ROBUST discussion

Happy New Year, everyone!!

Thought the first day of 2013 a good time to resurrect the old thread.

EXORDIUM

To begin; a beginning or introduction esp. to a discourse or composition

Yep, I know. Not exactly the proper use of either Resurrect (Here, rather than raising up the old thread, its proper use of the word, I have begun a new one), or Exordium (more properly the beginning of an argument in which a speaker or writer establishes credibility and presents the subject).

It sounds like one of those made-up words fantasy writers use for their empires: "Exordium, Blowhole of the Seweral Universe, where the Swordsmith of Oltestical could triumph or perish in the Shadow of the Colossus of Seum"... and further schoolboy puns without end.

Congratulations, Sharon. You've discovered a word no one else knows!

"Hold the pass, I'm coming. I'm only three Universes away. But they're Parallel, not end to end to end!"

Oltestical. I'll have to remember that for my next fantasy. All sorts of interesting things could happen there.

Oh. That's right. I don't write that sort of book. But I'd sell millions if I did!

Kench!

Ah, the fallout of a classical education...

Love it! I shall learn a new word every day.

I had a biology teacher when I was at school, who loved words. When I worked in the lab for a year before I went to University he used to come in to where I was working, lean dramatically against the door jamb and say, "I'm about to be expunged from existence!" Roughly translated that meant, "I'd love a cup of coffee!"

Kench, Katie!

This was not the word I intended to post today, but it's a word I love for the way it trips off the tongue rather playfully, quite nicely describing itself...

DIPSOMANIA

Sharon wrote: "DIPSOMANIA"

Compulsive pickpocketry.

Only if there's a mickey in there...

This could get to be addictive.

An alcoholic?

Dipsomanic.

A better version, considering that most drunks are on autopilot to destruction, would be:

DIPSOMATIC

I'll bite...

At least the alcohol will sterilize a vampire's bite.

In Our Twilight Years. Now there's a title I'm happy to give away.

I'm with you on that one, it's subjective anyway, who's to say when those years would begin?

DIPSOMATIC. Sounds like a washing machine!

Sharon wrote: "I'm with you on that one, it's subjective anyway, who's to say when those years would begin?"

Twilight as a euphemistic metaphor is anyway contaminated with sacharine lupinery for a few decades now.

Katie wrote: "DIPSOMATIC. Sounds like a washing machine!"

Kench!

I went with Roz on Thursday to shop for a new dryer after the handle broke off the door of our old Siemens. The woman in the shop recommended a Candy, which is apparently the name of the firm that owns Hoover. Talk of inappropriate names. Makes me think of Brighton Rock, not Graham Greene's book, but the candy stick with the deckchair stripes running up the inside, to be exposed by sucking on it. (I shall let the previous sentence stand as an example of a sentence loaded with subtexts, all of them confusing to those without the cultural references anglophones share.)

Yep - too cultural for me!

Kench!

Andre wrote: "...Makes me think of Brighton Rock, not Graham Greene's book, but the candy stick with the deckchair stripes running up the inside, to be exposed by sucking on it. (I shall let the previous sentence stand as an example of a sentence loaded with subtexts, all of them confusing to those without the cultural references anglophone share.)"

Loaded is for sure!

Lupinery - I shall have to remember and borrow that...

Katie wrote: "DIPSOMATIC. Sounds like a washing machine!"

Kench!

Reprographics


Even the generic descriptor for this clump of skills and trades and professions and knowledgebases is weird and wonderful: reprographics.

Andre is an old repro...

Keeping stumm, otherwise Sharon will demand the salacious details.

Pretty nifty, putting a cool word in your post.

SALACIOUS

Just saying the word makes one raise their eyebrows in a certain way...

Sharon wrote: "Andre is an old repro..."

First to say "reprobate" loses the game.

Then I guess you just lost, kench!

Kench.

Sharon wrote: "Pretty nifty, putting a cool word in your post.

SALACIOUS

Just saying the word makes one raise their eyebrows in a certain way..."

Kench. And "repro..." is great too!

VICISSITUDE

I have been allowing the vicissitudes of life to impede my progress, but today I am using them to move forward with renewed vigour...

Congratulations on achieving wisdom.

Thanks, Dakota. For the moment at least. But any wisdom I have gained is not

IRREFRAGABLE

Sharon wrote: "Thanks, Dakota. For the moment at least. But any wisdom I have gained is not

IRREFRAGABLE"

Very CONDESCENDING of you, Sharon.

Tip: The American Plenipotentiary to the Court of St James says to Her Britannic Majesty as he bows over her hand, "Most condescending of you, Mam." It once meant something different from today.

Andre wrote: "...It once meant something different from today.

As so many do...

Cool, Andre. I did not know the etymology of that word (so of course when I first read your comment, I thought, huh? how?).

Once "condescending", rather than superior or arrogant, meant "gracious", someone who despite belonging to a superior degree was agreeable, perhaps even humble, as in admitting of the possibility of being wrong.

MOTILE

An amoeba slithering across glass

Sounds like a perfect villian for the kinds of books that are popular just now...

Hold your trifle plate at an angle and you can see the motility of jelly. (Technically, motile refers to the motion of single cells, so I assume appropriating it for jelly is wrong, as "single cells" implies animals and therefore "alive".)

I never trifle with jelly in my trifle...

Kench.

A jelly trifle is nothing to trifle with...

Posted by my pedalpal Anto Kelly on another forum. So true.

Found in one of Dakota's books:

Schadenfreude, noun, German, glee in someone else's misfortune

Andre Jute wrote: "Found in one of Dakota's books:

Schadenfreude, noun, German, glee in someone else's misfortune"

I have several German friends, and have always loved that word. So expressive!

Here's a word which is also expressive, but unlikely in the way that comes to most minds:

PUISSANT

REJUVENESCENCE

The sunshine and walks in nature that come with the Spring always bring me rejuvenescence...

Sharon wrote: "Here's a word which is also expressive, but unlikely in the way that comes to most minds:

PUISSANT "

One day I was in a conversation with a bunch of aggressive lesbians who caught me on the hop when I took a shortcut to the staff club at my college through the grounds of teachers training college. They were abusing me for being a man, which I though politically incorrect of them, but I smiled and called them "My dear," and when they left, fuming of course, a journalist standing nearby, newly arrived from England, assigned to fill in my minor movements for a profile written by a more important journalist, said, "Pissant? They called you a pissant? What's that?" It took me a moment of thought. "Ah. They were explaining to me that I have a powerful position in the media only because I'm a man. The word is puissant, pronounced in the local manner. You will also have heard rat-shit, which is wretched. There's a little column in the local mispronunciations. I can suggest to your editor that you be assigned to it."

Sharon wrote: "REJUVENESCENCE."

EFFLORESCENCE the physical and metaphysical effect of rejuvenescence

Andre Jute wrote: "EFFLORESCENCE the physical and metaphysical effect of rejuvenescence"

Perfect unfolding of REJUVENESCENCE.

Next...

Yes, Andre, I see how that could have given you pause. Pissant is pretty much the opposite of PUISSANT. However, one can see how someone could occasionally be both simultaneously...

For a linguist, I have terrific difficulty with accents — I speak every language with the equivalent of a standard received accent in English, because that's what I learned, mostly from girlfriends — and understand five or so different kinds of Spanish easier than I can understand a Yorkshireman... Odd. In Australia I was there a lot longer than the kid in the story above before Buzz Buzolich, who took an interest in Cockney slang and its Australian variants told me "rat shit" wasn't a particularly inventive Australian phrase for disapprobation but a mispronunciation of "wretched". I was a very disappointed...