ROBUST discussion

Andre Jute wrote: "Ha, it looks like I misunderstood, "choose the hill to die on" rather than "choose which battles to fight". Yah. When I was younger, I fought every battle to the end. Now I just can't be bothered s..."

Yep, that's the healthy way...

K. A. wrote: "mallemaroking, n.
‘ The boisterous and drunken exchange of hospitality between sailors in extreme northern waters.’..."

Never heard of the word, but look at the lively discussion it precipitated...

Book title found on LT in the Giveaways, copied and pasted without correction:

First Aide Medicine by Nicholaus Patnaude (Emergency Press)

Medicine only for first aides is very specialized! And it raises the question of who will apply the first aid to first aide. Is there, for instance, a second aide to apply the first aid to the first aide? And when the first aid needs to be applied to the second aide by the third aide, is it still called first aid? How about when the first aid is applied to the second aide by the recovered first aide, then surely it is called first aid, hmm?

KENCH!!!!

"Scally," now there's a word I haven't heard since there were constables on the beat.

Scally, never heard it. Perhaps a nickname for 'Scallywag'?

Here's one I honest to goodness read in a book recently. It wasn't used badly but I would perhaps have chosen 'goose bumps':

Horripilation

I've heard of horripilation but it's a poncey word. You're right, "goose bumps" describes the effect better.

The thing about a rare and wonderful word is that it must describe something more accurately than the more common word; in most cases it must justify its use by describing something uniquely rather than just better.

In the horripilation example, it just looks like someone trying to be clever, because the word has nothing that goose bumps don't have.

I agree. It was kind of funny, because here it is near Hallowe'en, which North Americans go over the top to celebrate, and my first thought was it had something to do with horror - it does, since the etymology of the word originates with the word horror thus the goose bumps, but I giggled when I looked up the word. Still, the book in which it was used is set in an earlier century in a foreign land with foreign language, so I could almost understand why the author looked to something other than the modern term 'goose bumps'.

Have you checked that "goose bumps" is modern, Sharon. It sounds Dickensian to me.

Hadn't but it appears I guessed right. First in use in 1933 according to Miriam Webster.

In any case I would consider Dickensian words 'modern'. He certainly contributed to our English vocabulary, often in a slangish way and perhaps not for purists - flummoxed, bah humbug and scrooge come to mind.

Humbug is good though, sounding like just what it is, pious rubbish.

Just as so many of Dickens' invented words...

Found on my eminently respectable cycling conference:

"Would you Adam and Eve it?"

Let's see which of the Americans get it. You can see the reference here: http://www.thorncycles.co.uk/forums/i...

I am probably overthinking this, but I don't get it. :|

I'll give you all a hint. it Cockney slang, and Adam and Eve are incidental, almost random but not quite.

Okay, I gave up and looked it up. It all makes a weird sort of sense now.

There's more where that came from, a whole culture. Weird is right!

Andre Jute wrote: ""Would you Adam and Eve it?"

Let's see which of the Americans get it. You can see the reference here: http://www.thorncycles.co.uk/forums/i... "

Cockney rhyming slang for "Would you believe it?"

MISCIBLE

Doesn't mean what it sounds like. It is the correct way to refer to a substances which combines into a homogenous whole, rather than the made-up word "mixable". As in, "Winsor & Newton's Artisan series oil paints are water-miscible."

I'm having flashbacks to my organic chemistry classes.

Sorry about that. My schooldays were on the whole happy.

Kench! and Kench!

Andre Jute wrote: "Andre Jute wrote: ""Would you Adam and Eve it?"

Let's see which of the Americans get it. You can see the reference here: http://www.thorncycles.co.uk/forums/i... "

Cockney rhyming slang for "Would you believe it?"

This North American would never have guessed that...

Andre Jute wrote: "Sorry about that. My schooldays were on the whole happy."

At the time I was taking o-chem, I was working full-time, and trying to help with my daughter, so the whole experience was unpleasant. Plus, in my second semester I snapped my arm slipping on some ice, and missed a good chunk of the class. I did manage to pass though, even taking when my finals stilled doped up on percoset and one-handed.

That's the story I'm saving for the future for complaining kids:

"Back in my day, we walked to school in the snow two miles! We took our finals while not in our right mind and one-handed."

We didn't have snow where I grew up, but the noonday temperature was often 120 degrees Fahrenheit. More conducive to somnolence than remembering chemical formulae.

Eight years of the midwest cold was enough for me. Now I live in the desert.

If I went to back to the desert after 35 years in the temperate climes, I'd probably drop dead. Us schoolboys used to hang on the fence at the airfield when the plane came in on Wednesdays and laugh at the British tourists coming off the plane and fainting dead away in the heat before they even made it to the bottom of the steps.

Our unfeeling crimes return to haunt us!

I'd take Adelaide's weather in a heartbeat...

It's a trade off - Kentucky's summer heat or Ohio's frozen winters with the Siberian Express screaming outside the windows.

Kentucky wins!

"Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people." -- Eleanor Roosevelt

Hmmm...what does that mean???

Mrs Roosevelt from beyond the grave makes a cutting observation on the celebrity culture of our time.

Andre Jute wrote: ""Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people." -- Eleanor Roosevelt"

That's a very good quote, and never better than now...

Statistics are really, really good for stating the inarguably obvious:
Being born places you at a greater risk of dying later in life.

“If you find it hard to laugh at yourself, I would be happy to do it for you.” - Groucho Marx

Andre Jute wrote: "Statistics are really, really good for stating the inarguably obvious:
Being born places you at a greater risk of dying later in life."

I'm fond of saying, "No one ever survived life."

J.A. wrote: "I'm fond of saying, "No one ever survived life."

You missed your calling. Actuarial work may be depressing, but it is very highly paid.

It would have been the smarter move, probably.

I asked an undertaker once whether his work wasn't depressing and, after due thought, he said, "Nah, dead people don't talk back."

Andre Jute wrote: "“If you find it hard to laugh at yourself, I would be happy to do it for you.” - Groucho Marx"

Kench!

Makes you feel old when they start making TV bio-dramas about people you knew.

(Yesterday it was the story of making the first Doctor Who episode, about BBC drama chief Sidney Newman and producer Verity Lambert. Double whammy.)

When I walk into a classroom to teach, or into or the English teacher's room, I sometimes quote Beastie Boys. "Center stage on the mike, and with puttin' it on wax, it's the NEW STYLE."

If only I knew what it meant...

Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before ... He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way. — Kurt Vonnegut

I've always thought of Kurt Vonnegut as an oxymoron, a 'dark humanist'. Certainly he was very complex.

I never understood his writing, perhaps I am not so intellectual as I believe...

Vonnegut is an acquired taste; if you don't acquire it as a teenager, forget "getting" him as an adult. I stopped reading him long ago. That doesn't make his observations, like the one above, any the less true.

Anyone with experience of university professors or time-served tradesmen from the days of the 7-year apprenticeships can attest to the truth of his observation:

"Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before ... He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way." — Kurt Vonnegut

Vonnegut's humor is the perfect example of the difference between the morbid and the mordant.

True...

I always thought Vonnegut carried a lot of anger, but truly I dismissed him early on and suspect if I'd delved into him would have found him fascinating...

Most likely not, Sharon. I gave him up because he was too clever for his own good, and in a very superficial, clever-teenager way. Many of my friends thought the same, and it was clear that the fans he carried forward were not exactly mature. (Now it will turn out everyone else is a rabid fan, and I'll have to go into hiding...)

Oh, good, sounds as if my instincts were good and I need not spend another moment wondering...

Well, one consolation will be that you will have to go into hiding with me!