface. Obviously, this is just my reaction - I have no way of knowing how other regular users feel about the changes.
June 18, 2011
sionnach commented on the user feedback
There are aspects of the new interface that still require some working out. For instance, in the page that now constitutes the main viewing page for any given word or expression, I am invited to add the word in question to any of my most recent lists, or if that is insufficient, "to view all of my 50 lists". But I have more than 50 lists. It's not that I can't get at them; they are accessible from my profile page. But it used to be a simple matter to add words to any list; now, if that list is not among one's most recent 50 lists, it is distinctly more difficult.
June 18, 2011
sionnach commented on the word ATM machine
Apparently the designers of the new interface think I enjoy reading illiterate, obscene, xenophobic tweets about as much as I enjoy reading comments from other Wordnik users. This is not the case.
Please do not put user comments and tweets on the same page. It is not an improvement. Perhaps the thought might have crossed your minds that some of us log into Wordnik as a way of getting away from the drivel that permeates the rest of the web. Now you're forcing us to look at the drivel anyway.
June 18, 2011
sionnach commented on the word grauballe man
Grauballe Man (a poem by Seamus Heaney)
June 17, 2011
sionnach commented on the list man--1
glimmer man
grauballe man (a bog-buddy of tollund man)
June 17, 2011
sionnach commented on the list me---student-loans
What a most excellent list.
June 17, 2011
sionnach commented on the user 13003363
Seconded!
June 17, 2011
sionnach commented on the word stultifying glurgebucket
Tee-hee! Maybe I "improved" the Vogons' effort ....
June 17, 2011
sionnach commented on the word atm machine
ATM comments
June 17, 2011
sionnach commented on the word ATM machine
What is Wikipedia smoking?
June 17, 2011
sionnach commented on the word stultifying glurgebucket
Hmmm. One senses a lack of imagination on the Vogons' part:
June 17, 2011
sionnach commented on the word cartman
Apparently the Cent. Dict. predates "South Park".
June 17, 2011
sionnach commented on the word hauf and snake
Excellent, Monsieur big-ears !
June 16, 2011
sionnach commented on the word hauf and snake
Once again, Doctor Jamieson leads us straight down the lexicological garden path into the filthy bog at the end, like the malign etymological will-o-the-wisp that he is. Is there no end to this demon's twisted fiendish malevolence?
hauf and snake has two distinct meanings in the lowlands dialect:
1. a variant of "haufin' snake" (sample usage - "When that young feyboy Billy Elliott was out there prancing around in them tights o' his, sure there was a line of wee lassies strainin' their necks just to get a glimpse of his haufin' snake").
2. a variant spelling of "hoff and sneak", meaning to scoff and run, or leave an eating establishment without paying the bill.
June 16, 2011
sionnach commented on the word growkie-leakie
See omphalorrhea.
June 15, 2011
sionnach commented on the word haggis-grumlins
See allantiasis.
June 15, 2011
sionnach commented on the word kiddley-winks
See nephroblastomatosis.
June 15, 2011
sionnach commented on the word pus-na-whealies
See pyosalpingitis.
June 15, 2011
sionnach commented on the word arse-futtocks
See pyalgia.
June 15, 2011
sionnach commented on the word pyosalpingitis
pus-na-whealies
Usage: Bridget has taken to her bed with a bad case of the pus-na-whealies.
June 15, 2011
sionnach commented on the word allantiasis
also known as the haggis-grumlins. Do I need to give the source? I think not.
June 15, 2011
sionnach commented on the word nephroblastomatosis
kiddley-winks in the Scots dialect.
June 15, 2011
sionnach commented on the word pyalgia
What the Scots refer to as the arse-futtocks. (Doctor Jamieson's dictionary of highland ailments)
June 15, 2011
sionnach commented on the word omphalorrhea
What Doctor Jamieson refers to as the growkie-leakie.
June 15, 2011
sionnach commented on the user hernesheir
Would it be possible to do some kind of dynamic linking between Doctor Jamieson and the medical dictionary you are apparently currently browsing. For instance, it would be really fun to hear Doctor Jamieson's words for pyemesis and omphalorrhea? Or ... ponders ... maybe we could just make them up ourselves.
June 15, 2011
sionnach commented on the list killjoy-et-al
Do flophouse and clingstone really meet the criteria?
June 15, 2011
sionnach commented on the list killjoy-et-al
dotheboys, as in Dotheboys Hall is a near-miss for this list, I fear. Not sure about do-nothing, as in Truman's "do-nothing congress". The German word for nitrogen, Stickstoff, (chokestuff, or chokematerial) would be a nice addition, if foreign words were accepted. Actually, scratch that last one, as 'stuff' is not a direct object in the term.
June 15, 2011
sionnach commented on the word copremesis
It will come as no surprise to anybody that there is a metal band with this name.
June 15, 2011
sionnach commented on the word pyemesis
You know, for once, I'm glad that Flickr says "no images found".
Though, of course, this is still nowhere in the same league as copremesis.
June 15, 2011
sionnach commented on the word agonadism
Then my work here is done.
*Scampers off to besmirch yet another Wordnik page*
June 15, 2011
sionnach commented on the word agonadism
This seems like an unassailable proposition. One could, however, make the superficially plausible case that a truly vociferous behest might have some effect on the cremaster muscle, resulting in the rapid descent of "a pair", which might be confused with "growing" a pair. This is not the case. Further investigation reveals that the resulting cremasteric response is more likely to be one of contraction:
Where's Matthew Barney when you need him?
The final sentence of hh's comment is frankly baffling. Speaking personally, I have never been tempted to confuse neutropenia and anorchism.
June 15, 2011
sionnach commented on the word Peirce
Meanwhile, over on Twitter:
woe_cerri: I hate when people Peirce themselve it looks gross (Wed, Jun 15)
June 15, 2011
sionnach commented on the list killjoy-et-al
Wow. These words have the same structure as those on my bonebreakers and mother-in-law killers list.
June 15, 2011
sionnach commented on the word NTM
Nique Ta Mere, a legendary French rap group, whose name translates as "F*** Your Mother".
June 15, 2011
sionnach commented on the word red or green
I'm betting that not many people with red-green color blindness become vexillologists.
The flag of Chile makes a clear choice in favor of red.
June 15, 2011
sionnach commented on the word no money's too black to buy grog for lags
I was compelled to favorite this.
June 14, 2011
sionnach commented on the word an ape with angel glands
It was the German aversion to N-glands that precipitated WWI.
*Hums softly:
"Denn wir fahren, denn wir fa-ah-ren.
Denn wir fahren gegen N-gland"*
June 14, 2011
sionnach commented on the word pronephric
pickles de mini maïs (see saint pierre)
June 14, 2011
sionnach commented on the word saint pierre
John Dory.
For a delicious recipe for dos de Saint Pierre rôti, pickles de mini maïs by the charming Sébastien Buecher, see this video link
June 14, 2011
sionnach commented on the word violon d'Ingres
as seen here (now with extra-delightful flashing Eiffel Tower special effects)
June 14, 2011
sionnach commented on the word pronephric
I'm sure Leopold Bloom would have loved this.
June 14, 2011
sionnach commented on the word local girl makes good archetype
I hear her cassoulet is also to die for.
June 14, 2011
sionnach commented on the word ostler
Ooh! I love "The Highwayman"!
June 14, 2011
sionnach commented on the list •-little-pains-in-my-butt
Must not add tories to this list.
Must not add tories to this list.
Must not add ...
June 14, 2011
sionnach commented on the list •-little-pains-in-my-butt
Hmmm. Bridge trolls can be annoying, as can obtuse bridge players. But they don't fit on this list. But, since I'm in France, where anal insertion is the preferred mode of drug delivery, maybe I can add suppositories. Yes, that's the ticket!
June 14, 2011
sionnach commented on the word gorlins
gonternickles!
June 14, 2011
sionnach commented on the word fy-gae-by
Doctor J. was clearly a little fifish when he wrote this "definition". Other terms come to mind, but their grossness precludes their inclusion here, on a fambly website.
June 13, 2011
sionnach commented on the list things-that-make-me-happy--1
'zuzu: I'm sorry to hear about your grandmother's death. Your last comment below reminded me of this wonderful poem I came across, shortly after my own mother had died of cancer. I think the link below should still work (it's to a Word document, with the text of the poem, on my website). Mary Jo Salter, the author, is one of my favorite American poets (her husband, Brad Leithauser, is also a poet, and a fiction writer). I hope that the link works, and that you like the poem. It was first published in "The New Republic", probably around 1986.
Dead Letters
June 13, 2011
sionnach commented on the word fickfack
Oh, come on. Doctor J. is quite clearly just MAKING STUFF UP.
June 13, 2011
sionnach commented on the word lagan
This brings back memories of my mother singing "My Lagan Love". You Tube version (not by sionnach's mother, but worthy of your consideration, nonetheless) .
June 13, 2011
sionnach commented on the word a sexually transmitted disease with a mortality rate of 100 percent
Were you looking for a sexually transmit disease with a mortality rate of 100 percent?
No, not particularly.
June 13, 2011
sionnach commented on the word moresome
There ought to be a list.
*Rummages through early part of list o' lists*
Oh wait, there already is!
June 13, 2011
sionnach commented on the word We must restore the dignity of this vegetable!
Spices, marky? I do believe all those nuts are addling your brain.
We must restore the dignity of this list!
June 13, 2011
sionnach commented on the list things-that-make-me-happy--1
This sentence is also true for our family, if you replace the word "postcard" with the word "grudge".
June 12, 2011
sionnach commented on the list things-that-make-me-happy--1
The Santa Fox assures me, his Parisian representative, that he is honored to be on this list. Indeed, he is deeply honored. He is currently a wee bit exhausted, having spent far too much of the night out dancing with the sweet tooth fairies, and some of their less reputable brethren.
By an amazing twist of fate, tomorrow and Tuesday turn out to be two of the four days a year that the Santa Fox sets aside for such "old media" activities as "sending postcards to friends". By today's loose definition of "friend"ship, pretty much everyone on Wordnik is my friend and eligible to receive a lovely postcard from Paris. Some of you even met the older, more demanding, criteria for friendship, in my humble opinion. You know who you are.
Anyway, if anyone wants to receive a lovely Paris postcard from the Santa Fox (which could be worth millions to your children after his demise), all that is required is to send him the necessary information* care of my e-mail address on gmail. This takes the form myfirstnamemymiddleinitialmylastname followed by the usual gmaildotcom ending. My middle name is Michael.
*: this would be your name, your address, and whether or not you would like your lovely postcard to include the Eiffel Tower. Feel free to send me a private message on Facebook with the information, if you prefer, but given Facebook's general laxness about privacy, gmail might be the better option.
June 12, 2011
sionnach commented on the list the-former-island-of-urk
Have *you* been to Schokland, milos?
June 12, 2011
sionnach commented on the word strangers are usually born from a cabbage
How true, how true! And many of them carry that distinctive cabbagey smell around with them for ever. That's why we always keep a landscape goat grazing in our yard, to remain vigilant at all times.
June 12, 2011
sionnach commented on the word nefertweety
mummifying chickens
June 12, 2011
sionnach commented on the word puppy love song
And the foremost troubadour in this genre would be Donny!
June 12, 2011
sionnach commented on the word saint peter
They say that Saint Peter
Was a very big eater.
He founded the Vatican,
To have a seat for his fatty can.
June 12, 2011
sionnach commented on the word ignatius loyola
Ignatius Loyola
Was a bit of an a**hole, a
s are most Jesuit priests.
Frankly, they're beasts!
June 12, 2011
sionnach commented on the word joan of arc
Joan of Arc
Was afraid of the dark
So they lit a big fire
On her funeral pyre.
June 12, 2011
sionnach commented on the word tooth fairy godmother
Incredible that no one has listed this already!!
June 12, 2011
sionnach commented on the word dew drop in
as opposed to, e.g. "dew drop inn", which I'm sure must exist as a romantic getaway in the Poconos, replete with heart-shaped hot tubs
June 12, 2011
sionnach commented on the word jinglebell rock of ages
A well-known Christmas hymn.
June 11, 2011
sionnach commented on the word barbary corsair guitar
played by Keith Richards, of course.
June 11, 2011
sionnach commented on the word herald angel dust
Very high-grade product.
June 11, 2011
sionnach commented on the user sionnach
Go to bed, foxy!
June 11, 2011
sionnach commented on the word saint francis of assisi
Saint Francis of Assisi
used to get downright pissy
whenever his friends
called him a sissy.
Oh, fine. It's not a clerihew. Try this instead.
Saint Francis of Assisi
Would get downright pissy
If he caught an Italian
Being mean to a stallion.
June 11, 2011
sionnach commented on the word sir francis bacon bits
not so tasty
June 11, 2011
sionnach commented on the word canadian bacon bits
My word, but they're tasty, eh?
June 11, 2011
sionnach commented on the word mountebank of canada
A very dubious financial institution.
Not to be confused with the Mountie Bank of Canada.
June 11, 2011
sionnach commented on the word rorschach blot on the landscape
Every landscape should have one, to go with the goat.
June 11, 2011
sionnach commented on the word landscape goat
Every landscape should have one.
June 11, 2011
sionnach commented on the word 20th century fox and the grapes
Aesop updated.
June 11, 2011
sionnach commented on the word angioplasty of paris
it's all that rich French food...
June 11, 2011
sionnach commented on the word amputated limbo
Indeed, limbo was cut out of church doctrine a few years back.
June 11, 2011
sionnach commented on the word agelast laugh
This is very clever, given the meaning of agelast.
June 11, 2011
sionnach commented on the word the little mermaid in manhattan
I'd go see this. She could splash in the fountain in Central Park, together with the Friends cast!
June 11, 2011
sionnach commented on the word ballet shoestring budget
I dunno. This is almost a real STF. It has a certain pleasing logic to it.
June 11, 2011
sionnach commented on the word sir galahad a little lamb
or possibly, "Sir Galahad a little lambskin condom on when he rescued the Hoover damsel in distress"; though I think that constitutes more of a stream-of-consciousness fairy.
June 11, 2011
sionnach commented on the word arctic circle jerk
Well, they have jello-wrestling at the south pole; think of this as the boreal counterpart. To quote bilby:
June 11, 2011
sionnach commented on the word barometz
Well, the dreaded lamb of Tartary seems to have killed off everyone else on Wordie. It's awfully quiet around here today.
Or as yarb would put it;
June 11, 2011
sionnach commented on the word Ingres's violin
The 19th century French painter Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres's well-known passion for playing the violin gave to the French language a colloquialism, "violon d'Ingres", meaning a second skill beyond the one by which a person is mainly known. The American avant-garde artist Man Ray used this expression as the title of a famous photograph portraying Alice Prin (aka Kiki de Montparnasse) in the pose of the Valpinçon Bather.
le violon d'Ingres
June 11, 2011
sionnach commented on the word multiplex
filthy SPAMMER!
June 11, 2011
sionnach commented on the user sionnach
Very cool! Thanks, Teresa.
June 11, 2011
sionnach commented on the word barometz
That's lovely, blaff.
I think there's sufficient overlap between Scythia and the former U.S.S.R. to support the notion of the barometz falling into the Slav sphere of influence.
*Hears munching sound in the background. Looks around nervously.*
June 11, 2011
sionnach commented on the word the magnificent ampersands
Thanks, rol'. Your approval is always welcome!
June 11, 2011
sionnach commented on the word the magnificent ampersands
It's my list. I can break the rules if I want to.
June 11, 2011
sionnach commented on the word raoulia
Raoulia is a genus of flowering alpine plants in the daisy family that exhibit very fine and dense growths. These compact growths form large amorphous cushion-like masses with only the growing tips visible. Due to their shape and form, the plant clusters resembles sheep from afar, this giving them their alternate name, vegetable sheep.
June 10, 2011
sionnach commented on the word We must restore the dignity of this vegetable!
How about raoulia?
June 10, 2011
sionnach commented on the word We must restore the dignity of this vegetable!
Aieee!!! Flee the evil baromets!! Flee! Flee!
(Or, if you prefer, the evil barometz)
June 10, 2011
sionnach commented on the word We must restore the dignity of this vegetable!
From pickle switches to cornballs to cucumber in condoms, there seems to be an over-representation of vegetables on the 'most-commented' list. It's a veritable cornucopia of veggie goodness, I tell you.
Could we have some poultry on this list, please?
Signed, Foxy.
June 10, 2011
sionnach commented on the word orogeny
Is yarb using some special kind of "whisper font"?
*Is jealous, because I have no idea how to do that*
June 10, 2011
sionnach commented on the word plinth
I'd erect a sculpture of a pumpkin, vomiting with dignity.
June 10, 2011
sionnach commented on the word We must restore the dignity of this vegetable!
Oh, yeah, right. The majestic pumpkin:
seen here in one of its extraordinarily dignified moments.
June 10, 2011
sionnach commented on the word hermitage
Glad you enjoyed it, rolig. I got to visit the Hermitage in the summer of 1978 -- it is indeed a special place. At the time, only some fantastically low percentage of the paintings they had were on display (something like 5 to 10%); I wonder if that has changed now, or what their rotation schedule might be.
June 10, 2011
sionnach commented on the list phonestheme--cr---or-kr
Blafferty: I have two little rants on the cremains page which may help clarify why I think cranberries are evil.
June 10, 2011
sionnach commented on the list truth-about-lose-belly-fat--get-flat-stomach-are-right-way-to-get-your-body-fit
Myrrh, frankincense, and
SPAM: the gifts of two wise men
and one complete fool.
June 10, 2011
sionnach commented on the word We must restore the dignity of this vegetable!
Always insist on a sheathed cuke.
Surely this is a typo for 'heatshed cuke'; though where I live we call heatsheds 'greenhouses'.
If beets are so goddamned dignified, why do they blush constantly like giggling hormonal teenagers? Plus, have you ever read "The Beet Queen"? A book chocked to its little bookish gills with lascivious behavior.
My money is on the kohlrabi, because men of the Torah are always dignified, even those who work in kohlmines.
June 10, 2011
sionnach commented on the word croodle
pigeons do this
June 9, 2011
sionnach commented on the word cat
That's just your barcoo disease talking, mister!
June 9, 2011
sionnach commented on the word barcoo disease
Not to be confused with barcode disease, an occupational malady suffered by supermarket checkout workers.
June 9, 2011
sionnach commented on the word barcoo disease
Dear God. Whatever could this be? Wikipedia to the rescue:
It is characterised by nausea and vomiting exacerbated by the sight or smell of food and, unlike the usual gastro-intestinal infections, by constipation rather than diarrhoea. Fever and myalgia are also symptoms. Severe cases develop inanition and even death.
It is postulated that the disease is due to ingestion of cyanobacterial (blue-green algal) toxins, in particular cylindrospermopsin, a toxin from Cylindrospermopsis raciborskii and other cyanobacteria, which is a hepatotoxin.
Inanition: not a good thing, apparently. Also, apparently only Australians get barcoo disease.
bilby, are you there? Not feeling any symptoms of inanition, I hope?
June 9, 2011
sionnach commented on the word We must restore the dignity of this vegetable!
This opens a whole Pandora's box of questions, not the least of which is "Which vegetable is most dignified?". And is this ranking invariant, or does it change with the times? Vegetable popularity does - witness the recent Irish infatuation with mangetout, which duly ran its course, only to be replaced by rocket lettuce, aka arugula.
June 9, 2011
sionnach commented on the word rusé comme un renard
sly as a fox
June 9, 2011
sionnach commented on the word cat
But who would affix the tag "false friend" to a puddy-tat? Spiteful bastards, that's who.
June 9, 2011
sionnach commented on the word municipal bondage
Yes, indeed. An underrated and very funny writer:
sionnach's review of "How to Live"
June 9, 2011
sionnach commented on the word sleech
Mister Sleech was out sleeching the sleech
When he let out a terrible screech
Cuz from out of the dregs
Stuck to each of his legs
Was a beastie that looked like a leech!
June 9, 2011
sionnach commented on the list a-good-egg
No rotten eggs on this list!
If eggs had legs, would they wear L'eggs?
Leggo my eggo!
June 9, 2011
sionnach commented on the user shenzhenelectronic
Roseate pork slab
How you quiver on my spork!
Radiant light, gelled.
June 9, 2011
sionnach commented on the user jasmengleford
I hear the SPAM ball
It bounces, porqua, porqua
A haiku of spring.
June 9, 2011
sionnach commented on the user jasmengleford
Definitely spam.
Does SPAM contain tongues?
When you eat it, does it taste
you as you taste it?
June 9, 2011
sionnach commented on the word cornball
Read this in a font with bad kerning and it sounds like the start of a well-known Christmas carol.
June 8, 2011
sionnach commented on the list extended-ipa-letters
"though" is from my list of words that get even better when you add a 't' to them.
Add a t to the keystone state and you get tPA, a potentially lifesaving thrombolytic drug. Or an airport in Florida.
Airport, in contrast, is not improved by adding another t, but adding an 'h' might have some potential.
I's ime for me o go o bed.
June 8, 2011
sionnach commented on the word Man with dead weasel accused of assault
The victim asked, "Why are you carrying a weasel?" Police said the attacker answered, "It's not a weasel, it's a marten," then punched him in the nose and fled.
(See comments under marten; thanks to swordnik)
June 8, 2011
sionnach commented on the list extended-ipa-letters
I though IPA was a kind of beer.
June 8, 2011
sionnach commented on the word cremains
Speaking of cranberries, they seem to me to be the DSK of the orchard. One imagines the scenes of dismay down in Fruitville when the cranberries move into the neighborhood, with each of the other fruits nervously anticipating the inevitable rape scenario under which they will be forced to submit to the voracious sexual appetites of some marauding band of cranberries, to produce, in due course, some appalling bastard hybrid, the juice of which will inevitably end up taking up space on our supermarket shelves.
Ask any apple or raisin. They can tell you what it's like. Grapes and peaches too. It's like post-war Berlin down in the fruit groves, I tell you. Nobody is safe from the rapacious cranberry clan.
June 8, 2011
sionnach commented on the word coinkidink
AAAAAIIIIIEEEEEEEE!
This hurts my eyes, and gives me a vile earworm of someone closely resembling the Church Lady enunciating this heinous blot on the linguistic landscape with mincing smugness.
I am not a person who favors the outlawing of any form of speech, but if I were, this would be top of my list. Right up there with cremains.
June 8, 2011
sionnach commented on the user sionnach
Whipping Cats Special 100th Post, now with video!
cancerous moth
Don't miss the final 20 seconds of the 3-minute video, as the soul of Siegfried, decked out in his best ABBA outfit, crawls up the Venetian blinds like a cancerous moth ! No wonder the producer was roundly booed when he appeared on stage at the end.
June 8, 2011
sionnach commented on the word moro reflex
My favorite excerpt from this whole fracas has to be:
"Yes, yes, soft cheeses, of course. We're not monsters! "
That is pure Wordnik gold, right there, folks!
June 8, 2011
sionnach commented on the word I dislike ampersands
I know that bilbies can be a little annoying at times, but boiling them seems a little excessive.
*Wonders if the downunda version of "Fatal Attraction" was modified to have Glenn (Sheila) Close boil a bilby instead of a bunny. After all, bunnies are considered a nuisance down there, so boiling a bunny would be considered a public service*
"That Sheila's a bit wacko, eh Bruce?
Yeah, she's a right bilby-boiler, Bruce."
(Typical conversation overheard during a smoko)
June 8, 2011
sionnach commented on the word moro reflex
Oh dear God. This is the BEST PAGE EVER!!!
June 7, 2011
sionnach commented on the list the-list-who-cried-wolof
Was DSK studying the handbook from which this list is derived?
June 7, 2011
sionnach commented on the word menfauxpause
Thank you, rolig!
June 7, 2011
sionnach commented on the list collection-o-collocations
Speaking of literary phrases, some possibilities might be "madding crowd", "budding grove", "darkling plain". But these strike me as being a bit too literary to be considered of general interest. Besides which, open up the list in that way, next thing you know, half of Shakespeare will have elbowed its way in.
June 7, 2011
sionnach commented on the word cut the melon
What does this mean, in a figurative sense?
June 7, 2011
sionnach commented on the word eye dialect
Even after bouncing around over on Wiktionary, I'm not entirely sure I understand this term correctly. There is a lack of examples. Would writing "coff" for "cough" be considered an example of "eye dialect".
*Coffs nervously, feeling stewpid, hoping that someone will provide further clarification*
June 7, 2011
sionnach commented on the user sionnach
The comment feature on my Whipping Cats blog should now be fixed, so that there should no longer be any difficulty in posting comments. Please let me know (e.g. by sending me a message here, or by e-mail) if you encounter problems.
Even anonymous marsupials should be able to comment.
June 7, 2011
sionnach commented on the word 867-5309
This seems to be stretching the rules of proof just a little bit, Pro. The only thing that your link establishes is that you have placed it on your prime numbers in songs list, which seems like a classic example of affirming the consequent.
Or did I miss the part where you explained how "apparently" appeared in your recent post? Personal charm is not a substitute for solid substantiating evidence, Professore.
Note that I am not questioning the validity of your conclusion, just your method of argument. :-)
June 7, 2011
sionnach commented on the word Weissnitchtwo
I think this probably should read Weissnichtwo, assuming the reference is to Carlyle's work. It is literally translatable from German as "don't know where". Apparently Walter Scott also wrote something along these lines about a place called Kennaquhair, though that sounds more like a location in a Stephen King work.
June 7, 2011
sionnach commented on the word I dislike ampersands
I don't dislike ampersands, because they remind me of the treble clef sign, which I loved as a child.
"This is Mrs Treble, with her tightly folded skirt."
"This is Mr Bass, with two buttons on his shirt."
June 7, 2011
sionnach commented on the word melittologist
Does this mean melittology is a sub-specialty of apiology? The latter sounds like an excuse made by a penitent primate.
June 7, 2011
sionnach commented on the word full online keyboard
Red mercury bejeweled for palm-Their toil and loaded jounce too so they from the feast that
June 7, 2011
sionnach commented on the word full online keyboard
In a vertical shaft the valley lowlands How heard except the roar land.
June 7, 2011
sionnach commented on the list the-red-ink-ran-dry
"The Ball-lad of Reading Goal" is one of my favorite peoms.
June 6, 2011
sionnach commented on the list collection-o-collocations
I have come across groaning board many times in my reading, so I concur with rolig.
(It's generally wise to concur with rolig, in my experience)
June 6, 2011
sionnach commented on the word sleeve
You know, I don't really care what Jack and Stephen get up to in the bath -- they can amuse themselves by farting in the bathwater and attempting to bite the bubbles, as far as I'm concerned.
But I am horrified by the type of writing exemplified by Jack's ridiculous question, which makes no sense at all, at any level, real or metaphoric.
I will don my pointy pedant-hat to make two points:
1. the word is "sleave", not "sleeve" (sleave = a woven or threaded skein of yarn)
2. "sore labour's bath" is a reference to sleep, so the conjunction 'and' makes no sense, unless they plan to attempt the D minor double sonata in their sleep. Is Stephen agreeing to a little night music, or to getting some beauty rest? *
I call shenanigans on Mr O' Brian's faux-erudition. If he wants to lard his writing with Shakespearean references, he should take the trouble to get them right.
*: OK, granted that Jack might be proposing a little night music, followed by 40 winks, but given O' Brian's propagation of the 'sleeve' error, I'm inclined to think it's just another example of sloppy writing.
June 6, 2011
sionnach commented on the list found-in-pairs
I have spent at least 5 fruitless minutes now debating whether or not Siamese twins belong on this list.
June 5, 2011
sionnach commented on the user sionnach
Thanks, Bill B. I'm hoping to come back here in the autumn because, indeed, there is something about Paris that lifts my foxy spirits. Plus, I love learning French, which is a step above Thpanish in difficulty. But I intend to subdue it and bend it to my will. Because until that is done I can't move on to Italian.
I would post this on your profile, but you are invisible to us all here in the material world. Do marsupials ever leave the DUMPP (down-under marsupial protection program)?
June 5, 2011
sionnach commented on the list things-that-get-way-more-fun-when-you-add-a-p-to-them
Ahem! First chained bear has taken to calling me "big ears' over on Facebook; now reesetee appears to be confusing me with bilby.
I am not a marsupial. Sure, I've fantasized about it a little, even dabbled in marsupialism in my wild college years. But I would like to assure all of my fans, on either side of the placental divide, that this fox is 100% placental*. Those "birthers" who argue to the contrary are shapeshifting eco-terrorists, in the pay of big agribusiness.
*: physical evidence is, naturally, difficult to produce as, in accordance with the best prevailing vulpine midwifery practices at the time, my mother ate it in a delicious casserole.
June 5, 2011
sionnach commented on the word prussia
Rupssia as a nation was a direct result of the rupssia of the U.S.S.R.
June 5, 2011
sionnach commented on the list french-fruits
See also French expressions involving fruits and vegetables
June 5, 2011
sionnach commented on the list french-vegetables
See also French expressions involving fruits and vegetables
June 5, 2011
sionnach commented on the list mateusz-wasilenia
It is more common (and more useful) to add comments pertaining to individual words on a list to the words themselves (just click where it says 'x comments', next to the word).
Thanks!
June 5, 2011
sionnach commented on the word volkderwanderung
I am guessing that if this spelling were given in the final round of the spelling bee, it would be an automatic FAIL. Surely the word you are looking for is volkerwanderung?
June 5, 2011
sionnach commented on the word a great motionless beast
Existence is not something which lets itself be thought of from a distance: it must invade you suddenly, master you, weigh heavily on your heart like a great motionless beast --- or else there is nothing more at all.
Jean-Paul Sartre, "Nausea"
June 5, 2011
sionnach commented on the word poisoning the wells
During the last century a famous controversy took place between Charles Kingsley and Cardinal Newman. It began by Kingsley suggesting that truth did not possess the highest value for a Roman Catholic priest; that some things were prized above truth. Newman protested that such a remark made it impossible for an opponent to state his case. How could Newman prove to Kingsley that he did have more regard for truth than for anything else, if Kingsley argued from the premiss that he did not? It is not merely a question of two persons entertaining contradictory opinions. It is subtler than that. To put it baldly, Newman would be logically 'hamstrung.' Any argument he might use to prove that he did entertain a high regard for truth was automatically ruled out by Kingsley's hypothesis that he did not. Newman coined the expression poisoning the wells for such unfair tactics...The phrase poisoning the wells exactly hits off the difficulty. If the well is poisoned, no water drawn from it can be used. If a case is so stated that contrary evidence is automatically precluded, no arguments against it can be used.
June 5, 2011
sionnach commented on the word gadarene swine
the pigs into which Jesus cast the demons that had possessed a madman, and which as a result ran down a steep cliff into the sea and were killed; from this, gadarene means involving or engaged in a headlong or potentially disastrous rush to do something.
June 5, 2011
sionnach commented on the word Coachella
There is no such word as coachella.
What did Cinderella go to the ball in, then? A pumpkin?
Oh, wait. Never mind. :-)
Interesting. Thanks, Thetan!
June 5, 2011
sionnach commented on the word pornithology
Try using cooter muffaloon to get there!
June 4, 2011
sionnach commented on the word weyant jelly shoes for cats who enjoy jello-wrestling at the south pole
Well, this must certainly get on the 'trending words' list, for sure!!
*Cackles foxily*
June 4, 2011
sionnach commented on the word cang
Browsing the 'can' page of the dictionary, are we, r-t?
June 4, 2011
sionnach commented on the word homme politique
French word for politician
June 4, 2011
sionnach commented on the word high dudgeon
Is there any other kind?
June 4, 2011
sionnach commented on the list collection-o-collocations
I don't think tea chest belongs on this list, at least not the way I understand this list. I don't know whether such set phrases as "flotsam and jetsam" belong or not. Then there are phrases like lily-livered poltroon, which might just be natural juxtapositions in my head, but not in anyone else's. :-)
This list seems to have some partial overlap in its intent with my own "amber words" list.
June 4, 2011
sionnach commented on the word pedum
Hint to blafferty - try looking at the definition page. It may be effortful, but I'm sure you can manage it, by hook or by crook.
*pedum-tshhh
June 4, 2011
sionnach commented on the list enjoy-online-casino-bonus-casinos-and-casinos-internet
You can sit in your own place and have the fun.
This sounds like an incitation to immoral behavior to me. Not to mention, SPAM!
June 4, 2011
sionnach commented on the word a cancerous moth slowly try to make his way up your Venetian blinds
Siegfried's death scene, in the Opera Bastille's production of Götterdämmerung.
June 4, 2011
sionnach commented on the word le crépuscule des dieux
See also a cancerous moth slowly try to make his way up your Venetian blinds.
June 4, 2011
sionnach commented on the word le crépuscule des dieux
Valhalla at the Bastille
June 4, 2011
sionnach commented on the word comfortable
I'd favor rolig's first hypothesis, if only on the basis that Spanish engages in this kind of metathesis all the time, e.g. milagro for miracle, or - my personal favorite - regaliz for "licorice".
June 4, 2011
sionnach commented on the word arsy-farcy
Elizabeth loved Mr Darcy
I trust you are with me so far, see
The whole of the plot
Is to get to the spot
Where he loves her too. Arsy-farcy.
June 3, 2011
sionnach commented on the word rump and coke
Now, if you just add this to the "things that get way more fun when you add a "G" to them" list, you'd have yourself a grump and coke.
June 3, 2011
sionnach commented on the word swine
Why don't humans drink swine milk?
Duh, delicious bacon!
June 3, 2011
sionnach commented on the word swine
Though we tend to associate swine with impossibility, "when pigs fly", cows tend to feature more prominently in this context in other cultures: "when cows fly", "at Easter of the horses and at the wedding of the cows", "when the cow coughs".
French also is quite fond of cows when it comes to expressions, e.g. "La vache !" (Dammit!); "vachement" as an adverbial intensifier, etc. An interesting discussion of this phenomenon is found here .
June 3, 2011
sionnach commented on the word pastiche
Personally, I agree with she/her on this one; pastiche has too many inescapable pejorative connotations for me ever to consider it a positive designation. Instead of hodge-podge, how about salmagundi? Or the ever-pleasing gallimaufry?
June 3, 2011
sionnach commented on the word basin
Do you think the Hogwarts sorting-hat had to spend time in the sizing-kettle?
(Why does that sound vaguely dirty?)
June 2, 2011
sionnach commented on the word robot hoedown
See jello-wrestling at the south pole.
June 2, 2011
sionnach commented on the word jello-wrestling at the south pole
as seen here
*Secretly hopes this may be adopted as a 'trending word', like jelly shoes*
June 2, 2011
sionnach commented on the word cant dog
Synonym for peavey?
Antonym for can dog, a particularly aggressive political campaign manager?
June 2, 2011
sionnach commented on the word eckle-feckle
Doctor J. had a servant, Mick Muckle
A name, you'll agree, worth a chuckle
When Hyde was a dick
It was all up to Mick
I can't finish this - who the f###'ll?
June 2, 2011
sionnach commented on the word eckle-feckle
You have to feel bad for Doc Jeckle
As a youth he was covered with freckles
Meanwhile, growing insyde
was the mean Mister Hyde
who was anything but eckle-feckle.
June 2, 2011
sionnach commented on the word Halicephalobus mephisto
Deep in the mines of Moria, it's the subterranean worm from hell!
June 2, 2011
sionnach commented on the word eckle-feckle
One might be tempted to argue that Doctor Jeckle was the eckle-feckle counterpart of Mister Hyde.
June 2, 2011
sionnach commented on the word dingledousie
A stick ignited at one end, and foolishly given as a plaything to a child.
That might depend on the particular child, no?
June 2, 2011
sionnach commented on the word herald-duck
Maybe we should arrange a play-date. Might be kind of noisy, though.
June 2, 2011
sionnach commented on the word hump-glutteral
Please note that the corresponding meleagrine term is plump butterball.
June 1, 2011
sionnach commented on the word cruggles
Lord Voldemort's a bit of a swine.
In fact you could say he's porcine.
He made all of the muggles'
cows come down with cruggles.
Bessy now looks like a porcupine.
June 1, 2011
sionnach commented on the word inspidity
"This coffee is very inspid", said Vlad, "c'est le pipi du chat".
June 1, 2011
sionnach commented on the word blog
I wrote a book this morning, and I'll probably write another one after dinner.
Oh, sorry. I meant a paragraph.
Oops! Make that a sentence.
Word.
@
Cede the language to the pea-brained and we can all just go quietly extinct.
June 1, 2011
sionnach commented on the word herald-duck
I call my herald-duck Gabriel.
June 1, 2011
sionnach commented on the word habbowcraws
Wouldn't it be more effective to shout "Giant Pterodactyl Alert!!"?
June 1, 2011
sionnach commented on the list dity
One wonders why 'horrid'and 'fervid' (and 'squalid' and 'torpid', to some extent) took another path in the etymological forest.
And what about this sentence: "The unusual degree of cuspidity of Dogboy's canines gave him a particularly lupine cast"?
June 1, 2011
sionnach commented on the word ororotundity
This is a word? Rilly?
June 1, 2011
sionnach commented on the word pea coffee
How Mr Gooding takes his coffee makes no nevermind to me.
June 1, 2011
sionnach commented on the list wordlist-wordoperation-test--5
*horkety-hork*
June 1, 2011
sionnach commented on the list one-person-s-holiday-is-another-s
National bilby day, the day of the jackal, day of the locust; even the dead have their day. Why no day of the fox?
An important question, without a satisfactory answer. Fortunately, even if there is as yet no day of the fox, there is a fox of the day .
June 1, 2011
sionnach commented on the list one-person-s-holiday-is-another-s
This year's national bilby day falls on the 10-year anniversary of the September 11th attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon. I imagine this will give the conspiracy theorists something to dig into, so to speak.
June 1, 2011
sionnach commented on the word un troussage de domestique
The breathtakingly arrogant, dismissive, phrase used by Jean-Francois Kahn, one of France's best-known intellectuals of the left (co-founder of the leftist weekly magazine "Marianne" and no relation to Dominique Strauss-Kahn, though a longstanding friend of his wife, Anne Sinclair), to describe what he "felt sure must have happened" in that hotel suite in Times Square.
It can be roughly translated as "lifting the skirt of a domestic", evoking the kind of "droit du seigneur" behavior of those golden days when the right of the (male) ruling class to engage in unconsensual sex with the help went unquestioned.
I am pleased to relate that this particular remark triggered a firestorm of criticism here in France, to the extent that this week's edition of "Marianne" contains a blathering, self-pitying column by Monsieur Kahn, wherein he claims to have been the victim of a witch-hunt, and - sadder, but one hopes a little bit wiser - announces his retirement from writing his weekly column for the magazine.
The misogynistic arrogance of the the caste that constitutes France's "intellectual elite" is, as I said, just breathtaking. There was also the public pronunciation by former culture minister, Jacques Lang, to the effect of "why jail a man, it's not as if anyone was killed", not to mention the nauseating special pleading of douchebag Henri-Bernard Levy, complaining that the American justice system was corrupt, because of its failure to recognize the special status of his VIP buddy, Strauss-Kahn.
It all makes me sick to my stomach.
Google-translate misses the point as usual, rendering the phrase "un troussage de domestique" as "of a sweeping domestic". But then it translates "droit de seigneur" as "law lord", so what can you expect?
June 1, 2011
sionnach commented on the list a-myriad-of-irii
I have favorited this list, and anxiously await future additions. In fact, you could say I await them with baited breadth. But then you would expose yourself to the mockery of others.
May 31, 2011
sionnach commented on the list a-myriad-of-irii
I could keep a Beretta in my biretta. Though, actually, as far as cardinal garb is concerned, it's the red socks that interest me more. But then I've always harbored a weakness for ecclesiastical haberdashery.
May 31, 2011
sionnach commented on the list a-myriad-of-irii
My dream is to be the guy in the Vatican whose job it is to make up new Latin words for modern things/phenomena that didn't exist in Roman times. I might have to kill a few cardinals to accede to the position, though. :-)
May 31, 2011
sionnach commented on the user sionnach
French Animal Expressions : Special Pussycat Edition
May 30, 2011
sionnach commented on the word biscotti
Croustisnacks!
May 30, 2011
sionnach commented on the word biscotti
Those frogs are adorable!
May 29, 2011
sionnach commented on the word pleasantly plump
Type II diabetes is like a vampire - it can't take over your body unless you invite it in.
May 29, 2011
sionnach commented on the word pleasantly plump
May 29, 2011
sionnach commented on the word pleasantly plump
I've always been partial to rubenesque, myself. A little zaftig, with a tendency toward embonpoint.
May 29, 2011
sionnach commented on the list ovoloovoloovoloovoloovoloovoloovoloovoloovoloovoloovoloovoloovoloovoloovolo
egg and tongue sounds a bit risque.
May 29, 2011
sionnach commented on the word othello dolly!
Obviously, this is a mistake. It's meant to be "Othecko, Docky!"
May 29, 2011
sionnach commented on the word Saif Al Islam Ghadaffi
Given that 20,000 people attended his funeral a month ago, it's a fair bet that Saif actually is dead.
I've heard the same thing about Elvis. That doesn't mean it's true.
May 28, 2011
sionnach commented on the word ingrain
More like a discombobulated gerund.
May 28, 2011
sionnach commented on the word urban fox
link to address from which this image is taken is Urban Fox by Pirate Technics
May 27, 2011
sionnach commented on the word Italians with white mice
A recurring theme in Victorian literature (Middlemarch, Little Dorrit, The Woman in White)
May 27, 2011
sionnach commented on the word lesser-known proofreading marks
I just followed the trail of virtual caviar droppings ..... :-)
May 27, 2011
sionnach commented on the list french-fruits
French fruits
May 27, 2011
sionnach commented on the word lesser-known proofreading marks
There once was a bodyguard named Vlad
Whose face was ineffably sad
Vlad was like Mona Lisa
But then he met Teresa
Then Vlad went from being sad to glad!
May 27, 2011
sionnach commented on the word vulpine diorama
Wait until Mothra arrives!
May 27, 2011
sionnach commented on the word synosmic
My cousin, the black sheep of the family, was caught up in a bit of an embezzlement imbroglio at work and had to emigrate to Australia to escape the wrath of the authorities. Now we refer to him as Sin-Oz-Mick.
May 27, 2011
sionnach commented on the word synosmic
And if the resulting flavour is so out-of-this-world deliciously yummy that it's a guilty pleasure, you could call it syncosmic.
May 27, 2011
sionnach commented on the word vulpine diorama
Fox and friends.
May 26, 2011
sionnach commented on the list collection-o-collocations
Too tired to correct that ludicrous ambiguity in that last post. But I was living in a rented apartment, not in a tea chest.
May 26, 2011
sionnach commented on the list collection-o-collocations
After my mother died, in 1985, I inherited one of her china services. It was all packed up and shipped to New Jersey, where I was living at the time, in a tea chest. Because back in those days, that was what one used to ship things in. I still have the entire set, fully intact. It's been used maybe a total of five times. Guess I don't throw enough dinner parties for twelve people.
May 26, 2011
sionnach commented on the word bellical
Scots term, my Roman arse!
May 26, 2011
sionnach commented on the list gangster
Marky, are you familiar with the inspirational pimp business plan ?
May 26, 2011
sionnach commented on the word muck-ferreting dogs
as seen here
May 25, 2011
sionnach commented on the word Maunderings of nookshotten Norwegians
As seen here
May 25, 2011
sionnach commented on the user sionnach
It's another one of Foxy's infamous grammar rants , this time about the hideosity of prepositional verbs in general, with special attention given to the ludicrosity of Russian verbs of motion, and the mondo bizarro of the infamous bog of Irish prepositional pronouns.
May 25, 2011
sionnach commented on the word pea coffee
You're entirely welcome. Though sionnach would like to point out that this delightful illustration was really brought to us by the Paschal bilby. I just lifted it from the kopi luwak page, where the big-eared marsupial of Easter first deposited it. Santa Fox can claim no credit here.
May 25, 2011
sionnach commented on the word the English press reaction to Ibsen's "Ghosts"
From Wikipedia:
"Ibsen's positively abominable play entitled Ghosts....An open drain: a loathsome sore unbandaged; a dirty act done publicly....Gross, almost putrid indecorum....Literary carrion.... Crapulous stuff" - Daily Telegraph
"Lugubrious diagnosis of sordid impropriety....Characters are prigs, pedants and profligates....Morbid caricatures.... Maunderings of nookshotten Norwegians" – Black and White
"As foul and filthy a concoction as has ever been allowed to disgrace the boards of an English theatre....dull and disgusting....Nastiness and malodorousness laid on thickly as with a trowel." – Era
"Ninety-seven percent of the people who go to see Ghosts are nasty-minded people who find the discussion of nasty subjects to their taste, in exact proportion to their nastiness" – Sporting and Dramatic News
"The socialistic and the sexless....The unwomanly women, the unsexed females, the whole army of unprepossessing cranks in petticoats....Educated and muck-ferreting dogs.... Effeminate men and male women..... They all of them–men and women alike–know that they are doing not only a nasty but an illegal thing.... The Lord Chamberlain (the censor) left them alone to wallow in Ghosts.... Outside a silly clique, there is not the slightest interest in the Scandinavian humbug or all his works.... A wave of human folly" – Truth
(And, no, thank you, Wordnik genie, I was not looking for the English press reaction to ibsen's ghost)
May 25, 2011
sionnach commented on the word le doigté
Refers specifically to the fingering used to play a piece of music, but it also has the extended meaning of "skill" or "finesse"; equivalent of the German Fingerspitzengefühl.
May 25, 2011
sionnach commented on the word DOM-TOM
départements d'outre-mer et territoires d'outre-mer
(French overseas departments and territories)
May 25, 2011
sionnach commented on the word pea coffee
Oh, all right, 'zuzu. If you insist:
Does that help?
May 25, 2011
sionnach commented on the list sweet-tooth-fairy-dominoes
Duh. Thanks, Bill B.
Rolig, you are so droll! Guffaw.
May 25, 2011
sionnach commented on the list sweet-tooth-fairy-dominoes
Society garlic?
??
May 25, 2011
sionnach commented on the word Mademoiselle Julie
"Diving into Strindberg is a descent into Hell. The Hell of class struggle and the battle between the sexes. The Hell of paranoid delirium and complete breakdown... a long day's journey into night, into the heart of darkness ..."
From the program notes for "Mademoiselle Julie", which I saw earlier this evening.
May 24, 2011
sionnach commented on the user sionnach
Way after "Midnight in Paris" and Foxy isn't even remotely sleepy. Damn you, August Strindberg, with your disturbing plays!
May 24, 2011
sionnach commented on the word fumées de licorne
Unicorn fewmets!
May 24, 2011
sionnach commented on the word la descente aux enfers
A phrase that has been ubiquitous this past week, generally in reference to the fall from grace of Dominique Strauss-Kahn. But see also Mademoiselle Julie.
May 24, 2011
sionnach commented on the word Bernard-Henri Lévy
The personification of French "public intellectual" assmarmotry.
May 24, 2011
sionnach commented on the word cushat
My cushat is addicted to kumquats and the bills are becoming preposterous. Should I try paraquat?
Anguished Geordie.
May 24, 2011
sionnach commented on the list sweet-tooth-fairy-dominoes
"looks like this list already contains house"
Well neener, neener! Stamps little foxy paws, sulkily.
May 24, 2011
sionnach commented on the word pea coffee
"I'm just now working on a book about a Confederate general, and his corps is on its way to Gettysburg in search of shoes".
You see, I'd been reading this as "his corpse is on its way to G." and thinking this was just another one of them zombie civil war novels that reesetee is always toiling away at. But now I realise that was just a hilarious misunderstanding. By the way, I hope it was reesetee's comment that earned this entry a place on Pro's "Wordies talk about themselves" list. Because, let's be clear, Sharny McSquibals is entirely fictional, and is not meant to be a stand-in for me.
Personally, I drink coffee prepared only from the finest unicorn fewmets:
Fumees de licorne
May 24, 2011
sionnach commented on the list snose-words
Is snot-nosed too .... I dunno ... too something? obvious, or vulgar, or tautologous.
May 24, 2011
sionnach commented on the word ingowne
So, I says to him .... "How dare you come to the door like that in your dressonion?" . And do you know what the caffler has the cheek to say to me next? He says to me, 'When I want your ipingowne, I'll ask for it'! The bloody nerve of some people!!
May 23, 2011
sionnach commented on the word insucken multure
Not to be confused with bloodsucken vulture* or turducken culture** or hoboken sepulture***
*: First we insuck you, then we mulct you, then we outspit you.
**: Don't ask.
***: Where Jimmy Hoffa is really buried.
May 23, 2011
sionnach commented on the word hunk
Well, I'm damned if it's going on my Fireships and fizgigs list!
May 23, 2011
sionnach commented on the word hunk
Oh, pshaw, hh! Stuff and nonsense. Balderdash. Poppycock. Fiddlesticks.
May 23, 2011
sionnach commented on the word hump-glutteral
Not to be confused with dump-gutteral, the term used to describe the flesh of a beast found on the side of the road.
Or stump-guttural, the term used by linguists to describe the odd fricative-plosive snort made by (certain) Wordniks in response to Doctor Jamieson's more bizarre flights of fancy.
May 23, 2011
sionnach commented on the word hubbie
Isn't there a Ben & Jerry's ice-cream flavor called Chubbie hubbie?
May 23, 2011
sionnach commented on the word Send the creep running in a barrage of grapefruit!
I <3 Rebecca Solnit!
May 23, 2011
sionnach commented on the word perfect
"A luxury hotel chain needs to trademark this word immediately. "
As in:
Are you one of the power elite? Then think of the Sofitel Manhattan. Perfect for your next intimate rendezvous.
May 22, 2011
sionnach commented on the word bunniculastriation
Wow. "Bunniculastriation" already gets 32 google hits!
May 22, 2011
sionnach commented on the word perfect
Bilby beat me to my comment. Also, shouldn't that be per-pfucking-pfection?
May 22, 2011
sionnach commented on the word fewmets
Why is lars_bo spamming the fewmets page? But more to the point, we are in a position to show for the very first time, an extremely rare photo of
unicorn fewmets!
May 21, 2011
sionnach commented on the word molotov cocktail waitress
Squee!
May 21, 2011
sionnach commented on the word Nique Ta Mère
Of course, as part of the revolting media circus surrounding what the French refer to as l'Affaire DSK, we are all being treated to salacious re-interpretations of the singing nun's only hit: "Dominique-nique-nique-nique-nique-nique-nique-nique.."
Subtle, it's not.
May 20, 2011
sionnach commented on the word hosterage
When hernesheir tells us that hosterage
Is how Scotsmen refer to an osterage,
Foxy shuffles and pouts,
Protests "I have my doubts.
In fact, the whole thing is preposterage!"
May 20, 2011
sionnach commented on the word how sheep
a shepherd's call to his dog to incite him to pursue sheep.
Or to his pig, presumably. Baa, ram, ewe!
May 20, 2011
sionnach commented on the word hinkumsnivie
This seems odd. It's clearly related to Hookum Snivey, which has an entirely different meaning.
May 20, 2011
sionnach commented on the word hiving-sough
Not to be confused with the shriving-cough, a peculiar sound made by some priests before they shrive or fast.
May 20, 2011
sionnach commented on the word hoarsgouk
And herrings. Though it's possible that all of these "words" that hh has been entertaining us with lately are red herrings. A snipe hunt, if you will.
May 20, 2011
sionnach commented on the word herring drewe
There once was a herring named Drewe
Who hung out with a dubious crewe
He said "Maybe I'm erring,
But I'm just a young herring,
Who doesn't know what he should dewe".
May 20, 2011
sionnach commented on the word pea coffee
Speaking of coffee, today is the birthday of Honore De Balzac, who has some well-chosen remarks on the subject:
Du Cafe (added hilarity courtesy of google-translate)
May 20, 2011
sionnach commented on the word hankie
One has to wonder if Dr. Jamieson had been hitting the Jameson's when he wrote this "definition".
May 20, 2011
sionnach commented on the word cicurant
What a great blog, fbharjo!
May 20, 2011
sionnach commented on the word contumely
My very first Wordie/Wordnik word!
May 20, 2011
sionnach commented on the user sionnach
Fleiſʒiger Foxy
May 19, 2011
sionnach commented on the word weimaraner
— My weimaraner is barking a lot at cars going buy. I dont want to get is vocal cords removed so what should i do?
Really, Wordnik examples? Is this kind of illiterate drivel the best you can do?
May 19, 2011
sionnach commented on the list spinning
OK. I know there is a discussion about yarn-bombing somewhere on Wordnik. Why can't I find it?
May 19, 2011
sionnach commented on the word pea coffee
Gawd. Y'all are so demanding. I was doing my best. Anyway kopi luwak has its own page, surely?
May 19, 2011
sionnach commented on the word pea coffee
Several varieties of so-called coffee are made from fewmets and other coprological preparations. The best of these in our estimation is moose nugget coffee. This is made from dried moose excrement, which are roasted, like the genuine coffee berry, ground, mixed with egg, and prepared for the table exactly in the same manner, and in like proportions as the best Java or Mocha. If prepared with the care and skill usually bestowed on coffee making, it is a most palatable and nutritious beverage, and has won the praises of many reformed coffee drinkers who would not now exchange it for their old-time drink charged with caffeine.
Other former caffeine addicts maintain that the best brew is made with buffalo chips. Sharny Mc Squibals swears by it:
"After I've dropped the kids off at the pool, there's nothing I like better than to sit back, light up a Bondi cigar, and snack on a piece of delicious tappen pie, accompanied by a steaming hot cup o' buffalo chip coffee. Sometimes I'll add some cowblakes to the brew, for a little extra flavour, though you have to get the mix just right, else you'll have yourself a pot of fizzy gravy!"
May 19, 2011
sionnach commented on the list how-to-make-a-facebook-game
This list is indeed awesome. Thanks!
May 19, 2011
sionnach commented on the word toward
This is fascinating; thanks, qroqqa!
On edit, after reading rolig's astute comment: the very regular pattern of change from one form to the other between 1840 and 1940 is still striking, and suggests that the American usage was well-established by 1940. I wonder when the AP Style guide was first published.
May 19, 2011
sionnach commented on the word anastasie
Censorship
In France, censorship is personified by the ugly old woman Anastasie, generally portrayed wielding an enormous pair of scissors (les ciseaux d'Anastasie). This personification became popular in the second half of the 19th century; the caricature by Andre Gill (above) was particularly influential. The word is probably derived from the name of Pope Anastasios I, who was known for the fervor with which he attempted to suppress the publication of books he considered did not conform adequately to Catholic dogma.
May 19, 2011
sionnach commented on the word nag a ram
Try typing in anything beginning with 'ana' into google search and this is what comes to the top of the autocomplete queue. It's an anagram of 'anagram', evidemment.
Oh, google, you're so droll!
May 19, 2011
sionnach commented on the list first-lists
This list raises the interesting question - what was the first word you listed?
Now, it appears that this question may be easier for some Wordies to answer than for others. Because if, like me, you were a lazy slob back in the early days, your first list may be your default catchall list and have more than 3,000 words in it. It used to be that one could list one's words in the order added; now it seems that one can only list them in the reverse order added. Which means I would have to scroll through 30+ screens to get to my very first word. Which I am not interested enough to do.
But maybe there is another way? Any hints?
May 18, 2011
sionnach commented on the word giblich
Oops! It was King Gibich, not King Giblich...
May 18, 2011
sionnach commented on the word giblich
Aren't there gibliches in the Ring Cycle? Isn't Gunter the son of the King of the Giblichs?
May 18, 2011
sionnach commented on the list why-i-spend-so-much-time-on-wordie
I can't see the ʇɐq ʇınɹɟ either!
May 18, 2011
sionnach commented on the word gawlin
Aw shucks! Thanks, Bill B!
May 18, 2011
sionnach commented on the word gawlin
Tries desperately to assemble clever play on words involving the phrases "le Duc D'Orleans", "New Orleans", "N'awlins", and "gawlins", but fails miserably...
May 18, 2011
sionnach commented on the word exploding watermelon syndrome
charging baby tapirs! what are you doing here
May 18, 2011
sionnach commented on the word witchwich
We've got sourdough, focaccia, and whole wheat. Which witchwich would you like?
May 17, 2011
sionnach commented on the word kitchen bitch
See, e.g. I'm not your bitch, bitch
May 16, 2011
sionnach commented on the word morra
How are things in Glocca morra?
appalling, geographically impossible, "Celtic" ditty written by people born apparently without shame
May 16, 2011
sionnach commented on the word mucoadhesive
See proctofoam, if you dare!
May 15, 2011
sionnach commented on the word proctofoam
mucoadhesive is a word that just doesn't seem to come up all that much in casual conversation ...
May 15, 2011
sionnach commented on the user chained_bear
Congratulations, c_b! This means your new cub shares a birthday with my sister.
May 15, 2011
sionnach commented on the word peigner la girafe
to do something useless (literally, "to comb the giraffe")
May 14, 2011
sionnach commented on the word choogala moogala
Ahem! Did you say spider monkey juice?
May 14, 2011
sionnach commented on the user sionnach
Pas piqué des hannetons
Merci, Bill B !
May 14, 2011
sionnach commented on the word ortolan bunting
Infamously, one of the menu items at Francois Mitterrand's "Last Supper":
MMM. Endangered Songbirds! Crunchy!!
May 11, 2011
sionnach commented on the list sweet-tooth-fairy-dominoes
not sure how we got from Hans to device, but I offer "squad" as the next entry
May 11, 2011
sionnach commented on the word feather
You mean, like this:
May 10, 2011
sionnach commented on the word bullfit
sounds like bullsit to me!
May 10, 2011
sionnach commented on the user trivet
Yeah! trivet is back! Oh frabjous day!
May 10, 2011
sionnach commented on the word hairy ball theorem
Were you looking for hairy Ball theorem?
No, I was not. And I speak as someone who actually used a functional analytical version of the Brouwer Fixed Point Theorem to prove one of the major* results in my dissertation.
*: well, it was major to me. And it seemed to impress the committee members.
May 9, 2011
sionnach commented on the word TUNA
eeek!
May 9, 2011
sionnach commented on the word lock
Hey-day!
May 7, 2011
sionnach commented on the word i poked a badger with a spoon
This has been looked up 40 times?! Seriously??
(Revises former sunny notion about fellow Wordies)
May 7, 2011
sionnach commented on the list pennsylvania-dutch-of-stolid-country-cookery
I suppose it would be enormously politically incorrect to interject a remark involving the term "Saudi prostitutes" at this point.
But, honestly, so many items on this list sound so ... dirty what goes on between them dutch strickle sheets ... know what I'm sayin', rosina boi? nudge, nudge, wink, wink
g'shtupaful lew'r yourself, you salacious bawd! and keep your feelthy mitts off my kartoffel ballen.
Oh, wait, this is actually a SNL sketch starring Alec Baldwin
May 6, 2011
sionnach commented on the word stepped on a little frog
Reality is a club that smacks even the one who is holding it.
Experience is a comb that nature provides to bald men.
May 6, 2011
sionnach commented on the list mnemonics-days-in-the-month
this is the version I learned growing up
30 days hath September,
April, June and November,
All the rest have 31,
Excepting February alone.
Which only has but 28 days clear
And 29 in each leap year
"Who decided all this, and why couldn't they have used a logical system?"
They tried that after the French revolution. Didn't work out so well for them, as I recall. But then they were trying to incorporate 10-day weeks and 10-hour days as well; so much for the Enlightenment. Napoleon scrapped it all eventually and went back to the old system.
May 6, 2011
sionnach commented on the list lost-for-word
My first thought was "dord", but the thought process underlying the parallelism is different. Along the lines of "inadvertent inaccuracy versus deliberate inaccuracy designed to ferret out copyright cheaters".
May 6, 2011
sionnach commented on the list identify-the-wordienik
*Makes note to shop for souvenir tiara for 'zuzu.*
(fortunately, a return trip to Versailles is planned, with my next visitor from back in the U.S.)
May 5, 2011
sionnach commented on the list so-near-and-yet-so-far
This glimpse into how my mind functioned "about 4 years ago" is terrifying to me now!
May 5, 2011
sionnach commented on the list identify-the-wordienik
This was really more fun than the proverbial barrel-o-monkeys. Kudos to gangerh for the exciting, Eurovision-style, nailbiting countdown. And those fiendishly effective cred herrings. And congratulations to yarb and ruzuzu and ptero!
I guess I will just have to console myself by buying some kind of tacky mug with the Eiffel Tower on it. Because I will be here in Paris for another 7 weeks. Not that I would ever gloat about it; no, not me!
May 5, 2011
sionnach commented on the list identify-the-wordienik
So I think I have 5 right, and if fbharjo is chrestomathic, maybe 6.
But is it enough for the win? And why in hell didn't I put prodigal for seanahan, like the voice in my head was telling me to?
But I have to go to bed now.
May 4, 2011
sionnach commented on the list identify-the-wordienik
What's Eurovision? Is it like American Idol?
It's got the same cheesiness factor. But the prestige of entire nations is at stake. Purists like myself prefer the old days before the breakup of the Soviet union added about a dozen new entrants.
The voting is notorious for countries voting either for their neighbors, or deliberately slighting ancient enemies. And Luxembourg always seems to have an inordinate number of votes, given that nobody actually lives there, and the whole country can be rented out for parties. (Or is that Liechtenstein?)
on edit: Oh, poor sweet innocent 'zuzu, I don't think there's much ambiguity there.
May 4, 2011
sionnach commented on the list identify-the-wordienik
This is more long-drawn-out than the finale of "Top Chef, France". And that went on until midnight. It's 10:50pm here now, and I have to be in class by 9am tomorrow. He is tormenting us....
May 4, 2011
sionnach commented on the list identify-the-wordienik
Time for a shower. Back soon.
See ... that's just plain ... wrong!
Gnaws at fuflun anxiously, while wondering where to place mug ...
May 4, 2011
sionnach commented on the list identify-the-wordienik
ooh, goody! I am above average!!!
May 4, 2011
sionnach commented on the list identify-the-wordienik
Le jury du Luxembourg donne deux votes a hernesheir et deux votes a Prolagus...
May 4, 2011
sionnach commented on the list identify-the-wordienik
Oooh! This is like watching the results of the Eurovision Song Contest, except that the stakes are much higher.
*Still remembers fondly the year (1970) when sweet, innocent, gap-toothed Dana, from County Derry, won it for Ireland with the heart-rendering (sic) ballad, "All Kinds of Everything":
Snowdrops and Daffodils *
May 4, 2011
sionnach commented on the list identify-the-wordienik
Well, yarb, I think this question comes up every year, and I believe the probability of getting none right approaches 1/e (where e is the base for natural logs) as n gets larger and larger. So the answer to your question is 1 - (1/e) = roughly 63.2%
May 4, 2011
sionnach commented on the list identify-the-wordienik
So, in other words, I was led down the garden path at every turn.
Come on, gangerh, time to post the results already! You're just playing with us now ......
Though, with an average of fewer than 4 correct identifications per entrant, maybe there is some hope, just by sheer chance?
May 4, 2011
sionnach commented on the word address
"The English used the U.S.A is defiled beyond believe"
What kind of semi-literate nonsense is this, pray tell?
May 3, 2011
sionnach commented on the word dinosaur sentence
Described here
May 3, 2011
sionnach commented on the user sionnach
Yes, it was. But I moved it elsewhere, so maybe it's visible now?
May 3, 2011
sionnach commented on the word Abbottabad
A recent article by Stephen Moss in "The Guardian" suggests this as a candidate for the worst poem ever written, commenting:
"One begins to suspect satirical intent – or perhaps brain damage."
Does Major Abbott out-Mcgonagall Mcgonagall? You be the judge:
Abbottabad text
May 3, 2011
sionnach commented on the word 227
Methinks that, en espanol, the term "cousin prime" is a redundancy. Now, kissing cousin primes, that's a whole 'nother kettle of fish.
May 3, 2011
sionnach commented on the user sionnach
I am keeping my eyes on you all:
May 3, 2011
sionnach commented on the list identify-the-wordienik
Well, if frindley isn't alexis, bury me in a bog and call me sphagnovulpine. Y'all are obviously not reading my frogblog, because if you were, you'd know I was staying in the Marais, which means the marsh. I am a boggy froggy right now.
All my other choices were pure guesswork and/or following ze herd. Except for tear-resistant, which may be a very clever cred herring indeed. And heartstringplucker, which had enough of the STF about it to remind one of gangerh. mediaeval was tempting for chained_bear, but seemed too obvious.
Installs self next to telephone to await notification of being declared winner, munching on cupcakes and fufluns...
May 3, 2011
sionnach commented on the list identify-the-wordienik
I still think there should have been a rule preventing Wordnikoyennes who are really just birds trained to hunt and peck on the keyboard (you know who you are Madame R.T. Distingue) from passing themselves off as, you know, real virtual people.
(Written with the bitterness of someone who has wasted countless hours trying to teach Boris and Natasha to type with their little kitty-paws -- they always end up just chewing their little kitty-booties to shreds.)
May 3, 2011
sionnach commented on the word heiligenschein
Doesn't it also just mean "halo"?
May 3, 2011
sionnach commented on the word briss
And here I thought it was an especially sibilant circumcision.
May 3, 2011
sionnach commented on the word colepixy
The second Century definition given for this word is puzzling, to say the least.
Furthermore, the lack of images on Flickr is disappointing.
May 3, 2011
sionnach commented on the list identify-the-wordienik
Would it help anybody's decision to change anything, or not, if I told you that a brief scan of entries revealed that all of you were mostly wrong, or mostly right? Mwahahahaha!
No, it would not.
May 3, 2011
sionnach commented on the word hummer
Oh, you see that's just plain silly. It's quite sufficient to have the verb "to neigh"; there's no conceivable reason to have a special verb for starting the process. One can just say "Gluebones cleared his horsey throat, because he was feeling a bit catarrhy ...."
May 2, 2011
sionnach commented on the list identify-the-wordienik
Ping! That was the sound of yarb changing his "ming", muffled by the walls of his mortsafe, natch!
May 2, 2011
sionnach commented on the list identify-the-wordienik
* hugs Prolagus right back *
* dusts off phony umbrage and winks at dontcry *
* sits back and wonders what one has to do to get either (a) a cupcake, (b) a fuflun, or (c) some slop around here *
* enjoys ze mounting tension *
May 2, 2011
sionnach commented on the user rolig
Yes, rolig -- we miss your wit and rigor. Not to mention the Slovenian updates!
May 1, 2011
sionnach commented on the word žvrkljati
not to be confused with ženo Mućkalica, a wifebeater
May 1, 2011
sionnach commented on the list identify-the-wordienik
@dontcry:
And what am I? Chopped Liver?
Sob! sob! sob!
April 30, 2011
sionnach commented on the list identify-the-wordienik
Naw! It's an illusion.
I have absolutely no idea for most of them.
But yarb does live in mortal fear of bodysnatchers, that much is true.
April 29, 2011
sionnach commented on the list identify-the-wordienik
bilby is hidelugged
blafferty is ascian
chained_bear likes a wodge
dontcry is tear-resistant
erinmckean is calepinerienne
fbharjo is chrestomathic
frindley is alexis
frogapplause is a slopseller
gangerh is a heartstringplucker
hernesheir is balsamaceous
mollusque is systematic
oroboros is protean
possible_underscore is prodigal
The only Wordie I have actually met in person is sweet, charming, witty, loves animals and is a harlequin
pterodactyl is boggy
reestee est distingue
ruzuzu = lunette (aucune idee pourquoi)
seanahan is sinistral
I am sionnach
Wordnicolina is a greenhorn
Wordplayer is playful
yarb sleeps in a mortsafe
April 29, 2011
sionnach commented on the list identify-the-wordienik
Qui??? Moi!!!
Pas du tout!
April 25, 2011
sionnach commented on the list identify-the-wordienik
And I thought my word was *simple* this time. Apparently not!
April 25, 2011
sionnach commented on the word saute-mouton
leap-frog (literally "leap-sheep")
April 23, 2011
sionnach commented on the word easter bilby
Bonne Pâques au bilby Pâques!
April 23, 2011
sionnach commented on the user sionnach
Thanks, db: I think "burrowing" is a correct, but unimaginative, translation of rataconniculation, as it fails to capture the animal connotations of the latter,having to do with rats, puppies & bunnies. "Cannicula" is, according to Webster's, a common misspelling of "Canicula", another name for Sirius, the dog-star, and related to the Latin word for puppies; "Karnickel" is also a German word for "bunny", which is derived from the word "cunicula", which I think means "rabbit" in Latin.
By the way, though I don't necessarily agree with you on the particular instance, I greatly admire the passion of your lexicological rant over on gasometer. As somebody else mentioned, everyone is entitled to a few particular pet peeves (see discussion under data, for instance), and what is Wordnik for, if not to allow one to vent one's frustrations about one's word-related peeves?
April 23, 2011
sionnach commented on the word bunniculastriation
Comment # 10,000 (drumroll, please):
The name given to the ridges or grooves often found on the sides of parsnips:
assumed by cryptozoovegetologists to be the result of the fanged depredations of the dreaded Bunnicula as it lays waste to Farmer McGregor's carrot patch.
The process of producing aforementioned ridges or grooves.
April 23, 2011
sionnach commented on the word robidilardic
In the French text, the word robidilardicque is footnoted as appearing as robilardique in some versions. The latter word seems more consistent with the coinage that duckbill suggests.
April 23, 2011
sionnach commented on the word fanfreluches
I'm reasonably sure that fanfreluche means a frill, or possibly a furbelow. We saw the word in class my first week here in Paris.
April 23, 2011
sionnach commented on the word anthropophagodidymosiamailurophobia
Shhh! Don't tell duckbill about this "word".
April 22, 2011
sionnach commented on the word Nique Ta Mère
Suprême NTM (or simply NTM) is a French hip hop group formed in 1989 in the Seine-Saint-Denis département. The group comprises rappers Joey Starr (born Didier Morville) and Kool Shen (born Bruno Lopès). Their six albums were released by Sony Music Entertainment.
The group takes its name from the French slang "NTM", an abbreviation for "Nique Ta Mère" ("Nique" is derived from the shortening of the French word "forniquer" (fornicate)) meaning "F*** Your Mother". NTM is known for their hostility towards the police, violent lyrics, and legal battles with the French authorities. Their musical style is predominantly hardcore rap, although later albums include funk, soul and reggae influences.
The group is outspokenly critical of racism and class inequality in French society, and while their earlier music is violent, some of their later work, such as "Pose ton Gun" ("Put down your Gun"), is explicitly anti-violent.
In 1998, the group released its last album of original material under the NTM moniker, as both Joey Starr and Kool Shen started their own labels, promoting new bands and branching out in other fields such as the clothing industry (2High is Kool Shen's brand, Com-8 is Joey Starr's).
While officially the band still exists, and its well-known name was used in 2001 to promote a 'duel' album pitting the two label's artists against each other, Kool Shen was quoted in 2004 saying "on a fini avec NTM en 98" ("We were done with NTM in 1998").
The group is known for its gritty, dark and sometimes violent lyrics, as well as for the contrast between the two rappers' styles. While Joey Starr (also known as Jaguar Gorgonne and Double-R) has a relatively slow flow, aggressive lyrics and a deep, booming voice (which he sometimes uses to yell such as in "Pose ton Gun"), Kool Shen has a funkier flow as well as witty and rather melancholic lyrics.
April 22, 2011
sionnach commented on the word franchouillard(e)
adjective meaning French, in a slightly self-mocking kind of way; can have connotations of old-time traditional French (if applied to music), or pertaining to cliched French images, such as baguettes, berets, and camembert.
April 22, 2011
sionnach commented on the word spring
Here in Paris, the French media use the phrase "le printemps arabe" constantly.
April 22, 2011
sionnach commented on the user sionnach
No, but I am gradually inching towards a comment milestone, my own self.
Nominations accepted for shiny comment #10,000. No poop-related suggestions, please!
April 22, 2011
sionnach commented on the user reesetee
Reesetee has written 20,259 comments; Wordnik is billions of words, 943,480,593 example sentences, 6,603,031 unique words, 216,253 comments.....
20,259/216,253 = (furrows brow, counts on little foxy paws) = 9.368% of all Wordnik comments.
A contribution which dwarfs my own paltry vulpine 4.58%.
It's the parrots, isn't it? They are forced to enter little psittacine comments before they get their millet*.
Interestingly, Reesetee has entered *no* pronunciations. It's the parrots, isn't it?
*: A gen-u-wine capitonym, and not one of them fake ones.
April 22, 2011
sionnach commented on the word Es grünt so grün, wenn Spaniens Blüten blühen
goulash écureuil
April 22, 2011
sionnach commented on the word Babar
April 21, 2011
sionnach commented on the word baconalia
You are my people and I love you all more than I can say. More than a maple bacon sundae or a BBBLT.
One-two-three-four
let's do the sizzle!
April 21, 2011
sionnach commented on the word baconalia
I think the last two comments do a grave injustice to the advertising geniuses at Denny's. Paraphrasing from their website:
"At some point Baconalia sizzled out. Bacon historians contend that this could have been the result of a simple spelling mistake. Baconalia, the celebration of swine was misspelled "Bacchanalia", and confused with the Roman celebration of wine, which people then began to mistake for the original feast."
April 20, 2011
sionnach commented on the word maple bacon sundae
See baconalia.
April 20, 2011
sionnach commented on the word the sizzle
See baconalia.
April 20, 2011
sionnach commented on the word baconalia
as seen here:
Baconalia
It's things like this that make me regret my career choices. Instead of co-authoring a book that causes me to receive e-mail from earnest pharmacokineticists in Uganda and Sweden, I could have made a real contribution by going into advertising and coining words like "Baconalia". Which is sheer bloody genius, I think you'll agree.
April 20, 2011
sionnach commented on the list identify-the-wordienik
Nice try, 'zuzu! Too bad that everyone here knows your pure heart and sunny disposition render you completely incapable of guile.
April 19, 2011
sionnach commented on the list identify-the-wordienik
Jeez. You really have gone underground down under, floppy ears. Now we can't even send you a friendly pre-Paschal greeting on your profile.
Maybe that Swensen's murder really is catching up with you after all these years. There must be some reason for the deep cover.
April 19, 2011
sionnach commented on the word deflowered vegemite virgin, without furballs
Were you looking for deflower vegemite virgin without furballs?
No. I most definitely was not.
April 18, 2011
sionnach commented on the user polashkhandokar
Dogsvomit handmade spam shipped to your door by some wretched internet spambot.
April 18, 2011
sionnach commented on the list identify-the-wordienik
"do not comment on your intentions anywhere on this site as most of the words submitted have been published and the sharper participants will pick up on the fact that your word is in the last few listed".
I'm betting all of the sharper participants have seen "The Princess Bride" and will get totally bogged down in their own mental reverse-reverse-reverse psychology games if they attempt to follow that line of reasoning. Or do I mean reverse-reverse-reverse-reverse psychology games?
mwahahahaha!
April 18, 2011
sionnach commented on the user reesetee
Bonne anniversaire!
April 16, 2011
sionnach commented on the list irish-english-thats-not-in-american-english
There's also this list:
irish english
from which my favorite phrase is probably turf accountant.
April 16, 2011
sionnach commented on the word pwdr sêr
Mmmm. That dog's vomit slime mold sure looks toothsome.
April 16, 2011
sionnach commented on the word pwdr sêr
Not a valid Scrabble word? Zut alors!
April 16, 2011
sionnach commented on the word flea-rake
Updates "Kenny kens kenning" list.
April 16, 2011
sionnach commented on the word bon-vivants wearing fancy pants
May, we! floppy-ears.
April 16, 2011
sionnach commented on the word le diplomate
as in the phrase: "Nous avons mangé le diplomate"
No, there is nothing antropophagic going on here. My trusty visual French-English bilingual dictionary is quite clear that le diplomate is the word for everyone's favorite delicious dessert, trifle. This fact appears not to have made it to the synapses of the magnificent neural network that lurks within the heart of Google-translate, which insists on rendering the sentence above as: "Nous avons mangé la bagatelle". But that's what you get when you settle for the soulless machine-translation approach to life.
delicious diplomate
Note, however, that le diplomate can also mean "the diplomat", so if you find yourself travelling among, say, the Fore tribe of New Guinea, you might want to provide sufficient context to avoid any possible ambiguity.
April 15, 2011
sionnach commented on the word rakeheckonian
Obviously, this is the adjective derived from rakeheck.
April 15, 2011
sionnach commented on the word rakehellonian
Hmmmm. Rushes to update "Hecko reesetee!" list.
April 15, 2011
sionnach commented on the list identify-the-wordienik
Well, that's the interwebs for you. It's still a mystery why the AT&T support guy in Bangalore can get into my Yahoo e-mail account with the new password, but I can't access it from here, using the same password.
Thank God for Gmail! :-)
April 15, 2011
sionnach commented on the list identify-the-wordienik
I had to fiddle with it for a while, but eventually what seems to work is to go to the list in question, then find its exact address in your browser and copy that exactly into the href= part of the relevant HTML syntax. I think the reason that this works, where other possibilites don't, is that Wordnik replaces spaces in the list names with hyphens, as well as possibly making some other changes. If that makes sense ...
April 15, 2011
sionnach commented on the list identify-the-wordienik
Here are links to the previous two competitions:
Identify the Wordie 2!!
Identify the Wordie!!
April 15, 2011
sionnach commented on the list identify-the-wordienik
Squee! Count me in. Furrows brow, ponders list of shiny possible words...
April 15, 2011
sionnach commented on the word zwartbles
I am horrified that this word isn't listed in the "Z" section of my trusty French dictionary.
Horrified, I tell you.
April 13, 2011
sionnach commented on the list worse-than-they-sound
Why is spizzerinctum on this list? It seems like it would be a better candidate for the "not quite as bad as they sound" list.
Just sayin'
April 12, 2011
sionnach commented on the user bilby
Getting ready for those arduous Paschal responsibilities, oh floppy-eared one?
All the Parisian bells are clearing things with air traffic control in Rome for their flight back with the chocolate.
April 11, 2011
sionnach commented on the list the-man-without-qualities
Our boy Vardenis made it into the list description, but somehow not onto the list itself. I will rectify this when I have more time (and am less exhausted).
Thanks, 'zuzu.
April 11, 2011
sionnach commented on the user sionnach
There are muffins today. But otherwise I am too exhausted for creativity.
My brain feels full.
April 11, 2011
sionnach commented on the user sionnach
Whipping Cats has an exciting new feature, which may be of interest to all you Wordnik logonauts:
Geek's Corner
Or possibly, Geeks' Corner, should anyone else care to comment.
April 7, 2011
sionnach commented on the user sionnach
Some of you will probably enjoy this link:
10 best obnoxious responses to misspellings on facebook
April 7, 2011
sionnach commented on the user sionnach
That is a lovely little ditty indeed, albeit a teensy bit baffling in parts.
April 7, 2011
sionnach commented on the word Seachtain na Gaelige
Were you looking for "seachtain Na gaelige"?
No, I would look for Seachtain na Gaeilge; last time I checked, the genitive form of Gaeilge was still Gaeilge. Gaelige is not an admissible form; try running "Seachtain na Gaelige" through google's fine translating machine and you will be given the gmail address of some entity called "Groundwork muirmaid", which I think we can all agree is more than a little fishy
April 7, 2011
sionnach commented on the word Sansculottide
Why, yes. Yes, they are.
April 6, 2011
sionnach commented on the word moran
I'll trouble you to keep a civil tongue in your head there, yarrrrrrrrrrrb!
April 5, 2011
sionnach commented on the word moran
Would a very stupid, dyslexic, married warrior qualify as well?
April 5, 2011
sionnach commented on the word hilarious misunderstanding
My first French hilarious misunderstanding
Contextual note: my apartment back in S.F. has just been repainted, hence my leap to thinking of paint colors.
April 5, 2011
sionnach commented on the word Sansculottide
Make mine a kir sansculottes!
A nos femmes!
A nos chevaux!
Et a ceux qui leur montent,
Avec ou sans eperons!
April 4, 2011
sionnach commented on the user bilby
So, I get it. You've entered the witness protection program somewhere theredownunda (where women glow and men chunder). But aren't those big floppy leather ears a dead giveaway in the WPP?
April 4, 2011
sionnach commented on the word chef-candidat
The "Top Chef, France" equivalent of cheftestant.
April 4, 2011
sionnach commented on the word ingenuity
Prolagus is just playing a belated April fool's joke on us. Nothing he, or anyone, can say can convince me that ingegnosità is an actual word. It looks like the kind of furball a cat might throw up on one's freshly carpeted apartment.
April 3, 2011
sionnach commented on the list story-of-a-missing-s
While this list remains one of my all-time favorites, I must confess to being baffled by its title. And who the hell is "Parker Smith", and what has he done with uselessness?
Ah, those were the good old days, weren't they? The halcyon days of "about 4 years ago".....
April 3, 2011
sionnach commented on the user sionnach
Sob!
Why so sad, foxy?
Because a certain antipodal marsupial never visits my new blog. Is it the lack of candy-pooping animals? The absence of posts related to Operation Baked Goods? One tries one's very best. But nothing seems interesting enough to attract the attention of a certain chocolate-bearing marsupial.
Oh, I am desolate. Desolate indeed.
April 3, 2011
sionnach commented on the list specific-excrement
No thanks, chum. I'm allergic to shellfish.
March 23, 2011
sionnach commented on the word lob
One of my favorite scientific papers that I read while in graduate school was on the estimation of trunk volume of loblolly pines based only on serial measurements of tree circumference. An important topic if you care about forestry inventory management, apparently.
Or if you are a woodworm.
Mmmm. Loblolly pines.
March 23, 2011
sionnach commented on the list lost-for-word
Continuing on the them of impressive words, there is something about the word bulbul that is very appealing. Or the sound that nightingales traditionally make - jugjug. But perhaps these ruminations already exist in the comments for philomelian.
Then there's the word Banba, an old designation for Ireland. Seems relatively unremarkable, until you consider that its genitive singular form is Banban, which confers on it a kind of lurking charm, all the more impressive for being initially hidden.
But perhaps I am babbling.
March 23, 2011
sionnach commented on the word translate
#5 could use some clarification.
#3: I imagine that the bishop in question would be constrained to move diagonally from see to shining see.
March 23, 2011
sionnach commented on the word philimination
What happens to unsuccessful contestants on "The Amazing Race". Like certain other TV-spawned words (e.g. cheftestants for competitors on "Top Chef"), this term fills me with inordinate delight, bordering on glee.
March 23, 2011
sionnach commented on the list words-to-use-when-telling-off-adulturers
What's an adulturer?
Well, duh, it's obviously a grownup childurer.
March 23, 2011
sionnach commented on the word a la recherche du temps perdue
Very nice, 'zuzu!
That guy at the bottom of the Perdue link seems to have unnaturally large fingers. One imagines a company-wide egg-holding contest for the honor of being featured on the homepage...
I can't believe it's "about 3 years" since I added this. I had so many more brain cells back then. Sigh.
March 23, 2011
sionnach commented on the user sionnach
I run a cruelty-free blog, leather-ears!
March 23, 2011
sionnach commented on the user sionnach
I would like to clarify that the preceding post is in no way meant to imply that Prolagus is not clever. Having met P. in person, I can attest to the fact that he is not only super-smart, but also even more charming in real life than on the interwebs.
March 22, 2011
sionnach commented on the user sionnach
Bonsoir, wordnikoyens et wordnikoyennes!
Ici le renard, bien installe dans le Marais.
Il y a un nouveau blog:
Mainly on the Plain is now mainly in the Marais
Clever wordnikoyennes (& Prolagus) know that foxy is also now on Facebook, and have be'friend'ed him there:
Facebook foxy .
You too could do the same.
March 22, 2011
sionnach commented on the list lost-for-word
I think that having an anagram that uses all the letters and gives the same meaning as the original word is pretty special. Even if one doesn't feel such a word is worthy of the designation "perfect", maybe it deserves a lesser designation, e.g. "impressive". What numbers might be considered impressive?
March 9, 2011
sionnach commented on the list lost-for-word
# 21 days ago mollusque said
No, because words don't have factors. The words that can be formed by the letters within a word aren't essential properties of the word.
# 21 days ago Prolagus said
From marco_nj's profile:
In mathematics, a perfect number is defined as a positive integer which is the sum of its proper positive divisors, that is, the sum of the positive divisors excluding the number itself. Is there a linguistic equivalent?
Mollusque is, of course, technically correct here. Words don't have factors. Nonetheless, is it wise to discard the whole idea, which seems at the very least to have the germ of an interesting question, out of hand?
I am reminded of the delightful chapter in Hofstadter's "Le Ton Beau de Marot" in which he takes the initially unpromising question of how one might play chess on a board with hexagonal "squares" and develops it in a way that turns out to be extremely intellectually satisfying.
Is there a re-interpretation of the definition of "perfection" that makes sense, even if only by distant analogy? I am reminded of the idea of kangaroo words, where a particular word contains a shorter word with the same meaning (the joey). Extending this idea, one might imagine a perfect word to be defined as one whose letters can be anagrammed into a word or phrase with the same meaning as the original word (excluding the trivial case). I can't think of a good example offhand, but I'm sure somebody can.
March 9, 2011
sionnach commented on the word pimiento load
Say it ain't so! Some of my most inspired bullshit was on the mi-vox page. "What is that noise?", you ask. It is the agonized screaming of hideous deformed flipper-people as they vanish into a wordhole, never to be heard from again.
March 7, 2011
sionnach commented on the word mishegoss
Safire on mishegoss
The root is the same as that for meshuggene
March 1, 2011
sionnach commented on the word poached eggs with salmon and cream cheese
Yum!
February 27, 2011
sionnach commented on the user sionnach
It's an easy commute through the Chunnel! :-)
February 27, 2011
sionnach commented on the word vanwinklerip
A tear in the fabric of the chronolexiverse; a wordhole. Further explanation in the comments for wordhole.
February 21, 2011
sionnach commented on the word chronolexiverse
See my comment on wordhole.
February 21, 2011
sionnach commented on the word wordhole
Right now, on Sunday February 20th (or 21st if you live in bilbyland) 2011, you can find the following on a certain leather-eared marsupial's profile:
about 3 years ago bilby said
I'll be scarce on Wordie for the rest of January 2007 ... global crossings, unbroadbanded parents, temporal dislocation and all that kind of thing. Hope to be the careless match in your box of firecrackers again too soon!
*mwah*
Note the odd discrepancy in dates. What happened to that other year? Bilbo's use of the phrase "temporal dislocation" seems oddly prescient.
This is, of course, just a very extreme instance of a previously noted phenomenon. Those of us who suffer from an addiction to words and reading are indeed subject to bizarre temporal dislocations - the sudden inexplicable loss of a whole afternoon, in extreme cases, even a three-day weekend. The vanishing of an entire year confirms my suspicion that regular users of Wordie are at a considerable elevated risk for a more severe type of temporal anomaly. My working theory is that Wordie, in its function as a portal to the great wide world of words, tempts regular users - logonauts if you will - to venture farther and farther afield in the lexiverse. This exploration is not risk-free - sometimes an intrepid logonaut may stumble, or be lured, into a wordhole. Though the phenomenon is not fully understood, a wordhole may be thought of as a type of singularity, or tear, in the fabric of the chronolexiverse, sometimes known as a vanwinklerip*. Falling into a wordhole is not necessarily fatal, but the few cases documented in the literature suggest that it is a life-transforming experience -- in addition to the time distortion experienced by survivors, glossolalia is a common side effect, as well as a baffling tendency to identify with small burrowing animals, and a need to hibernate in cold weather. Instances of distorted perception of one's own body size have also been reported (e.g. Swift, Carroll), though care should be taken to distinguish between genuine travel across the chronolexiverse and mere hallucinations following the ingestion of psychoactive agents (Coleridge, Thompson, Castaneda).
Bilby is one of the lucky ones. Regular site users should be cognizant of the risks associated with extensive, unsupervised wandering in the chronolexiverse. Logonauts beware!
* as described, e.g. in Irving, W. (1819).
(I've copied this comment over from the Zeitgeist page)
February 21, 2011
sionnach commented on the word gold digger
for viewers of the "History" channel, now and forever linked with the term glory hole
Jack Hoffmann is digging around in the glory hole (this is the Joel McHale link 'zuzu is referring to)
weak mineral humor
February 21, 2011
sionnach commented on the word Zeitgeist
Right now, on Sunday February 20th (or 21st if you live in bilbyland) 2011, you can find the following on a certain leather-eared marsupial's profile:
about 3 years ago bilby said
I'll be scarce on Wordie for the rest of January 2007 ... global crossings, unbroadbanded parents, temporal dislocation and all that kind of thing. Hope to be the careless match in your box of firecrackers again too soon!
*mwah*
Note the odd discrepancy in dates. What happened to that other year? Bilbo's use of the phrase "temporal dislocation" seems oddly prescient.
This is, of course, just a very extreme instance of a previously noted phenomenon. Those of us who suffer from an addiction to words and reading are indeed subject to bizarre temporal dislocations - the sudden inexplicable loss of a whole afternoon, in extreme cases, even a three-day weekend. The vanishing of an entire year confirms my suspicion that regular users of Wordie are at a considerable elevated risk for a more severe type of temporal anomaly. My working theory is that Wordie, in its function as a portal to the great wide world of words, tempts regular users - logonauts if you will - to venture farther and farther afield in the lexiverse. This exploration is not risk-free - sometimes an intrepid logonaut may stumble, or be lured, into a wordhole. Though the phenomenon is not fully understood, a wordhole may be thought of as a type of singularity, or tear, in the fabric of the chronolexiverse, sometimes known as a vanwinklerip*. Falling into a wordhole is not necessarily fatal, but the few cases documented in the literature suggest that it is a life-transforming experience -- in addition to the time distortion experienced by survivors, glossolalia is a common side effect, as well as a baffling tendency to identify with small burrowing animals, and a need to hibernate in cold weather. Instances of distorted perception of one's own body size have also been reported (e.g. Swift, Carroll), though care should be taken to distinguish between genuine travel across the chronolexiverse and mere hallucinations following the ingestion of psychoactive agents (Coleridge, Thompson, Castaneda).
Bilby is one of the lucky ones. Regular site users should be cognizant of the risks associated with extensive, unsupervised wandering in the chronolexiverse. Logonauts beware!
* as described, e.g. in Irving, W. (1819).
February 21, 2011
sionnach commented on the word losing keys
You might try St. Nicholas of Myra, patron saint of longshoremen and dockworkers.
February 20, 2011
sionnach commented on the user sionnach
Spelling with Stephen Fry and Harry Potter
February 20, 2011
sionnach commented on the user sionnach
Renard likes this commercial
February 20, 2011
sionnach commented on the list four-weeks--28-breakfasts
I, for one, certainly hope that this list is working up to a grand finale of casu marzu. Perhaps served with a delicious glass of baby mice wine.
Anyone who looks up baby mice wine on google image should be sure to have made prior preparations for the projectile vomiting that is the likely result.
Hi, Pro!
February 20, 2011
sionnach commented on the list cattle
I just recently learned that the "Happy California Cows" ad that runs so frequently on TV was, in fact, filmed in New Zealand, with NZ cows. I feel deceived, disillusioned, and disappointed.
February 18, 2011
sionnach commented on the word sausage dog
Technically, I suppose this could be considered edible in some cultures.
February 18, 2011
sionnach commented on the word airplane breakfast
Is that one of them dreaded Croissanwich atrocities?
It's still not too late to agitate for the return of the Burger King sausage biscuit, whose cruel and sudden discontinuation in August 1983 almost proved fatal to the completion of my doctoral dissertation. The final section, fueled by demonstrably inferior Hardee's biscuits, is perceptibly more stupid than the rest of the document.
February 18, 2011
sionnach commented on the word conference breakfast
I imagine that elevation above sea-level might have a substantial impact on the boiling temperature of bagels as well. For the same reason that making a decent cup of tea on Mount Everest is well-nigh impossible.
You might think this is due to Boyle's Law. You would be only tangentially correct.
February 18, 2011
sionnach commented on the user sionnach
Sionnach has a new blog:
Whipping Cats .
February 18, 2011
sionnach commented on the word Girl Famous for Having Hiccups Charged with Murder
Now this:
'Hiccup Girl' Jennifer Mee's Hiccups Return in Court.
this defines the word trivia
February 18, 2011
sionnach commented on the word panvocalic
hernesheir encourages me to make some kind of comment here, asserting precedence of coinage, but as noted below, there are other coinages of which I am more proud. Still, I know that there is a diligent cohort of Wordnikians for whom panvocalics hold a certain fatal fascination - God bless 'em.
February 14, 2011
sionnach commented on the word eruptions of Mount Etna
St. Agatha
(Hi Mom! Bizarre sionnach family fact - my mother's name was Agatha, my stepmother's name is Etna)
January 31, 2011
sionnach commented on the word dying alone
St. Francis of Assisi
January 31, 2011
sionnach commented on the word glandular disorders
St. Cadoc of Llancarvan
January 31, 2011
sionnach commented on the word in-law problems
Plenty to choose from here.
Saints-
* Adelaide
* Elizabeth of Hungary
* Elizabeth Ann Seton
* Godelieve
* Helen of Skofde
* Jeanne de Chantal
* Jeanne Marie de Maille
* Ludmila
* Marguerite d’Youville
* Michelina
* Pulcheria
January 31, 2011
sionnach commented on the word losing keys
St. Zita
January 31, 2011
sionnach commented on the word protection from perjurers
St. Pancras and St. Felix of Nola.
January 31, 2011
sionnach commented on the word Mithridate
Those are some high-quality examples for this word. But maybe I was looking for mithridate.
January 30, 2011
sionnach commented on the word confectio damocritis
Well. Which is it? Damocritus or Democritus?
January 30, 2011
sionnach commented on the word diospyrobezoar
The kind of bezoar you get from overindulging in persimmons.
January 30, 2011
sionnach commented on the word confectio Damocritis
I always thought that mithridatism referred to the practice of building up a tolerance to a specific poison by successive ingestion of larger and larger doses.
Fortunately I have no need to stand in line at the apothecary's -- I just look to Boris and Natasha** to provide me with bezoars as needed.
** who naturally feast on a diet of unripe persimmons.
January 30, 2011
sionnach commented on the list plurale-tantum
Fortunately I still have visitation rights, even if custody has been grabbed by this Reese Tee entity.
Sniff! What about the hideous jeggings?
January 30, 2011
sionnach commented on the word disappointing children
Monica would get on well with Willie:
Little Willie, feeling mean
Pushed his sister through a screen
Mother stopped his innovations
Said it made for strained relations.
Little Willie, mean as hell
Threw his sister in the well
Mama said, when drawing water,
"Gee, it's hard to raise a daughter."
January 29, 2011
sionnach commented on the word disappointing children
I'm guessing it's a question of demand. Who among us has not been a disappointment to our illustrious ancestors, at one point or another?
January 29, 2011
sionnach commented on the list we-have-saints-for-your-complaints
Chained_bear expressed the hope this list would be comprehensive. A little research shows this to be a forlorn hope indeed. But for anyone interested in tracking down complaints not listed here there is the mother of all resources:
Your extended family in heaven and what they can do for you.
January 29, 2011
sionnach commented on the word convulsive children
Saints:
* Guy of Anderlecht
* John the Baptist
* Scholastica
January 29, 2011
sionnach commented on the word backward children
St. Hilary of Poitiers
January 29, 2011
sionnach commented on the word children who are late learning to walk
St. Vaast
January 29, 2011
sionnach commented on the word disappointing children
Saints:
* Clotilde
* Louise de Marillac
* Matilda
* Monica
January 29, 2011
sionnach commented on the word sick horses
St. Eligius
January 29, 2011
sionnach commented on the word mice
For protection against infestation pray to St. Servatus, St. Ulric, or St. Gertrude of Nivelles.
January 29, 2011
sionnach commented on the word diseased cattle
St. Roch, as previously noted. But you can hedge your bets by requesting the intercession of the following: St. Beuno, St. Sebastian, St. Erhard of Regensburg.
January 29, 2011
sionnach commented on the word leg diseases, rats, and mice
Now we know what gets on zuzu's radar.
Your best bet for protection is St. Servatus.
January 29, 2011
sionnach commented on the list we-have-saints-for-your-complaints
From Wikipedia:
The Fourteen Holy Helpers are a group of saints venerated together in Roman Catholicism because their intercession is believed to be particularly effective, especially against various diseases. This group of Nothelfer ("helpers in need") originated in the 14th century at first in the Rhineland, largely as a result of the epidemic (probably of bubonic plague) that became known as the Black Death.
The basic 14 are:
Saints-
Agathius, Barbara, Blaise, Catherine of Alexandria, Christopher, Cyriacus, Denis, Erasmus, Eustace, George, Giles, Margaret of Antioch, Pantaleon, Vitus (Guy)
For one or another of the saints in the original set, Anthony the Anchorite, Leonard of Noblac, Nicholas, Sebastian, Oswald the King, Pope Sixtus II, Apollonia, Dorothea of Caesarea, Wolfgang of Regensburg, or Roch were sometimes substituted. In France an extra "helper" is added, the Virgin Mary.
January 29, 2011
sionnach commented on the word storms, hail, toothaches, and sudden death
St. Christopher
January 28, 2011
sionnach commented on the word ruptures
St. Osmund
January 28, 2011
sionnach commented on the word lameness, insanity, sterility, and epilepsy
St. Giles
January 28, 2011
sionnach commented on the word eye diseases, dysentery, and
There's something very weird going on with this entry. It seems to have generated a phantom entry without the "hemorrhages in general" part after the "end". Comments show up on the phantom entry page. I'm guessing it has to do with the quotes.
January 28, 2011
sionnach commented on the word eye diseases, dysentery, and
St. Lucy
January 28, 2011
sionnach commented on the word Belgians with hernias
St. Gomer
January 28, 2011
sionnach commented on the word hernias
St. Cathal
January 28, 2011
sionnach commented on the word gravel in the urine
St. Drogo
January 28, 2011
sionnach commented on the word eye diseases, dysentery, and
St. Lucy
January 28, 2011
sionnach commented on the word bad knees, cattle diseases, and bubonic plague
St. Roch
January 28, 2011
sionnach commented on the word leg diseases
St. Servatus (also good for rodent infestations)
January 28, 2011
sionnach commented on the word oversleeping
St. Vitus
January 28, 2011
sionnach commented on the word gambling addiction
St. Bernardino of Siena
January 28, 2011
sionnach commented on the word stuttering
St. Notker the stammerer
January 28, 2011
sionnach commented on the word nightmares
St. Christopher
January 28, 2011
sionnach commented on the word sick chickens
St. Ferreolus
January 28, 2011
sionnach commented on the word sore eyes
St. Clare (also the patron saint of television)
January 28, 2011
sionnach commented on the user Prolagus
Bonjour, P.
I have an Italian question for you? Does "ad horas" mean "at short notice"?
I am making preparations for the big French adventure, scheduled to launch in March. Paris, here I come. Le renard va s'ébattre dans l'ombre de la Tour Eiffel.
I hope all is well chez Prolagus - I have fond memories of our visit to the Morgan Library. I do worry about the possibility of your getting mauled as you trap assorted critters in Central Park. Be sure to wear a pith helmet.
Merci,
Renard.
January 22, 2011
sionnach commented on the word hooting-pudding
A plum pudding with so few plums, they can be heard hooting at one another.
January 22, 2011
sionnach commented on the word Hook and Snivey, with Nix the buffer
A confidence trick used to finagle a free meal for a man and a dog. From Grose's Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (1811):
This rig consists in feeding a man and a dog for nothing, and is carried on thus: Three men, one of who pretends to be sick and unable to eat, go to a public house: the two well men make a bargain with the landlord for their dinner, and when he is out of sight, feed their pretended sick companion and dog gratis.
By extension the term came to mean general trickery and skullduggery, see e.g.
this reference
January 22, 2011
sionnach commented on the word Hookum Snivey
See Hook and Snivey, with Nix the buffer
January 22, 2011
sionnach commented on the word fernando poo
See silent Bubis , from the 6:30 mark on the video.
Also check out Ronni Ancona's most righteous dissertation on the word "obscurity" beginning at 2:39 on the same video.
January 21, 2011
sionnach commented on the word Meatball sandwich horseplay leads to two deaths, family betrayal, two trials
shenanigans in Over-the-Rhine
January 15, 2011
sionnach commented on the list jewel-or-ailment
nephrite? bixbite? parisite?
January 13, 2011
sionnach commented on the word Becher's brook
The most notorious jump in horse racing, Becher's brook is part of the most demanding steeplechase on earth, the (British) Grand National at Aintree. The jump actually has to be negotiated twice during the race – as the sixth and twenty-second fences.
It takes its name from Captain Becher, who famously took refuge in the small brook running on the landing side of the fence. This was during the very first Grand National, when he was unseated by his horse, Conrad. The brook is now concealed under a line of cast iron drain covers.
January 12, 2011
sionnach commented on the word Cross-eyed opossum finds fame
die dicke Heidi aus Leipzig
January 12, 2011
sionnach commented on the word bibliophobe
Someone who fears books
December 22, 2010
sionnach commented on the word bibliophile
Someone who loves books
December 22, 2010
sionnach commented on the word bibliomaniac
A book lover gone mad
December 22, 2010
sionnach commented on the word bibliomane
Someone who accumulates books indiscriminately
December 22, 2010
sionnach commented on the word bibliomancer
Someone who uses books for divination
December 22, 2010
sionnach commented on the word bibliolestes
A book robber or plunderer
December 22, 2010
sionnach commented on the word bibliolater
A book-worshipper
December 22, 2010
sionnach commented on the word bibliophage
Someone who devours books
December 22, 2010
sionnach commented on the word biblioklept
A book thief
December 22, 2010
sionnach commented on the word bibliodemon
A book fiend
December 22, 2010
sionnach commented on the word bibliopole
A seller of books
December 22, 2010
sionnach commented on the word biblioriptos
Someone who throws books around
December 22, 2010
sionnach commented on the word bibliosopher
Someone who gains wisdom from books
December 22, 2010
sionnach commented on the word bibliotaphe
Someone who buries or hides books
December 22, 2010
sionnach commented on the word biblioclast
someone who desecrates books
December 22, 2010
sionnach commented on the word bibliobibule
someone who reads too much
December 22, 2010
sionnach commented on the word keep it pimpin
As seen in the inspirational pimp business plan
December 22, 2010
sionnach commented on the list helpful-hints-to-avoid-unit-confusion
But .... at least one member of the word-pair should be a unit of measurement of some kind...
December 21, 2010
sionnach commented on the word milliard and billiard
A milliard is the European term for what wimpy Americans call a billion, that is, one thousand million, or 10 to the 9th power. In recent years, the British have also adopted the American terminology, rendering the term milliard essentially obsolete in English. (It still appears in French and German).
The divergence becomes self-perpetuating. In English, 10**9 is a billion, 10**12 is a trillion, and 10**15 is a quadrillion. In the European system you need 10**12 to be called a billion, and 10**18 to be considered a trillion. And the word for that intermediate case of 10**15? You've guessed it, that number is called a billiard.
December 21, 2010
sionnach commented on the word hobbet and hobbit
A hobbet was originally a Welsh unit of capacity, later redefined as a unit of mass. Actual numerical values for the amount it represented appear to have varied by exact geographic location (and possibly the particular commodity being measured).
Hobbitses, as is well known, live in New Zealand, have furry feet, and a marked predilection for secreting things in their pocketses.
December 21, 2010
sionnach commented on the word megadeath and Megadeth
One megadeath is a term for one million deaths, coined in 1953 by RAND military strategist Herman Kahn.
Megadeth is the highly successful thrash metal band formed by Dave Mustaine in 1983 after he was fired from Metallica.
December 21, 2010
sionnach commented on the word mutchkin and munchkin
A mutchkin is a "a Scottish unit of liquid measure equal to slightly less than one pint".
A munchkin is a diminutive resident of Munchkin County (or, if you prefer, Munchkinland) located in the kingdom of Oz. Some well-known munchkins are Algernon Woodcock, Nick Chopper, Jinjur, Ojo the lucky, and Queen Orin of the Ozure Isles. On November 20, 2007, the Munchkins were given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
December 21, 2010
sionnach commented on the list bristols--bazongas-and-butter-bags-on-the-balcony
It would be remiss not to mention the exciting "99 Luftballons" parody song: ( link )
Jugs and orbs and darts and gourds
Elmer Fudds and bouncing Buddhas
Sweater stretchers, lung protectors
Beach umbrellas, frost detectors
Scooby Snacks and snake-eyes dice
Jell-o molds and high-beam lights
Every day I probably use
99 words for boobs
Humpty Dumplings, Hardy Boys
Double lattes, Ode to Joys
Hooters, shooters, physics tutors
Bobbsey Twins and bald commuters
Double-WMD's
MRE's and PFD's
Snow-white dwarfs, Picasso cubes
99 words for boobs
Gerber servers, holy grails
Whoopee cushions, humpback whales
Flying saucers, traffic stoppers
Super Big Gulps, Double Whoppers
Pillows, billows, Don DeLillos
Soft-serve cones and armadillos
Pimped-out hubcaps, inner tubes
99 words for boobs
Midget earmuffs, warming globes
Strobes and probes and frontal lobes
Knockers, honkers, knicker bonkers
Smurfs and Screaming Yellow Zonkers
Tannin' cannons, Mister Bigs
Big bad wolves and Porky Pigs
Jogging partners, saline noobs
99 words for boobs
Two-point jumpers, Bambi's thumpers
Rubber baby buggy bumpers
Rutabagas, Chi Omegas
Schwag the showgirls show in Vegas
Congo bongos, bowling pins
Fast-pitch softballs, siamese twins
Your claims I'm breast-obsessed are true
We're quite a pair 'cause I'm a boob too
December 21, 2010
sionnach commented on the word saber's beads
First listed when capitalization was not an option.
December 15, 2010
sionnach commented on the word Osric the Stoat
Ancient computer game, recently discovered by researchers at the Institute of Druidic Technology:
See the wily Osric banquish the pesky bog-hedgehogs
December 15, 2010
sionnach commented on the user Prolagus
Very cool, P!
December 7, 2010
sionnach commented on the user bilby
Dear bilby:
My mother taught me it was rude to bait, or otherwise pick on, the mentally deficient. Even those with royalist tendencies.
Or are you simply bored and have set up a sock-puppet account just to amuse yourself?
HRH Natasha and her consort Prince Boris send their most cordial regards and salutations.
December 4, 2010
sionnach commented on the word not for the first time, he hoped for a swift and expedient death once his time had come
Because the alternative was simply too chilling to contemplate.
December 4, 2010
sionnach commented on the user ruzuzu
ruzuzu said
If you were a list, I would favorite you.
blush... But the sentiment is entirely mutual, querida ruzuzu.
December 2, 2010
sionnach commented on the list i-hope-you-dont-do-this-for-a-living
The chicken sexer job family is surprisingly rich:
sexy careers
November 29, 2010
sionnach commented on the word One stone skunk being helped to overcome bacon butty addiction
November 25, 2010
sionnach commented on the word Ban on sandals, sand castles and hugs by Italy's mayors
Have you hugged your mayor today?
November 25, 2010
sionnach commented on the word Woman fights off bear with courgette
All together now: "But how did the bear get that courgette?"
November 25, 2010
sionnach commented on the word the united states of america
I think we hold that truth to be self-evident.
November 25, 2010
sionnach commented on the word hippo's tooth
a cement bollard
November 24, 2010
sionnach commented on the word Useless Gobshites
The Irish Daily Star's nuanced take on those responsible for the country's current financial debacle.
November 24, 2010
sionnach commented on the list the-several-stages-of-wordie-addiction
Having a specific region of one's brain permanently dedicated solely to monitoring all input for the possible occurrence of a new specific excrement term. Because we live in hope.
November 23, 2010
sionnach commented on the word strategic management
Academic "hotshot" Richard Quinn, exposed as being too lazy to develop his own exams, does a little "strategic management" of the situation by accusing his students of cheating. Warning: the hypocrisy in the linked video may cause emesis.
profscam
November 23, 2010
sionnach commented on the word angry birds
more angry birds
(Seen on the kottke.org site)
November 23, 2010
sionnach commented on the word angry birds
as seen here
Maybe reesetee knows some of these birdies.
November 23, 2010
sionnach commented on the list geometric-pattern-tessellations
Don't forget the tessellation pattern that's all the rage now for kitchen wallpaper: polyputthekettleon
November 19, 2010
sionnach commented on the word surströmming
discussed here
Discussion of the fermented herring starts at around the 10-minute mark, but the first part of the clip is also worth watching, for the discussion of hybristophilia (Bonnie and Clyde syndrome), the origins of heckling and, of course, the hilarious Kate Winslow dream and tomato-and-spider-pizza segments.
November 19, 2010
sionnach commented on the word leptokurtosis
A somewhat bemused discussion of this condition, hitherto thought to have been confined to statisticians and economists, may be found here .
And since bilby is rumored to be back, the mnemonic diagram mentioned in my previous comment is below:
November 18, 2010
sionnach commented on the word leptospirosis
Sewer worker's disease, contractible by ingestion of rat urine. As c_b has pointed out, the culprit is the rna virus known as the Machupo virus.
November 18, 2010
sionnach commented on the word mansfield pork
Jane always was a lousy speller ....
November 18, 2010
sionnach commented on the word World Toilet Day
Cthulhu says:
There once was a demon named Cthulhu
Who was building himself a fine new loo
When to his chagrin
The elephants barged in
So now Cthulhu's new loo is a zoo loo.
November 18, 2010
sionnach commented on the word World Toilet Day
November 19th might indeed be World Toilet Day, children, but did you know that the Japanese Toilet Association has designated November 10th as National Toilet Day, because 11/10 in Japanese sounds like the characters for "clean toilet"? *
Here on Wordnik we bring you the news that matters.
*: source - "The Big Necessity" by Rose George, one of the most under-appreciated nonfiction works of 2008. No bathroom should be without a copy.
November 18, 2010
sionnach commented on the list johnny-appleseed
See also doctor deterrents
November 18, 2010
sionnach commented on the word hymenorraphy
Restore your virginity the 17th century way -- in only seven days
Just send Fr Paco his airline ticket and a few cans of beans and follow the simple steps outlined.
November 18, 2010
sionnach commented on the word fenugreek
Isn't this what the dead father on "Six Feet Under" liked to eat in the afterlife? Or maybe it was pasta with fenugreek,
yum. pasta.
November 18, 2010
sionnach commented on the word Kentucky Man Forced To Eat His Own Beard In Fight Over Lawnmower
This is not so much a crash blossom as a news-of-the-weird item.
November 18, 2010
sionnach commented on the word the united states of america
Gosh, this new modem I was forced to buy to stop the red flashing light and get access to the interwebs is having all kinds of unexpected side effects. My phone line has developed a background wheeze suggestive of Darth Vader with pleurisy, and now it appears to be redacting out key on-screen text, in a disturbingly primitive cold-war kind of way.
Pssst! Prolagus is even more charming in person than online. Hard to believe, I know. But those are the facts. I just report them.
November 18, 2010
sionnach commented on the word manscara
The only slight imperfection in my otherwise most delightful recent sojourn in New York City was my failure to win BIG in the Cash Cab. Possibly related to the Cash Cab's negligence in not picking me up in the first place.
It was nonetheless reassuring to know that, had I been in the C.C., risking everything to come up with the term guyliner for "the kind of eye makeup favored by emo kids and Captain Jack Sparrow", my guess of manscara would also have been considered acceptable.
November 17, 2010
sionnach commented on the user Prolagus
Hi Pro:
got your message. In case we don't reach each other by phone, 12:30 on Thursday by the entrance to the Empire State Building sounds fine. I will be there.
Que alegria!
sionnach
November 9, 2010
sionnach commented on the word Girl Famous for Having Hiccups Charged with Murder
Most hiccups are benign. But occasionally there's the bad-seed hiccup that turns to ........ MURDER!
November 4, 2010
sionnach commented on the word spoffkins
A prostitute pretending to be a man's wife.
November 3, 2010
sionnach commented on the word Scarpa's liquor
The watery fluid contained in the membranous labyrinth of the internal ear. (endolymph; see any medical dictionary)
But see also the mobster and the KKK , which suggests an entirely different interpretation of Scarpa's liquor.
November 3, 2010
sionnach commented on the word ozaena
Either "a fetid discharge from the nostrils", or possibly the disease that causes it, atrophic rhinitis, aka catarrh.
Snotty vases
"The origin of atrophic rhinitis, especially that form which is accompanied by foetor (ozaena), is still a question waiting to be solved. ..."
The Diseases of the Nose, Mouth, Pharynx and Larynx: A Textbook for Students by Alfred Bruck (1910).
November 3, 2010
sionnach commented on the word neutercane
A tropical storm that has not yet been named.
November 3, 2010
sionnach commented on the word antigram
Examples: united = untied; funeral = real fun.
November 3, 2010
sionnach commented on the word apocolocyntosis
Pumpkinification, as in Seneca's Apocolocyntosis of the Emperor Claudius
November 3, 2010
sionnach commented on the word Girl Famous for Having Hiccups Charged with Murder
as seen here .
Note: despite this lapse, Edith Z. is in every respect awesome.
November 3, 2010
sionnach commented on the user Prolagus
Like Omigod, Pro. I will be in New Work City next week. Will you be in town?
November 3, 2010
sionnach commented on the list lost-for-word
ruzuzu asked: Okay, I remembered. Is there a name for the gunk that builds up on my mousepad and inside my computer's mouse?
Two terms I've heard in this general context are hand salsa and keyboard plaque.
In heating and air-conditioning ducts the relevant term is baffle jelly
November 2, 2010
sionnach commented on the word temporal slices of spacetime worms
Shriek! This sounds so .... cruel. Those spacetime worms are pretty advanced, you know. Even to the point of building cathedrals .
November 1, 2010
sionnach commented on the word on the bubble
(referring to a network television series) to be on the chopping block, but not yet axed
October 31, 2010
sionnach commented on the word thesp
FABLE III: An acting company of British thesps, including Sir Ben Kingsley and Simon Pegg, lend their voices to this medieval videogame sequel.
EW, 11/5/2010
October 31, 2010
sionnach commented on the word threequel
Complete the trilogy at home with Pixar's dazzling threequel, which finds Woody, Buzz, and their toy brigade ending up in a day-care center.
(Entertainment Weekly, 11/5/2010 issue, page 8)
October 31, 2010
sionnach commented on the word a wagner compendium
Not everyone was a fan. Here are some of the terms that have been used to describe his music:
aberration
aural aberration
abortion
absent melody
absurd
agony
anarchistic
antichrist
advanced cat music
And that's just the As.
October 31, 2010
sionnach commented on the word james gibbons huneker on claude debussy
I met Debussy at the Cafe Riche the other night and was struck by the unique ugliness of the man. His face is flat, the top of his head is flat, his eyes are prominent, the expression veiled and somber and, altogether, with his long hair, unkept beard, uncouth clothing and soft hat, he looked more like a Bohemian, a Croat, a Hun, than a Gaul. His high, prominent cheek bones lend a Mongolian aspect to his face. The head is brachycephalic, the hair black ...
Again I see his curious asymmetrical face, the pointed fawn ears, the projecting cheek bones- the man is a wraith from the East; his music was heard long ago in the hill temples of Borneo; was made as a symphony to welcome the head-hunters with their ghastly spoils of war.
October 31, 2010
sionnach commented on the word The Musical Courier on rimsky-korsakov
Rimsky-Korsakov -- what a name! It suggests fierce whiskers stained with vodka!
October 31, 2010
sionnach commented on the word adam mars-jones on paulo coelho
There's more psychological depth in Calvin Klein's Obsession than in Paulo Coelho's Zahir.
__________________
October 31, 2010
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