Word Of The Day
- Thread starter rynner2
- Start date
- Joined
- Aug 7, 2001
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- 54,631
Came across this one today in a book of short stories by Colin Dexter (creator of Inspector Morse):
kyphotic
Had to look it up:
kyphosis??... [kahy-foh-sis]
–noun Pathology. an abnormal, convex curvature of the spine, with a resultant bulge at the upper back.
Origin:
1840–50 kyphosis a hunched state ....
Related forms:
kyphotic ?..., adjective
crookback, crookbacked, gibbous, humpbacked, humped
[Had to edit this to get the moronic MB ("Could not insert new word matches") to accept the post - link for details:
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/kyphotic ]
kyphotic
Had to look it up:
kyphosis??... [kahy-foh-sis]
–noun Pathology. an abnormal, convex curvature of the spine, with a resultant bulge at the upper back.
Origin:
1840–50 kyphosis a hunched state ....
Related forms:
kyphotic ?..., adjective
crookback, crookbacked, gibbous, humpbacked, humped
[Had to edit this to get the moronic MB ("Could not insert new word matches") to accept the post - link for details:
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/kyphotic ]
Mal_Adjusted
Justified & Ancient
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rynner - you going for the multiple post record or summat?
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Doh!Mal_Adjusted said:
I said the board was moronic - it puts up an error message so you think you have to post again. And when you finally post 'successfully', it only shows you the latest post, and not the earlier attempts which it did in fact post!
I've deleted the text from the superfluous posts - perhaps a passing Mod could tidy up by permanently deleting them...?
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Weird Words: Dozenal
-------------------------------------------------------------------
"We want to replace decimal numeration by dozenal," is the stated
aim of the Dozenal Society of Great Britain. That will give you the
necessary clue to its meaning - it's from the word "dozen" and it
refers to a system of counting by twelves. You're much more likely
to be familiar with the well-established "duodecimal". If you did
New Maths as a child you might also remember "base 12".
In a dozenal system, with counting based on twelve,
not ten, the number "100" would mean 144 in our base-ten
counting system, and twelve "dozades" (each twelve years
long) would make up a grossury, with 144 decimal
years.
[Coast Lines, by Mark S Monmonier, 2008.]
"Dozenal" is a rare adjective (sometimes a noun for an advocate of
the numbering system) that's absent from every dictionary on my
shelves, though it does appear occasionally in technical literature
as well as in reports about the system:
Dozenals contend much of life already is divided into
twelves: People buy dozens of eggs and dozens of
doughnuts. There are 12 months in the year and 12 inches
to a foot.
[Los Angeles Times, 17 May 1982.]
Any popularity it has would seem to be the result of its adoption
in its title about a couple of decades ago by the Dozenal Society
of America (the successor to the old Duodecimal Society of America)
and by its British cousin.
An enthusiast for the duodecimal number system has been called a
dozenalist or a dozener. Both are highly unusual.
http://www.worldwidewords.org/nl/gbps.htm
-------------------------------------------------------------------
"We want to replace decimal numeration by dozenal," is the stated
aim of the Dozenal Society of Great Britain. That will give you the
necessary clue to its meaning - it's from the word "dozen" and it
refers to a system of counting by twelves. You're much more likely
to be familiar with the well-established "duodecimal". If you did
New Maths as a child you might also remember "base 12".
In a dozenal system, with counting based on twelve,
not ten, the number "100" would mean 144 in our base-ten
counting system, and twelve "dozades" (each twelve years
long) would make up a grossury, with 144 decimal
years.
[Coast Lines, by Mark S Monmonier, 2008.]
"Dozenal" is a rare adjective (sometimes a noun for an advocate of
the numbering system) that's absent from every dictionary on my
shelves, though it does appear occasionally in technical literature
as well as in reports about the system:
Dozenals contend much of life already is divided into
twelves: People buy dozens of eggs and dozens of
doughnuts. There are 12 months in the year and 12 inches
to a foot.
[Los Angeles Times, 17 May 1982.]
Any popularity it has would seem to be the result of its adoption
in its title about a couple of decades ago by the Dozenal Society
of America (the successor to the old Duodecimal Society of America)
and by its British cousin.
An enthusiast for the duodecimal number system has been called a
dozenalist or a dozener. Both are highly unusual.
http://www.worldwidewords.org/nl/gbps.htm
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- Messages
- 54,631
One here for any Fortean dictionary:
Weird Words: Ostrobogulous
-------------------------------------------------------------------
The word is weird not only because it looks strange and is rather
rare but because it can refer to something weird (or to a strange,
bizarre or generally unusual happening). To increase its oddity, it
can also mean something mildly risqué, indecent or pornographic.
"Ostrobogulous" was Vickybird's favourite word. It
stood for anything from the bawdy to the slightly off-
colour. Any double entendre that might otherwise have
escaped his audience was prefaced by, "if you will pardon
the ostrobogulosity".
[Magic my Youth, by Arthur Calder-Marshall, 1951.]
It was coined by Victor Neuburg (Vickybird in the quotation), a gay
British Jewish poet and writer and a close friend of the occultist
Aleister Crowley, whose sexual magic practices he helped develop.
Neuburg said that the word was formed, highly irregularly as you
might expect, from Greek "ostro", rich, plus English "bog" in the
schoolboy slang sense of the toilet, hence "dirt", and ending in
Latin "ulus", full of. The Oxford English Dictionary doesn't agree,
suggesting that the first part is from "oestrous". But we ought to
let Victor Neuburg have the last word on its etymology, as it was
his creation.
The word is a favourite of people like me who collect interestingly
weird words. A notable recent appearance was in the Mail on Sunday,
a British family newspaper which might have looked askance at it
had its editors known of its indecorous antecedents. It was quoted
as the favourite word of Professor Christian Kay, who has worked
for 42 years on the Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English
Dictionary, due to be published next month.
http://www.worldwidewords.org/nl/nfkl.htm
Weird Words: Ostrobogulous
-------------------------------------------------------------------
The word is weird not only because it looks strange and is rather
rare but because it can refer to something weird (or to a strange,
bizarre or generally unusual happening). To increase its oddity, it
can also mean something mildly risqué, indecent or pornographic.
"Ostrobogulous" was Vickybird's favourite word. It
stood for anything from the bawdy to the slightly off-
colour. Any double entendre that might otherwise have
escaped his audience was prefaced by, "if you will pardon
the ostrobogulosity".
[Magic my Youth, by Arthur Calder-Marshall, 1951.]
It was coined by Victor Neuburg (Vickybird in the quotation), a gay
British Jewish poet and writer and a close friend of the occultist
Aleister Crowley, whose sexual magic practices he helped develop.
Neuburg said that the word was formed, highly irregularly as you
might expect, from Greek "ostro", rich, plus English "bog" in the
schoolboy slang sense of the toilet, hence "dirt", and ending in
Latin "ulus", full of. The Oxford English Dictionary doesn't agree,
suggesting that the first part is from "oestrous". But we ought to
let Victor Neuburg have the last word on its etymology, as it was
his creation.
The word is a favourite of people like me who collect interestingly
weird words. A notable recent appearance was in the Mail on Sunday,
a British family newspaper which might have looked askance at it
had its editors known of its indecorous antecedents. It was quoted
as the favourite word of Professor Christian Kay, who has worked
for 42 years on the Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English
Dictionary, due to be published next month.
http://www.worldwidewords.org/nl/nfkl.htm
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- Aug 7, 2001
- Messages
- 54,631
This is new to me - Twink
Michael Quinion writes:
TWINKLE, TWINKLE, LITTLE TWINK It's amazing what you can learn
from e-mail error messages. The issue last week was blocked by one
site in the UK because it had a rude word in the message body. Do
you recall reading any rude words? I don't remember writing any. It
transpired that the offending "word" was in the title of a nursery
rhyme I listed: Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star. The filtering system
spotted the first five letters of the first word and pounced. I had
to look it up: TWINK is gay slang (I quote Wikipedia) for "a young
or young-looking gay man (usually white and in his late teens or
early twenties) with a slender build, little or no body hair, and
no facial hair."
http://www.worldwidewords.org/nl/puqo.htm
Not a word I expect to use much!
Michael Quinion writes:
TWINKLE, TWINKLE, LITTLE TWINK It's amazing what you can learn
from e-mail error messages. The issue last week was blocked by one
site in the UK because it had a rude word in the message body. Do
you recall reading any rude words? I don't remember writing any. It
transpired that the offending "word" was in the title of a nursery
rhyme I listed: Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star. The filtering system
spotted the first five letters of the first word and pounced. I had
to look it up: TWINK is gay slang (I quote Wikipedia) for "a young
or young-looking gay man (usually white and in his late teens or
early twenties) with a slender build, little or no body hair, and
no facial hair."
http://www.worldwidewords.org/nl/puqo.htm
Not a word I expect to use much!
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- Aug 7, 2001
- Messages
- 54,631
GOOSTRUMNOODLE
GRAND WORD Lord Myners, who is usually referred to in newspapers
as the City minister, though his full official title is Financial
Services Secretary to the Treasury, gave a speech on Wednesday at
the dinner of a City of London guild, one that has the currently
inappropriate title of the Worshipful Company of International
Bankers. He ended: "The next few months will set the blueprint for
public perceptions of the banking industry for decades to come. The
taxpayer will not be taken for a GOOSTRUMNOODLE a second time - nor
should they be allowed to." What a wonderful word! I had to search
a while before finding a dictionary that contains it. Eventually, I
tracked it down in the English Dialect Dictionary of a century ago.
It turns out to be a Cornish word for a fool. It's not surprising
that Lord Myners should know it - his childhood was spent in
Cornwall.
http://www.worldwidewords.org/nl/okbl.htm
Wonderful word! Though I must say that, although I've lived in Cornwall for 20 years, I've never heard it before.
GRAND WORD Lord Myners, who is usually referred to in newspapers
as the City minister, though his full official title is Financial
Services Secretary to the Treasury, gave a speech on Wednesday at
the dinner of a City of London guild, one that has the currently
inappropriate title of the Worshipful Company of International
Bankers. He ended: "The next few months will set the blueprint for
public perceptions of the banking industry for decades to come. The
taxpayer will not be taken for a GOOSTRUMNOODLE a second time - nor
should they be allowed to." What a wonderful word! I had to search
a while before finding a dictionary that contains it. Eventually, I
tracked it down in the English Dialect Dictionary of a century ago.
It turns out to be a Cornish word for a fool. It's not surprising
that Lord Myners should know it - his childhood was spent in
Cornwall.
http://www.worldwidewords.org/nl/okbl.htm
Wonderful word! Though I must say that, although I've lived in Cornwall for 20 years, I've never heard it before.
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- Messages
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Weird Words: Tumbarumba
-------------------------------------------------------------------
A tumbarumba is not a belly-dance to South American music, as a
contestant in an Australian words competition once suggested. Nor
does it directly address the small Australian town of that name
that lies south-west of Canberra in New South Wales, though some of
its inhabitants must surely tumbarumba without knowing that name
for it.
No, "tumbarumba" is another name for tmesis, one form of which is
that curious trick of stuffing one word into the middle of another.
"Abso-bloody-lutely", "a whole nother", "fan-bloody-tastic" and
"any-blooming-where" are classic cases, though many of the most
powerful examples include the F-word. For a reason buried in local
linguistic history it's a verbal tic Australians are fond of, who
insert their favourite adjective, "bloody", to great effect.
The origin of the term is disputed, but who can sensibly decry the
claim of this de-flaming-lightful poem:
"Howya bloody been, ya drongo, haven't seen ya fer a week,
And yer mate was lookin' for ya when ya come in from the creek.
'E was lookin' up at Ryan's, and around at bloody Joe's,
And even at the Royal, where 'e bloody NEVER goes".
And the other bloke says "Seen 'im? Owed 'im half a bloody quid.
Forgot to give it back to him, but now I bloody did -
Could've used the thing me bloody self. Been off the bloody booze,
Up at Tumba-bloody-rumba shootin' kanga-bloody-roos."
[The Integrated Adjective, or Tumba Bloody Rumba, by John O'Grady.]
http://www.worldwidewords.org/nl/xcbg.htm
-------------------------------------------------------------------
A tumbarumba is not a belly-dance to South American music, as a
contestant in an Australian words competition once suggested. Nor
does it directly address the small Australian town of that name
that lies south-west of Canberra in New South Wales, though some of
its inhabitants must surely tumbarumba without knowing that name
for it.
No, "tumbarumba" is another name for tmesis, one form of which is
that curious trick of stuffing one word into the middle of another.
"Abso-bloody-lutely", "a whole nother", "fan-bloody-tastic" and
"any-blooming-where" are classic cases, though many of the most
powerful examples include the F-word. For a reason buried in local
linguistic history it's a verbal tic Australians are fond of, who
insert their favourite adjective, "bloody", to great effect.
The origin of the term is disputed, but who can sensibly decry the
claim of this de-flaming-lightful poem:
"Howya bloody been, ya drongo, haven't seen ya fer a week,
And yer mate was lookin' for ya when ya come in from the creek.
'E was lookin' up at Ryan's, and around at bloody Joe's,
And even at the Royal, where 'e bloody NEVER goes".
And the other bloke says "Seen 'im? Owed 'im half a bloody quid.
Forgot to give it back to him, but now I bloody did -
Could've used the thing me bloody self. Been off the bloody booze,
Up at Tumba-bloody-rumba shootin' kanga-bloody-roos."
[The Integrated Adjective, or Tumba Bloody Rumba, by John O'Grady.]
http://www.worldwidewords.org/nl/xcbg.htm
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- Aug 7, 2001
- Messages
- 54,631
Vuvuzela n.
A vuvuzela, sometimes called a "lepatata" (its Setswana name) or a stadium horn, is a blowing horn, approximately one metre in length, commonly blown by fans at soccer matches in South Africa. They require some lip and lung strength to blow and emit a loud monotone like a foghorn or an elephant
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vuvuzela
If you've never heard or seen a vuvuzela, I'm pretty sure you will soon! 8)
A vuvuzela, sometimes called a "lepatata" (its Setswana name) or a stadium horn, is a blowing horn, approximately one metre in length, commonly blown by fans at soccer matches in South Africa. They require some lip and lung strength to blow and emit a loud monotone like a foghorn or an elephant
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vuvuzela
If you've never heard or seen a vuvuzela, I'm pretty sure you will soon! 8)
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- Aug 7, 2001
- Messages
- 54,631
Here's a whole shedload of odd words - see if you can use some today!
Secret vault of words rejected by the Oxford English Dictionary uncovered
Wurfing, polkadodge and nonversation are among the words stored in secret files after being rejected for inclusion by the Oxford English Dictionary, it has been disclosed.
Published: 12:07PM BST 04 Aug 2010
Millions of "non words" which failed to make the dictionary lie unused in a vault owned by the Oxford University Press.
"Wurfing" means surfing the internet at work, while "polkadodge" describes the strange little dance two passing people do when they try to avoid each other but move in the same direction, and "nonversation" denotes a pointless chat.
These words were recently submitted for use in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) but will remain dormant unless they enter common parlance in the future.
Graphic designer Luke Ngakane, 22, uncovered hundreds of 'non words' as part of a project for Kingston University, London.
He said: ''I was fascinated when I read that the Oxford University Press has a vault where all their failed words, which didn't make the dictionary, are kept.
''This storeroom contains millions of words and some of them date back hundreds of years.
''It's a very hush, hush vault and I really struggled to find out information about it because it is so secretive.
''But when I spoke to them they were happy to confirm its existence and although I didn't actually get to see the room they did send me some examples.
''I picked out the words that resonated with me and really seemed to fit the purpose they were intended for.
''I get really excited when I hear someone using one of them because if enough people pick them up then maybe they will make it into the dictionary after all.''
Mr Ngakane researched hundreds of 'non words' before choosing 39 to etch onto a metal press plate and print onto A4 paper for his graphic design degree.
His favourite selection from his "Dictionary of Non Words" project include "furgling", which is the act of fumbling in your pocket for keys or loose change.
Other notable words are "dringle", which is the watermark left by a glass of liquid, and "earworm", a catchy tune that frequently gets stuck in your head.
"Sprogging", is the act of running slower than a sprint but faster than a jog, while the silver foil coating on scratch cards is given the name "scrax".
All of these words have been submitted to the Oxford University Press for inclusion in the OED but were judged to be ''unsuitable''.
etc...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstop ... vered.html
Secret vault of words rejected by the Oxford English Dictionary uncovered
Wurfing, polkadodge and nonversation are among the words stored in secret files after being rejected for inclusion by the Oxford English Dictionary, it has been disclosed.
Published: 12:07PM BST 04 Aug 2010
Millions of "non words" which failed to make the dictionary lie unused in a vault owned by the Oxford University Press.
"Wurfing" means surfing the internet at work, while "polkadodge" describes the strange little dance two passing people do when they try to avoid each other but move in the same direction, and "nonversation" denotes a pointless chat.
These words were recently submitted for use in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) but will remain dormant unless they enter common parlance in the future.
Graphic designer Luke Ngakane, 22, uncovered hundreds of 'non words' as part of a project for Kingston University, London.
He said: ''I was fascinated when I read that the Oxford University Press has a vault where all their failed words, which didn't make the dictionary, are kept.
''This storeroom contains millions of words and some of them date back hundreds of years.
''It's a very hush, hush vault and I really struggled to find out information about it because it is so secretive.
''But when I spoke to them they were happy to confirm its existence and although I didn't actually get to see the room they did send me some examples.
''I picked out the words that resonated with me and really seemed to fit the purpose they were intended for.
''I get really excited when I hear someone using one of them because if enough people pick them up then maybe they will make it into the dictionary after all.''
Mr Ngakane researched hundreds of 'non words' before choosing 39 to etch onto a metal press plate and print onto A4 paper for his graphic design degree.
His favourite selection from his "Dictionary of Non Words" project include "furgling", which is the act of fumbling in your pocket for keys or loose change.
Other notable words are "dringle", which is the watermark left by a glass of liquid, and "earworm", a catchy tune that frequently gets stuck in your head.
"Sprogging", is the act of running slower than a sprint but faster than a jog, while the silver foil coating on scratch cards is given the name "scrax".
All of these words have been submitted to the Oxford University Press for inclusion in the OED but were judged to be ''unsuitable''.
etc...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstop ... vered.html
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- Aug 7, 2001
- Messages
- 54,631
Topical Words: Nurdle
-------------------------------------------------------------------
A pending court case between Colgate and Glaxo has reminded me of
this invaluable word, whose wide circulation and range of senses is
a wonder, even more so because it rarely features in dictionaries.
Some know it best as a term in cricket, for a tap by the batsman
that pushes the ball into a space among the fielders in order to
take a quick single ("One of our habitual opponents was captained
by a man who could, and often did, nurdle the ball down to fine
leg", noted The Times in January this year). It's also a term in
tiddlywinks for playing a wink so close to the pot that it's almost
impossible for your opponent to pot it ("To escape from a nurdle
you need a university degree, an agile wrist and a zany sense of
humor", the Toronto Star wrote in 1985). A couple of English pubs
play a game called nurdling, which has been described as "getting
old pennies down a hole in a bench". Generally speaking, if you're
nurdling you're faffing about doing nothing very constructive.
A nurdle in the plastics business, on the other hand, is properly a
pre-production pellet, the basic feedstuff that plastic products
are made from. When plastics biodegrade in the oceans they turn
back into particles that have been given the same name.
In the court case sense, "nurdle" is the term in the US for the
"correct" amount of toothpaste one should put on one's toothbrush,
a squeeze of the tube that exactly covers the whole length of the
bristles. The news report in which I found it said, "The complaint
seeks a declaration that Colgate's 'Triple Action' phrase and three
stripe nurdle are not confusingly similar to Glaxo's 'Triple
Protection' phrase and nurdle design in other colours." Let us hope
that this dispute is cleared up soon, for the sake of our communal
peace of mind. I'm told that we must give credit, or blame, to the
American Dental Association for its work in the 1990s to popularise
"nurdle" in this sense.
It has been claimed that "nurdle" was coined by the writers of the
US TV show Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, with "farkel", "bippy" and
others. The true origin, as any Brit of mature years can tell you,
was in the crazy mind of Michael Bentine, one of the original Goons
and the chief perpetrator of a BBC television show between 1960-64
called It's a Square World. He invented a spoof pub game, drats,
supposedly played by Somerset yokels. It was dangerous, with the
main risk being that of nurdling, an unspecified but catastrophic
error ("Drat me! - He's Nurdled!!"). The word entered the American
lexicon in 1967 when reports appeared in various US media about a
mad pub group in Totten, near Southampton, that actually played the
game, under the title of the Nurdling Championships.
Truly, it's a word for all seasons and occasions.
http://www.worldwidewords.org/nl/brck.htm
-------------------------------------------------------------------
A pending court case between Colgate and Glaxo has reminded me of
this invaluable word, whose wide circulation and range of senses is
a wonder, even more so because it rarely features in dictionaries.
Some know it best as a term in cricket, for a tap by the batsman
that pushes the ball into a space among the fielders in order to
take a quick single ("One of our habitual opponents was captained
by a man who could, and often did, nurdle the ball down to fine
leg", noted The Times in January this year). It's also a term in
tiddlywinks for playing a wink so close to the pot that it's almost
impossible for your opponent to pot it ("To escape from a nurdle
you need a university degree, an agile wrist and a zany sense of
humor", the Toronto Star wrote in 1985). A couple of English pubs
play a game called nurdling, which has been described as "getting
old pennies down a hole in a bench". Generally speaking, if you're
nurdling you're faffing about doing nothing very constructive.
A nurdle in the plastics business, on the other hand, is properly a
pre-production pellet, the basic feedstuff that plastic products
are made from. When plastics biodegrade in the oceans they turn
back into particles that have been given the same name.
In the court case sense, "nurdle" is the term in the US for the
"correct" amount of toothpaste one should put on one's toothbrush,
a squeeze of the tube that exactly covers the whole length of the
bristles. The news report in which I found it said, "The complaint
seeks a declaration that Colgate's 'Triple Action' phrase and three
stripe nurdle are not confusingly similar to Glaxo's 'Triple
Protection' phrase and nurdle design in other colours." Let us hope
that this dispute is cleared up soon, for the sake of our communal
peace of mind. I'm told that we must give credit, or blame, to the
American Dental Association for its work in the 1990s to popularise
"nurdle" in this sense.
It has been claimed that "nurdle" was coined by the writers of the
US TV show Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, with "farkel", "bippy" and
others. The true origin, as any Brit of mature years can tell you,
was in the crazy mind of Michael Bentine, one of the original Goons
and the chief perpetrator of a BBC television show between 1960-64
called It's a Square World. He invented a spoof pub game, drats,
supposedly played by Somerset yokels. It was dangerous, with the
main risk being that of nurdling, an unspecified but catastrophic
error ("Drat me! - He's Nurdled!!"). The word entered the American
lexicon in 1967 when reports appeared in various US media about a
mad pub group in Totten, near Southampton, that actually played the
game, under the title of the Nurdling Championships.
Truly, it's a word for all seasons and occasions.
http://www.worldwidewords.org/nl/brck.htm
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- Aug 10, 2005
- Messages
- 11,990
Sure enough, there's a Nurdling website. About a version of a nurdling game, based in Dorsetshire.rynner2 said:
http://www.crumbleholme.plus.com/nurdling.htm
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- Aug 7, 2001
- Messages
- 54,631
Weird Words: Ugsome
-------------------------------------------------------------------
If this reminds you of the inarticulate cry of disgust that's most
often spelled "ugh!" then you're on the mark. "Ugh" comes from the
much less familiar "ugsome", something loathsome or horrible. In a
case of linguistic turn-and-turn-about, "ugsome" derives from the
ancient and long defunct word "ug", which about a millennium ago
came into English from the Old Norse "ugga", to dread. That Old
Norse word is also the source of "ugly" (which meant frightful or
horrible before it weakened to refer to something merely unpleasing
in appearance). You could argue that "ugsome" is the opposite of
"handsome".
In the centuries before Shakespeare, "ugsome" was common enough,
mostly in Scotland and northern England, but then almost completely
died out except in dialect. It was resurrected in the eighteenth
century by writers seeking an archaic word to help set a historical
scene. The following century, popular authors such as Sir Walter
Scott ("Like an auld dog that trails its useless ugsome carcass
into some bush or bracken"), Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton ("''Tis an
ugsome bit of road!' said the Corporal, looking round him") and
Charles Dickens ("One very ugsome devil with goggling eyes, seems
to hold up frightful claws, to bar the traveller's way") regained
it some small exposure, though it was never very popular.
Today, "ugsome" is unknown to most English-speaking people. This is
a rare modern example:
The link between motorists and rats may not be
immediately obvious - except to that tiny proportion of
the population for which car-users are pests and their
vehicles ugsome - but drivers and rats both react badly
to the stress brought on by crowded conditions.
[Yorkshire Post, 6 Sep. 2004.]
http://www.worldwidewords.org/nl/onwl.htm
-------------------------------------------------------------------
If this reminds you of the inarticulate cry of disgust that's most
often spelled "ugh!" then you're on the mark. "Ugh" comes from the
much less familiar "ugsome", something loathsome or horrible. In a
case of linguistic turn-and-turn-about, "ugsome" derives from the
ancient and long defunct word "ug", which about a millennium ago
came into English from the Old Norse "ugga", to dread. That Old
Norse word is also the source of "ugly" (which meant frightful or
horrible before it weakened to refer to something merely unpleasing
in appearance). You could argue that "ugsome" is the opposite of
"handsome".
In the centuries before Shakespeare, "ugsome" was common enough,
mostly in Scotland and northern England, but then almost completely
died out except in dialect. It was resurrected in the eighteenth
century by writers seeking an archaic word to help set a historical
scene. The following century, popular authors such as Sir Walter
Scott ("Like an auld dog that trails its useless ugsome carcass
into some bush or bracken"), Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton ("''Tis an
ugsome bit of road!' said the Corporal, looking round him") and
Charles Dickens ("One very ugsome devil with goggling eyes, seems
to hold up frightful claws, to bar the traveller's way") regained
it some small exposure, though it was never very popular.
Today, "ugsome" is unknown to most English-speaking people. This is
a rare modern example:
The link between motorists and rats may not be
immediately obvious - except to that tiny proportion of
the population for which car-users are pests and their
vehicles ugsome - but drivers and rats both react badly
to the stress brought on by crowded conditions.
[Yorkshire Post, 6 Sep. 2004.]
http://www.worldwidewords.org/nl/onwl.htm
- Joined
- Aug 7, 2001
- Messages
- 54,631
The D.T. pats itself on the back for a whole raft of new words over the years:
Ageist to Zedonk: 251 words The Daily Telegraph coined
The Daily Telegraph has been blithefully accoladed by the Oxford English Dictionary, for the tricklet of words that have yomped and bossed their way from the pages of the newspaper into the country's premier lexicon.
By Harry Wallop, Consumer Affairs Editor 6:30AM GMT 30 Nov 2010
From "ageist" (one who discriminates against another person on the basis of their age) to "zedonk" (the offspring of a male zebra and a female donkey), The Daily Telegraph is responsible for 251 words appearing in the august dictionary.
The paper has either coined them – thanks to a particularly imaginative or well-refreshed reporter – or, as is more often the case, been the first publication in the world to use the word in print.
It seems impossible to imagine living without such terms as "drink-driving", "extradite", "triathlon", "alcopop" or "eco-friendly", but according to the editors of the Dictionary, the great majority of people had never read them until they picked up their copy of The Daily Telegraph that morning.
Most of us unlucky enough to have spent the night in hospital have dealt with anaesthetist, but the profession was first recorded in this paper's pages in 1882. Underdog was in common usage in late Victorian Britain, but it wasn't written down until 1887 when the Daily Telegraph used the term.
Some of the words, of course, have failed to stand the test of time. Modern technology has rendered many them obsolete – who needs a "buser" (a bus horse) when modern double-deckers are powered by engines. Others may be of use to historians, but are unlikely to be ever heard in modern usage, such as "polyversity", the institutions that tried to combine polytechnics and universities in the 1970s, "Squarials", the satellite television dishes that were all the rage in the late 1980s, and "balloonacy" the term used to describe the 1860s craze for ballooning.
The words have been compiled by Oxford University Publishing to coincide with the latest electronic version of the dictionary being published on the internet. Subscribers will now be able to search for words by sources, and by the date they first appeared in print.
Five of the top 15 sources used by the OED are newspapers, with The Times used more frequently than William Shakespeare. It is the most popular source.
John Simpson, the chief editor, said: "Newspapers have always been very useful for the Dictionary, even though the first publishers tried to stop newspapers being used because they thought they were too trivial. The editors won the day.
"They have always been good at recording new words picked up either in the school playground on in politics."
He added that the Daily Telegraph was quoted, along with the The Times so often because "probably because they are the newspapers that the readers and editors of the dictionary read."
As well as Shakespeare, Chaucer and Walter Scott – the three preeminent authors used as sources – more modern authors can be searched for. The comic pen of PG Wodehouse is responsible for both "cuppa" and "whiffled", while Len Deighton, the thriller writer, was the first to use the words "Stasi" and "merguez" as in the spicy sausage.
Mr Simpson pointed out that though The Daily Telegraph has a reputation for being cautious it appears to have been assiduous at recording the counter-culture movement in the 1960s and 1970s. The terms "freak-out" (an intense emotional experience, especially one resulting from the use of hallucinatory drugs), a "Be-in" (a public gathering of hippies) and "soulie" (a fan of soul music) all appeared first in this newspaper.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/ ... oined.html
Ageist to Zedonk: 251 words The Daily Telegraph coined
The Daily Telegraph has been blithefully accoladed by the Oxford English Dictionary, for the tricklet of words that have yomped and bossed their way from the pages of the newspaper into the country's premier lexicon.
By Harry Wallop, Consumer Affairs Editor 6:30AM GMT 30 Nov 2010
From "ageist" (one who discriminates against another person on the basis of their age) to "zedonk" (the offspring of a male zebra and a female donkey), The Daily Telegraph is responsible for 251 words appearing in the august dictionary.
The paper has either coined them – thanks to a particularly imaginative or well-refreshed reporter – or, as is more often the case, been the first publication in the world to use the word in print.
It seems impossible to imagine living without such terms as "drink-driving", "extradite", "triathlon", "alcopop" or "eco-friendly", but according to the editors of the Dictionary, the great majority of people had never read them until they picked up their copy of The Daily Telegraph that morning.
Most of us unlucky enough to have spent the night in hospital have dealt with anaesthetist, but the profession was first recorded in this paper's pages in 1882. Underdog was in common usage in late Victorian Britain, but it wasn't written down until 1887 when the Daily Telegraph used the term.
Some of the words, of course, have failed to stand the test of time. Modern technology has rendered many them obsolete – who needs a "buser" (a bus horse) when modern double-deckers are powered by engines. Others may be of use to historians, but are unlikely to be ever heard in modern usage, such as "polyversity", the institutions that tried to combine polytechnics and universities in the 1970s, "Squarials", the satellite television dishes that were all the rage in the late 1980s, and "balloonacy" the term used to describe the 1860s craze for ballooning.
The words have been compiled by Oxford University Publishing to coincide with the latest electronic version of the dictionary being published on the internet. Subscribers will now be able to search for words by sources, and by the date they first appeared in print.
Five of the top 15 sources used by the OED are newspapers, with The Times used more frequently than William Shakespeare. It is the most popular source.
John Simpson, the chief editor, said: "Newspapers have always been very useful for the Dictionary, even though the first publishers tried to stop newspapers being used because they thought they were too trivial. The editors won the day.
"They have always been good at recording new words picked up either in the school playground on in politics."
He added that the Daily Telegraph was quoted, along with the The Times so often because "probably because they are the newspapers that the readers and editors of the dictionary read."
As well as Shakespeare, Chaucer and Walter Scott – the three preeminent authors used as sources – more modern authors can be searched for. The comic pen of PG Wodehouse is responsible for both "cuppa" and "whiffled", while Len Deighton, the thriller writer, was the first to use the words "Stasi" and "merguez" as in the spicy sausage.
Mr Simpson pointed out that though The Daily Telegraph has a reputation for being cautious it appears to have been assiduous at recording the counter-culture movement in the 1960s and 1970s. The terms "freak-out" (an intense emotional experience, especially one resulting from the use of hallucinatory drugs), a "Be-in" (a public gathering of hippies) and "soulie" (a fan of soul music) all appeared first in this newspaper.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/ ... oined.html
- Joined
- Jul 31, 2001
- Messages
- 5,823
And of course from the Simpsons we have cromulent and embiggen.
- Joined
- Aug 7, 2001
- Messages
- 54,631
Octothorpe :!:
How the # became the sign of our times
It's called an octothorpe – and Twitter users have made it a global symbol
Tim Dowling guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 8 December 2010 20.00 GMT
We haven't seen a typographical resurrection like it since the @, an obscure accounting symbol meaning "at the rate of", was pressed into service to form the first email address in 1971.
According to the buzz on Twitter and the blogosphere, the rebranded symbol of 2010 is the octothorpe. The what, you say? Did you not know the name for the #, the cross-hatch figure beloved of Twitter users everywhere? A symbol so little used even three years ago that I have just had to press alt+3 on my keyboard to generate one?
Don't worry – almost no one knows it's called an octothorpe, and most of those who do don't call it that. In the UK it's generally known as "hash". In America they call it a pound sign, because it's sometimes used to denote weight in pounds. Elsewhere it's called a number sign (because #3, or "alt+3+3" in my case, means number three) or a "hex".
The term octothorpe was coined by engineers at Bell Laboratories in the early 1960s, who wanted a name for one of two non-number function symbols on the first touch-tone keypads (the other was the *, which they called a sextile). It didn't catch on, and the # key became famous as an ineffectual way of interacting with the robots who work at your bank.
Until, that is, Twitter came along. The octothorpe is the essential symbol in the formation of a hashtag, a marker that allows 140-character tweets to be grouped together by subject (#boringtypographystories, for example). It means all the comments about #xfactor or #imaceleb can be viewed together.
There are a few other symbols on the keyboard awaiting a new life, among them §, which is used to denote "section", the ¶ (or pilcrow, for "paragraph") and the dagger †, used for footnotes when the asterisk has already been deployed, but it won't happen until a need arises.
An ongoing search for a universal symbol to denote irony (the reverse question mark being among the oldest suggestions) has always faltered, partly because it's not really irony unless someone somewhere doesn't get it.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/ ... typography
### 8)
How the # became the sign of our times
It's called an octothorpe – and Twitter users have made it a global symbol
Tim Dowling guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 8 December 2010 20.00 GMT
We haven't seen a typographical resurrection like it since the @, an obscure accounting symbol meaning "at the rate of", was pressed into service to form the first email address in 1971.
According to the buzz on Twitter and the blogosphere, the rebranded symbol of 2010 is the octothorpe. The what, you say? Did you not know the name for the #, the cross-hatch figure beloved of Twitter users everywhere? A symbol so little used even three years ago that I have just had to press alt+3 on my keyboard to generate one?
Don't worry – almost no one knows it's called an octothorpe, and most of those who do don't call it that. In the UK it's generally known as "hash". In America they call it a pound sign, because it's sometimes used to denote weight in pounds. Elsewhere it's called a number sign (because #3, or "alt+3+3" in my case, means number three) or a "hex".
The term octothorpe was coined by engineers at Bell Laboratories in the early 1960s, who wanted a name for one of two non-number function symbols on the first touch-tone keypads (the other was the *, which they called a sextile). It didn't catch on, and the # key became famous as an ineffectual way of interacting with the robots who work at your bank.
Until, that is, Twitter came along. The octothorpe is the essential symbol in the formation of a hashtag, a marker that allows 140-character tweets to be grouped together by subject (#boringtypographystories, for example). It means all the comments about #xfactor or #imaceleb can be viewed together.
There are a few other symbols on the keyboard awaiting a new life, among them §, which is used to denote "section", the ¶ (or pilcrow, for "paragraph") and the dagger †, used for footnotes when the asterisk has already been deployed, but it won't happen until a need arises.
An ongoing search for a universal symbol to denote irony (the reverse question mark being among the oldest suggestions) has always faltered, partly because it's not really irony unless someone somewhere doesn't get it.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/ ... typography
### 8)
- Joined
- Aug 7, 2001
- Messages
- 54,631
Take your pick!
Scrabble king celebrates with night on tiles
'Caromel' helps local government finance adviser Wayne Kelly win war of words to become 2011 UK champion
Maev Kennedy guardian.co.uk, Sunday 6 November 2011 19.13 GMT
At the end of a long grey day, it came down to suet and it was all over: Gary Oliver's enchantingly dull word was worth just 10 points, and meant that Wayne Kelly's lead was unassailable. The audience, which hung on his every word throughout the day, went as wild as was possible for about 50 mainly middle-aged, very polite people, and Kelly was proclaimed British national Scrabble champion.
Kelly, 37, a local government finance adviser who lives with his parents in Warrington, and who will invest a good chunk of his £2,000 winnings in a new computer, does struggle slightly to convey the drama of his chosen sport.
"I'm on a bit of a buzz," he said. "My colleagues will be pleased for me. They know all about it – I've talked about nothing else for weeks. But I know some people see it as a game like Monopoly that doesn't really involve skill."
He conceded that his last high-scoring word, travails, was "a bit of a slog word", but he was proud of caromel, which was immediately challenged: "I wasn't 100% sure of it myself, to be honest." He was allowed the word, then shaken when Oliver came back with the 107-point ergotize (to argue logically).
etc...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/ ... ayne-kelly
Scrabble king celebrates with night on tiles
'Caromel' helps local government finance adviser Wayne Kelly win war of words to become 2011 UK champion
Maev Kennedy guardian.co.uk, Sunday 6 November 2011 19.13 GMT
At the end of a long grey day, it came down to suet and it was all over: Gary Oliver's enchantingly dull word was worth just 10 points, and meant that Wayne Kelly's lead was unassailable. The audience, which hung on his every word throughout the day, went as wild as was possible for about 50 mainly middle-aged, very polite people, and Kelly was proclaimed British national Scrabble champion.
Kelly, 37, a local government finance adviser who lives with his parents in Warrington, and who will invest a good chunk of his £2,000 winnings in a new computer, does struggle slightly to convey the drama of his chosen sport.
"I'm on a bit of a buzz," he said. "My colleagues will be pleased for me. They know all about it – I've talked about nothing else for weeks. But I know some people see it as a game like Monopoly that doesn't really involve skill."
He conceded that his last high-scoring word, travails, was "a bit of a slog word", but he was proud of caromel, which was immediately challenged: "I wasn't 100% sure of it myself, to be honest." He was allowed the word, then shaken when Oliver came back with the 107-point ergotize (to argue logically).
etc...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/ ... ayne-kelly
- Joined
- Aug 7, 2001
- Messages
- 54,631
Let's kick off the new year with a revival of this old 'un:
Weird Words: Toploftical--------------------------------------------------------------------
This may look and sound like one of those grandiloquent words that
arose on the American frontier, alongside sockdolager, hornswoggle,
dumfungled, absquatulate, goshbustified and their kin.
No, it's British, dammit! To be more accurate, it's Scots, as it
started life in 1823 in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, in one of a
series of imaginary conversations entitled Noctes Ambrosianae that
were set in a tavern in Edinburgh. One member, Odoherty, whom you
may conclude was Irish, commented sarcastically on a snatch of a
poem by Lord Byron: "Very toploftical, to be sure."
It was a slang term - roughly translatable as high-flown, high and
mighty, highfalutin or stuck-up - that was rarely to be found in
printed texts of the nineteenth century. It seems to have caught on
soon after (Thomas Carlyle used it in a letter in 1824) and we know
it had reached Ireland no later than the early 1840s:
Thomas Wilson, who spoke in a strain so ambitious and
toploftical as to be scarcely intelligible to the
magistrates, succeeded after much ado in making their
worships comprehend that on the night previous he had had
a jollification with a friend in Merrion-street.
[Freeman's Journal and Daily Commercial Advertiser
(Dublin), 21 Mar. 1842.]
It was taken to the US around this time and had greater success
there, no doubt because it fitted the extravagant lexicality of that
rambunctious nation. In the 1850s "toplofty" was formed from it.
Though the heyday of both words is long over and "toploftical" has
vanished, on rare occasions the shorter word still graces our
private conversations and the public press.
Its origin is disputed. The Oxford English Dictionary suggests it
comes from "top loft", though it has no entry for the term. Examples
in books indicate that it was literally the topmost storey of a high
building, usually a storage area. Presumably its height above the
ground was the stimulus for the figurative expression.
http://www.worldwidewords.org/nl/yurg.htm
Weird Words: Toploftical--------------------------------------------------------------------
This may look and sound like one of those grandiloquent words that
arose on the American frontier, alongside sockdolager, hornswoggle,
dumfungled, absquatulate, goshbustified and their kin.
No, it's British, dammit! To be more accurate, it's Scots, as it
started life in 1823 in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, in one of a
series of imaginary conversations entitled Noctes Ambrosianae that
were set in a tavern in Edinburgh. One member, Odoherty, whom you
may conclude was Irish, commented sarcastically on a snatch of a
poem by Lord Byron: "Very toploftical, to be sure."
It was a slang term - roughly translatable as high-flown, high and
mighty, highfalutin or stuck-up - that was rarely to be found in
printed texts of the nineteenth century. It seems to have caught on
soon after (Thomas Carlyle used it in a letter in 1824) and we know
it had reached Ireland no later than the early 1840s:
Thomas Wilson, who spoke in a strain so ambitious and
toploftical as to be scarcely intelligible to the
magistrates, succeeded after much ado in making their
worships comprehend that on the night previous he had had
a jollification with a friend in Merrion-street.
[Freeman's Journal and Daily Commercial Advertiser
(Dublin), 21 Mar. 1842.]
It was taken to the US around this time and had greater success
there, no doubt because it fitted the extravagant lexicality of that
rambunctious nation. In the 1850s "toplofty" was formed from it.
Though the heyday of both words is long over and "toploftical" has
vanished, on rare occasions the shorter word still graces our
private conversations and the public press.
Its origin is disputed. The Oxford English Dictionary suggests it
comes from "top loft", though it has no entry for the term. Examples
in books indicate that it was literally the topmost storey of a high
building, usually a storage area. Presumably its height above the
ground was the stimulus for the figurative expression.
http://www.worldwidewords.org/nl/yurg.htm
- Joined
- Aug 7, 2001
- Messages
- 54,631
- Joined
- Aug 7, 2001
- Messages
- 54,631
From WORLD WIDE WORDS E-MAGAZINE:
...Other writers discussed skiving, I think familiar to Americans from the Harry Potter stories. This is a well-known British and Commonwealth slang term in the general sense of avoiding duties of any kind, not just truanting, usually by ensuring one is somewhere else at the time. Its origin is uncertain, but it may be from French esquiver, to slink away. As skive is first recorded in 1919 in an army context, it may be yet another term adopted by soldiers in France during the First World War.
Sounds good to me! 8)
...Other writers discussed skiving, I think familiar to Americans from the Harry Potter stories. This is a well-known British and Commonwealth slang term in the general sense of avoiding duties of any kind, not just truanting, usually by ensuring one is somewhere else at the time. Its origin is uncertain, but it may be from French esquiver, to slink away. As skive is first recorded in 1919 in an army context, it may be yet another term adopted by soldiers in France during the First World War.
Sounds good to me! 8)
- Joined
- Jul 31, 2001
- Messages
- 5,823
A skiver was originally someone who worked with very thin sheepskin for binding books or covering desks. Their work was regarded by leather workers as being easy and insubstantial. The word gradually came to mean someone who is work-shy.