Words of the Day

 

Today I had to translate many words. A lot of words. And sentences. And idioms and metaphors. Mostly it was quite fun (except when I got a bit stuck). Luckily my beloved L has the Italian literary and linguistic background that I lack, God bless her.

My favourite English word of the day that I learned is "acephalous" ("acefale").

My favourite Italian word of the day is "tarlo" ("woodworm").

O, and I came across this delightful phrase:  "il/la tal dei tali" which is apparently equivalent to "whatsisname" or "whatshername". I shall be looking out for an appropriate occasion to use it!

Make 'Em Laugh

Have you laughed today? If not, then I have a couple of jokes for you. If you like them, I shall take full credit. If not, then I shall have to admit that I pinched them from Michael Winner's column in the Sunday Times a week or so ago, and he pinched them from John Landis. Here they are:

I thought I saw an eye doctor on an Alaskan island but it turned out to be an optical Aleutian

A vulture boards an aeroplane carrying two dead raccoons. The stewardess says, “I’m sorry, sir, only one carrion allowed per passenger.

I laughed. You didn't? O go watch a Fatty Arbuckle movie for goodness' sake!

o fffffffffalafel

David Mitchell has been writing about swearing for the Observer newspaper. He believes saying "fuck" is no big deal. I happen to find it very difficult to swear, and am a right little prude about it. It sounds ugly to me, and this is because I was brought up to believe this. Not by my mother, who swore freely throughout my childhood. In fact, I don't really know why I have such a problem with the word. Like most everything else, it is probably a class issue. Meanwhile, Mitchell writes:

" "Is 'fuck' a rude word?" Everyone accepts it's a rude word - it would hardly be used if it weren't. The disagreement is about whether using it (and other swearing, but "fuck" is the Gaza Strip here) is an offensive act.

I don't think it is. I don't think it matters a shit, damn or piss if someone says "fuck" or how many times they say it. My friends and colleagues unthinkingly use it all the time and, as far as I can tell, it hasn't resulted in the poisoning of their souls or their becoming unable to express themselves because of the effect of linguistic inflation.

That's the argument often deployed against swearwords: "If you overuse them, they'll lose their effect." Well, so what, if you hate them so much? Or is the prospect of a rude word losing its offensive power too unsettling for the offendees, as it would reveal that it was only ever a word and the power was an illusion of their own making? It would emasculate their attempts to censor with their censure."

read the rest here.

It is only a word, of course. I knew a 5-year-old whose brother had taught him that the worst word in the world was 'mushroom' so when he was really angry he would say 'youuuuuuuuuu MUSHROOM!' with deathly fury. Personally, I prefer to say 'o FFFFFFFFFALAFEL!"

Colloquial French

I see from today's cartoon and via Google and some french translations that 'un macchabee' is slang for a stiff aka a dead body. How on earth did a word which to me represents a hero in battle (Judah Maccabee and the whole Chanukah story) come to mean this? It can also be used as bored stiff, i.e. to death. Any suggestions?

NB Here is an article about the closure of the Our Body exhibition in France

If You Like Words of More Than One Syll ...

Kudos to the presenter who manages to pronounce all the long words with nary a stutter:

Where are the movies for women?

Wanting to find a new angle in award-winning season from which to write, the showbiz editor of the Telegraph tries to grab the attention of women ignored by Hollywood. Worked for me :-)

"Women have flocked to see Mamma Mia! because they are otherwise ignored by Hollywood, according to Meryl Streep. Mamma Mia! has taken nearly £402million worldwide and is nominated for three Baftas. The feelgood movie has smashed box office records, overtaking Titanic and Harry Potter to become the highest-grossing release of all time in the UK.

Streep, the Oscar-winning star who played the lead role in the musical, said women are woefully under-served by Hollywood and jumped on a film which was made just for them. "I know the studio is gobsmacked by its success, and a lot of the critics have been surprised, but I wasn't. It was a no-brainer," the actress said of the film, which features the songs of Abba and is based on the West End stage show. "I knew it would do well because it was aimed at an audience that has been neglected in recent years in film offerings - women. They are the last group anybody ever cares about.""

This is a perennial complaint. In the end, my attention was grasped by the question of whether or not Ms Streep would actually use the word "gobsmacked".

Bye Bye Bush 1

The BBC online peeps have published their favourite verbal lapses of the outgoing US President and, in turn, I have selected a few for your amusement and edification:

""There's an old saying in Tennessee - I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee - that says, fool me once, shame on... shame on you. Fool me - you can't get fooled again."
Nashville, Tennessee, 17 September, 2002

"I want to thank my friend, Senator Bill Frist, for joining us today. He married a Texas girl, I want you to know. Karyn is with us. A West Texas girl, just like me."

"The war on terror involves Saddam Hussein because of the nature of Saddam Hussein, the history of Saddam Hussein, and his willingness to terrorise himself."
Grand Rapids, Michigan, 29 January, 2003

"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we." Washington DC, 5 August, 2004

"The ambassador and the general were briefing me on the - the vast majority of Iraqis want to live in a peaceful, free world. And we will find these people and we will bring them to justice."
Washington DC, 27 October, 2003

"Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?"
Florence, South Carolina, 11 January, 2000

"You teach a child to read, and he or her will be able to pass a literacy test.''
Townsend, Tennessee, 21 February, 2001

"I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully."
Saginaw, Michigan, 29 September, 2000

"I have a different vision of leadership. A leadership is someone who brings people together."
Bartlett, Tennessee, 18 August, 2000

and, perhaps most apt of all:

"I'll be long gone before some smart person ever figures out what happened inside this Oval Office."
Washington DC, 12 May, 2008

There is not really anything else I can say after that. The whole article is here.

mnemonics

it is the time of year for lists and quizzes. the times quiz has a section on mnemonics, and i actually knew four out of ten. if you need something to do for a couple of minutes, why not see how well you can do?

1. every good boy deserves favour [answer]
2. may i have a large container of coffee [answer]
3. richard of york gave battle in vain [answer]
4. kings play chess on fat girls' stomachs [answer]
5. my very educated mother just served us nine pizzas [answer]
6. spring ahead, fall back [answer]
(i wouldn't count this one but who am i to argue with the times?)
7. sergeant major hates eating onions [answer]
8. you go brown before potting black [answer]
9. bless my dear aunt sally [answer]
(cannot think of any time ever that i will need to use this, so of course i shall now remember it!)
10.my goodness but eating hot nachos causes pain [answer]

and if you are not already sick of this, here is a site with a few more examples.

what is that whatsit anyway?

recently the telegraph made a note of some of the thingummys that abound in our lives and what they are actually called. i present ten of my favourites:

"Borborygmus
(Pronounced bor-buh-rig-mus) is the name for the rumbling sounds made by the stomach. These are caused by the movement of fluids and gases, as food, acids and digestive juices migrate from the stomach into the upper part of the small intestine. The average body makes two gallons of digestive juices a day. The hydrochloric acid in your stomach is so strong it could eat into metal, but a special form of mucus protects your inner linings from this acid along the length of its journey.

Caruncula
Is the small pink protuberance in the corner of the eye. It contains glands which produce sweat and tears. These tears are then secreted onto the surface of the conjunctiva. These glands are known as Ciaccio's glands, named after Italian anatomist Giuseppe Vincenzo Ciaccio, who first described their function in 1874.

Dragées
(pronounced drah-zhay) Are those little silver balls to be found on birthday cakes. They're smaller than a cultured pearl, made of sugar and adorned with a metallic coating to resemble a ball bearing.

Glassine
Is the type of paper that lines boxes of chocolates or truffles and cups single chocolates. In a special manufacturing process, paper pulp is beaten to break down the fibres, and pressed into moulds, then allowed to dry into sheets. After that, a process called ' calendering' presses the sheets through hot rollers, making the paper grease- and air-proof. This is ideal for protecting chocolates from that white 'bloom' that can sometimes appear.

The Interrobang
Is the combination of an interrogative point, or question mark, and a bang (printers' parlance for the exclamation mark). These are some sentences which require one: 'She said what?!'; 'He ate how many slices of cake?!'; 'You're going to have a baby?!'
No one uses them more eloquently than Captain Haddock in Herge's Tintin stories.

Phloem bundles
(Pronounced flo-em bundles) are the squidgy, stringy bits between the skin and the edible part of a banana.

Spogs
Are the pink and blue aniseed-flavoured jelly sweets in bags of Bassetts Liquorice Allsorts - and the only ones that contain no liquorice.

Tittle
If you've dotted an i, you have tittled, because the little dot above the i and the j is called a tittle. Hence the phrase 'jot and tittle', which indicates that every small detail has received attention.

Zarf
Is the cardboard holder for a coffee cup that has no handle. The word comes from the Arabic for container or envelope, because the device (originally a metal holder for a handle-less glass) originated in the Middle East.

Zuchetto
(pronounced zoo-ket-oh) Is the skullcap worn by Roman Catholic clergy. The colour of the zucchetto (which means pumpkin in Italian) denotes rank. Cardinals traditionally wear red, bishops and abbots wear violet, priests black and the Pope has a white one."

now aren't you glad you know that? although i would argue that the skullcap worn by the bishops and cardinals and popes is actually a kippah/yarmulke. just like mine, except theirs don't have the new york yankees or blue's clues or rainbow magen davids on them.

the rest of the article is, i hope, here.

you gotta read this!

ok, maybe not the book, but certainly the extracts on the bbc today page here. each chapter uses only a single vowel for all the words in that section. some examples are given, e.g.:

"Kingbirds flit in gliding flight, skimming limpid springs, dipping wingtips in rills which brim with living things: krill, shrimp, brill - fish with gilt fins, which swim in flitting zigs. Might Virgil find bliss implicit in this primitivism? Might I mimic him in print if I find his writings inspiring?"

please pay particular attention to the comments, e.g.:

"An arrant grab-bag; a bland, flat mass. Appals as far as charms. Alas, Art! That many days a man can scratch hard, and halt at that tat. That man wants a slap."

hip hip hurrah!

was just browsing an old copy of brewer's dictionary of phrase and fable and came across the following entry:

"hip! hip! hurrah! - the old fanciful explanation of the origin of this cry is that the hip is a notarikon, composed of the initials 'hierosolyma est perdita', and that when german knights headed a jew-hunt in the middle ages, they ran shouting "hip! hip!" as much as to say "jerusalem is destroyed."
hurrah was similarly derived from slavonic 'hu-raj' (to paradise), so that hip! hip! hurrah! would mean "jerusalem is lost to the infidel, and we are on the road to paradise.""

and there i was thinking that saying 'hip hip hurrah' was such a terribly british thing to do. shall have to omit the hips from now on methinks, although hurrah still seems to make sense

birthday greetings ...

... was e-mailing a note to a facebook friend on his birthday to wish him many happy returns of the day, and suddenly wondered what that actually means. i've not heard it here in the states, but it used to be around quite a bit i think when i was growing up in london. anyway, wiki and a couple of other googled sites have this to say:

"Many Happy Returns is a greeting, usually reserved for birthdays. The term itself refers to the passing year. Since the 18th century this has been used as a salutation to offer the hope that a happy day being marked would recur many more times. It is now primarily used on birthdays; prior to the mid 19th century it was used more generally, at any celebratory or festive event.
Current usage is often as a more formal option than 'Happy Birthday'. It is also often to be found on greetings cards.

Its earliest attributable use was by Lady Newdigate in a letter written in 1789 (and published in Newdigate-Newdegate Cheverels in 1898)[1]: "Many happy returns of ye day to us my Dr Love.""

buffalo?

just encountered the following sentence for the first time:

"Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo."

it makes absolutely no sense to me whatsoever, but there is an almost coherent explanation on this wiki page.

basically, with the understanding that there are three meanings to the word 'buffalo' in the sentence, i.e., buffalo a city, buffalo an animal; and buffalo a verb meaning to bully, confuse, deceive or intimidate, then one may derive the following meaning:

"the sentence when parsed reads as a description of the pecking order in the social hierarchy of buffaloes living in Buffalo:
[Those] (Buffalo buffalo) [whom] (Buffalo buffalo buffalo) buffalo (Buffalo buffalo).
[Those] buffalo(es) from Buffalo [that are intimidated by] buffalo(es) from Buffalo intimidate buffalo(es) from Buffalo.
or
Bison from Buffalo, New York who are intimidated by other bison in their community also happen to intimidate other bison in their community."

get it?

current uk teen slang

just to make us, well, me at least, feel unbearably ancient, here are some definitions of the latest language developments in the world of some young brits:

Book: an adjective to describe something that's really cool. That's because it's the first option given in predictive text when typing "c o o l".

Cotch down: hang out, chill or sleep. Thought to derive from the French word for sleep, "coucher".

Elton: a lavatory. Derived from the fact that "john" means this in America, and the name of a well-known pop star.

Flat roofin': to be overworked and stressed, as in "I was flat roofin' for my GCSEs".

Igry: embarrassed. "Stop doing that, you're making me igry."

Klingon: younger child - particularly your irritating brother or sister.

Mouldies: parents. Abbreviation for "mouldy oldies". See also rents.

Nang: cool, excellent, brilliant.

Oudish: very good, excellent, wicked.

Tear: to leave quickly, run away. "You ready to go? Then let's tear"

Vanilla: boring, dull - particularly when referring to someone's taste in clothes. "Look at her checkers - vanilla or what!"

Wafwaan: what's up, what's going on. Originally from Jamaican slang

Za: abbreviation of "pizza". "Let's grab a za before the movie."

nb the original article is here.

thursday thirteen xxi

Thirteen Word Definitions that I can Never Remember

1. GIBBOUS
an adjective meaning humpbacked and (of a heavenly body) convex at both edges, as the moon when more than half full.

2. INCHOATE
an adjective meaning not yet completed or fully developed; rudimentary; just begun; incipient.; not organized; lacking order.

3. KINESTHESIA
a noun meaning the sensation of movement or strain in muscles, tendons, and joints; muscle sense.

4. JEJUNE
an adjective that can mean without interest or significance; dull; juvenile; immature; childish;lacking knowledge or experience; uninformed.

5. TRENCHANT
an adjective that can mean incisive or keen, as language or a person; caustic; cutting: trenchant wit. clearly or sharply defined; distinct.

6. HEURISTIC
an adjective meaning serving to indicate or point out; stimulating interest as a means of furthering investigation. also, encouraging a person to learn, discover, understand, or solve problems on his or her own, as by experimenting, evaluating possible answers or solutions, or by trial and error.

7. ALGORITHM
a noun meaning a set of rules for solving a problem in a finite number of steps, e.g., for finding the greatest common divisor.

8. AQUILINE
an adjective that when referring to a nose means shaped like an eagle's beak; hooked. otherwise, of or like the eagle

9. EPISTEMOLOGY
a noun that means a branch of philosophy that investigates the origin, nature, methods, and limits of human knowledge.

10. PALAVER
a noun meaning Idle chatter. or talk intended to charm or beguile. it used to mean a parley between european explorers and representatives of local populations, especially in africa.

11. MOOT
this one is still confusing even though i looked it up! on the one hand, it is something that has been previously decided or settled and is therefore not relevant to discuss; and on the other hand it can be understood as bringing something up in order to discuss it. for more information, look at the usage note near the bottom of this page.

12. PHLEGMATIC
an adjective that can mean having or suggesting a calm, sluggish temperament; unemotional.

13. ANTIDISESTABLISHMENTARIANISM
a noun meaning originally, opposition to the disestablishment of the Church of England, now opposition to the belief that there should no longer be an official church in a country. usually used, however, as an example of the longest word that someone knows :-)

phew! now, use them all in a sentence!! happy tt ...

Get the Thursday Thirteen code here!View More Thursday Thirteen Participants
ps not for the faint of heart, well, not for anyone who faints easily ... the first tt i viewed after posting was really quite fascinating - 13 operations. those of you with a medical bent may enjoy it.

some notes on indian english

the telegraph had a lovely piece today about how standard english is finally being replaced by indian english these days in india. read the analysis here. on this page, i present you with some of the examples for your edification and delight:

A glossary of the latest lingo as spoken on the streets of India

A driver, when asked what he does, may refer to his occupation as "drivery". He keeps his "stepney" (spare tyre) in the "dicky" (boot).

Teachress - a female teacher.

Timepass - a trivial activity that passes the time.

She freaked out last night - she had a good time.

Your lyrical missive has enveloped me in the sweet fragrance of our love - from a book advising lovers on how to write to girlfriends.

Pritam Singh has left for his heavenly above - a death notice.

Hue and Cry notice - title of police missing person newspaper advertisement.

Don't do nuisance in public - government admonition against urinating in public

In railway offices, a standard opening line in correspondence is: "Dear Sir, with reference to your above see my below."

A government official urged farmers in Rajasthan to grow "herbs in their backsides" (backyards).

english words of hebrew origin

ok so i am not in bed yet. thinking about ba'al-z'vuv led me to wondering about other words in english that have their origins in hebrew. best i can do in the middle of the night is a wiki page here. some samples:

Amen - from אמן (="so be it; truly")
Armageddon - from הר מגידו "har megido" (="megido mountain"), the biblical location of an apocalyptic battle
Behemoth - from בהמות behemot (="beasts" or "cattle")
Cane - from קָנֶה "qāneh" (="reed")
Carob - from חרוב "charuv"
Cherub, cherubim - from כרוב kerubh, כרובים kerubim
Hallelujah - from הללויה halleluyah (="(let us) praise God")
Jubilee - from יובל yovel (Jubilee year)
Leviathan - from לויתן livyatan (="whale, sea monster")
Satan - from שטן satan (="adversary")

Cinnamon - akin to קינמון kinamon
Camel - akin to גמל gamal

not too many everyday words there but still interesting to me. you may also wish to browse the wiki page of yiddish words in american english. it should be here.

pre-birthday mini-thoughts

did i spell her name right?
o how i hate birthdays and how i love them. i am too old to get excited and yet on the day itself i want everyone to be nice to me because it is my birthday. the way i deal with this is that the week right before the day i mostly actually manage to forget about it, and if it comes to mind i quickly change the subject of my thoughts. so i just had a look at my friend geoff's blog about jewish mysticism (link on the right in the second group). it is really interesting. from that my thoughts turned to gematria and thence came the idea to check out the gematria for my new age. nu - i managed almost 5 minutes of other thoughts. i'm sure i'll get better with practice :-)

anyway, according to the mysticalnet web gematria server, one of the words i get is באלזבב. hmmmmm. time to go to bed i think!

nb bet, aleph, lamed, zayin, bet, bet spell the hebrew word 'ba'al-z'vuv' aka lord of the fly, or beelzebub

breaking the language barrier

at last! the times of london publishes a vocabulary list to help brits and americans to speak english to each other. here are some important examples:

British — North American:

articulated lorry — tractor-trailer
blanket bath — sponge bath
bumbag — fanny pack
central reservation — median strip
cut-throat razor — straight razor
double cream — heavy cream
dummy — pacifier
dustbin — trash/garbage can
fringe — bangs
green fingers — green thumb
hundreds and thousands — sprinkles
indicator (on car) — turn signal
ladybird — ladybug
mangetout — snow peas
maths — math
number plate — license plate
off-licence — liquor store
press-up — pushup
queue — line
recorded delivery — certified mail
roundabout (in road) — traffic circle
trainers — sneakers
transport café — truck stop
vest — undershirt
waistcoat — vest
zebra crossing — crosswalk

the rest of the list is here, in the entertainment section!

they left out the pants/underpants/trousers example though ... make of that what you may ...

like i don't do king's english

the daily telegraph has produced a new book: "she literally exploded: the daily telegraph infuriating phrase book", and plugged it today in this article. it seems to be a pocket-sized version of something like the urban dictionary, but is certainly of interest to pedants like the ravaj.

examples aside, here is my favourite paragraph from the article:

"It is poverty of thought and expression that make for infuriating phrases. There are comfortably more than 500,000 words in the English language, many more than are available in French or German. They allow us to be specific in every situation, and to be playful, alliterative, allusive - all sorts of things that repetitive use of phrases such as "I'm like, whatever" doesn't allow. If people use four words where one would do, they're wasting your time. If corporate lackeys use jargon to obfuscate or euphemism to obscure, then anger is the right - or as they'd say "appropriate" - response."

'obfuscate' - what a brilliant word?!

go. look. enjoy.