Word of the Day. Post it Here

Discussion in 'Linguistics' started by Captain Kremmen, Aug 16, 2007.

  1. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    24,690
    I see. Well most of those terms were new to me, so I thought you were introducing them. My mistake, sorry.
    I agree, that's why I didn't edit it myself.
    I think that's unlikely so again, that's why I didn't edit it. I just didn't want to start a trend and have the next guy post his entire vocabulary of four-letter words.
    You could have just said "breasts," dude! Or researched the origin of some of those words I've never heard of. I'm sure that would have been interesting.

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  3. Captain Kremmen All aboard, me Hearties! Valued Senior Member

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    The number of synonyms was interesting in itself, linguistically.
    The eskimos only have seven words for snow.

    You don't want to set a precedent for body part posts
    and I can see how that might become troublesome.
     
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  5. one_raven God is a Chinese Whisper Valued Senior Member

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    snow - kaniktsqaq
    no snow - aputaitok
    to snow - qanir, qanunge or qanugglir
    snowy weather - nittaatsuq or qannirsuq
    to get fine snow or rain particles - kanevcir
    first falling - apingaut
    light falling - qannialaag
    wet and falling - natatgo naq
    in the air, falling - qaniit
    feathery clumps of falling snow - qanipalaat
    air thick with snow - nittaalaq
    rippled surface of snow - kaiyuglak
    light, deep enough for walking - katiksugnik
    fresh without any ice - kanut
    crusty - sillik
    soft for travelling - mauyasiorpok
    soft and deep where snowshoes are needed for travel - taiga
    powder - nutagak
    salty - pokaktok
    wind-beaten - upsik
    fresh - nutaryuk
    packed - aniu
    sharp - panar
    crusty that breaks under foot - karakartanaq
    rotten, slush on the sea - qinuq
    best for building an igloo - pukaangajuq
    glazed in a thaw - kiksrukak
    watery - mangokpok
    firm (the easiest to cut, the warmest, the preferred) - pukajaw
    loose, newly fallen snow which cannot be used as it is, but can provide good building material when compacted - ariloqaq
    for melting into water - aniuk
    that a dog eats - aniusarpok
    that can be broken through - mauya
    floating on water - qanisqineq
    for building - auverk
    on clothes - ayak
    beaten from clothes - tiluktorpok
    much on clothes - aputainnarowok
    crust - pukak
    cornice, formation about to collapse - navcaq
    on the boughs of trees - qali
    blown indoors - sullarniq
    snowdrift that blocks something - kimaugruk
    smoky drifting snow - siqoq
    arrow-shaped snowdrift - kalutoganiq
    newly drifting snow - akelrorak
    space between drifts and obstruction - anamana or anymanya
    snowstorm - pirsuq, pirsirsursuaq or qux
    violent snowstorm - igadug
    blizzard - pirta or pirtuk
    avalance - sisuuk or aput sisurtuq
    to get caught in an avalance - navcite

    Some of the Inuit definitions for snow, courtesy of one of my favorite books, which I highly recommend for lovers of words:
    The Meaning of Tingo and Other Extraordinary Words From Around the World by Adam Jacot de Boinod

    (please excuse any typos, the Inuit languages are a bit difficult to transcribe)
     
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  7. Captain Kremmen All aboard, me Hearties! Valued Senior Member

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    Good Post.

    The "Eskimos have Seven words for snow" is an old cliche.
    I wonder who was the first person to say it.

    But why do the Inuit have a word for snow that a dog eats.
    Maye they mean it's snow that's no good.

    Inuit1: "Here's some good snow for building an igloo."

    Inuit2: "Good Snow? That's Aniusarpok!"

    btw It's only a few minutes since you posted this,
    but it's already the top result for a search for aniusarpok on google.
    google must be trawling this site continuously.
     
    Last edited: Sep 5, 2007
  8. one_raven God is a Chinese Whisper Valued Senior Member

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    :bravo:

    I am a God!
     
  9. Captain Kremmen All aboard, me Hearties! Valued Senior Member

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    This is also now on google. No wonder people are always spamming this site.
     
  10. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    24,690
    Obviously this language is synthetic, agglutinative, or some other type that combines morphemes to build new "words." You can see that under qanir. With no knowledge of the language beyond what you've posted, I can't reduce this list to seven words, but someone with that knowledge might be able to.

    An Inuit, at least one from a few centuries ago, might say, "Gosh you anglophones have so many words for 'person': watchman, fireman, brakeman, con man, straight man, front man..."
    Someone else recommended that. I ordered it yesterday.
    You need a flatbed OCR scanner.

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    Actually the definition one of my friends came up with is more accurate: "Fraggle, if a dog won't eat something, it's no good." Dogs will only eat things for hydration, nutrition, or to replenish their intestinal bacterial culture. Perhaps aniusarpok is soft enough to quench thirst, contains frozen insects that are a good source of protein, or has some animal's stool with lots of bacteria.
    Uh... How many people are googling for aniusarpok anyway? Only the Inuit and the people who bought that book even know the word.

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    Hey, don't knock it. I originally found this website accidentally by using a search engine. It was probably Dogpile, Google wasn't around yet. I can't speak for all the moderators, but I think we get a really low volume of spam. Trolls, on the other hand, are a big nuisance. I just had to slap one down.
     
  11. Captain Kremmen All aboard, me Hearties! Valued Senior Member

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    Hypozeuxis

    A sentence where each subject has its own verb, producing parallel clauses.
    A rhetorical device.

    eg

    "We shall fight on the beaches.
    We shall fight on the landing grounds.
    We shall fight in the fields, and in the streets,
    We shall fight in the hills. We shall never surrender!"

    —Winston Churchill


    If Winston had got the codebreakers at Bletchley to work on a grammar checker
    instead of the enigma code, we might have got:

    We shall fight them on the beaches, landing grounds, fields, streets and hills,
    and never surrender.

    This is a prozeugma.
    An improvement?


    Etymology
    Greek word Hypo=below
    Greek word Zeugma=yoking


    Zeuxis was a Greek painter who died laughing at
    a painting he had just made.

    Nine people who died laughing:
    http://www.canongate.net/Lists/Death/9PeopleWhoDiedLaughing
     
    Last edited: Sep 14, 2007
  12. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    24,690
    I've never heard the word before. Thanks! You got the definition a little wrong: it should be "A sentence in which each verb has its own subject." If it were the other way around, the example would be:
    But they gave you a bad example:
    If this is an accurate transcription of the quote, it is not a hypozeuxis. A hypozeuxis is a single sentence. The classic is:
    In order for Churchill's pronouncement to be a hypozeuxis, it must be a single sentence like Caesar's:
    That gets kind of rambly and doesn't seem like Churchill's style. The breakdown of parallel construction in the final clause really makes it suspicious. Any style manual would call that a stylistic error and as an editor I personally would flag it. He would have put the period after "hills" so that all the previous clauses had "fight" as their verb.

    You can spot such an error by deliberately "dis-hypozeuctifying"

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    it:
    whoops--"never surrender" cannot be fit into that pattern!
     
  13. Captain Kremmen All aboard, me Hearties! Valued Senior Member

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    This is the speech. Remember to pronounce Nazi as Narzee, which was something which particularly annoyed Hitler:
    Churchill had much trouble with his teeth. A problem his Nanny put down to his youthful fondness for pickles.

    Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God's good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.

    The punctuation here is so strange, that I think it must be original.
    Two sentences.
     
    Last edited: Sep 14, 2007
  14. Captain Kremmen All aboard, me Hearties! Valued Senior Member

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    Nerd, Dork, Geek

    According to some Dork on another thread, the inhabitants of
    Sciforamia all belong to these categories, but What's the difference?

    Nerd
    A bookish but likeable individual with few friends.
    Etymology.
    Numerous. But I like "Drunk" backwards, Knurd, becoming nerd

    Dork
    Need not be particularly clever. Socially and physically clumsy.
    Most likely of the three to end up in prison.
    Etymology.
    Unknown. Supposed to be the word for a Whale's Penis.

    Geek
    A nerd whose main interest is computers.
    Most likely of the three to end up being a millionaire.
    Etymology
    From an old word for fool.
    eg in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night:

    Why have you suffer’d me to be imprison’d,
    Kept in a dark house, visited by the priest,
    And made the most notorious geck and gull
    That e’er invention play’d on? tell me why.


    The words all have four letters.
    Words with four letters which describe types of people tend to be disparaging
    eg Yank (American) Prod (Protestant) Brit (English person)
     
    Last edited: Sep 15, 2007
  15. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    24,690
    That is just the standard British way of mangling words assimilated from foreign languages. Back in my college days we called it the Don JOO-uhn Principle. I've heard Brits pronounce tequila as tee-QUILL-ah and of course their three-syllable version of the word kha-GWAHR, which they use as an auto marque, is infamous. We don't pronounce any of those words quite right either, but at least they all have the correct number of syllables and the accent on the correct one. We're actually pretty close with te-KEE-luh.
    The punctuation is nonetheless proper, if indeed strange. I wonder whether he dashed it off, intending for it only to be spoken, not distributed in writing. Even the best writers slack off when aiming for oral rather than written eloquence. It could be that the punctuation was "cleaned up" later. In those days he might very well have never given anyone his own written draft; what we're reading may be a transcription after the fact by journalist on staff.

    In any case the hypozeuxis form is so weak that it makes a poor example. Caesar's is much more powerful, especially in the original language:
    Three verbs, all standing alone with no subject, all in the preterit tense. Of course in Latin a hypozeuxis may be far more compact than in English, since the verb inflections include an implicit subject. Churchill's example is woefully deficient in parallel construction, and I doubt very much that such a master of the King's English would have submitted that draft for print media.
    A definition steeped in irony. Likeable individuals generally have many friends.

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    That's suspicious. A common trait of nerds is unflagging seriousness and pedantry, reflected in moderation or total abstinence from alcohol. A drunken nerd is a rare sight and usually confined to first-year university parties.
    When I first heard the word in the 1960s it was a variation of calling someone a "dick," and occasionally the word was used as a verb for intercourse performed with no thought for the partner's feelings--or even her name.

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    So a Dork is indeed a big, clumsy Dick. But in those days there was no overtone of malice or true antisocial behavior. Dorks were unpopular but we would not have expected them to ever be arrested. (The legal doctrine of "date rape" was several decades off, of course.)
    Missing an important step here. In the early 20th century and presumably the 19th, a geek was a very specific member of circus and carnival troupes. (The squeamish are advised to skip the rest of this paragraph). My father's generation was quite familiar with the word, meaning, "A performer who bites the heads off of live chickens for entertainment." The only true "geek" alive today is Ozzy Osbourne, and he is indeed fairly wealthy.

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    I believe he has reformed since the "cute little rubber bat" that the fan threw onto the stage turned out to be a real one and he had to undergo the ignominious treatment for suspected rabies.
    Odd. We Americans don't feel disparaged when Europeans call us "Yanks." Southerners bristle a bit: a Yankee is a Northener, a term that survives from the Civil War. WWII was a strong force for reunification of our country; soldiers were touched by the experience of Yankees and Rebels fighting on the same side and endured being lumped together by the grateful Europeans. I don't believe that any American means "Brit" to be an insult; I toss the word around myself on SciForums and I certainly hope no one has taken offense. I hate to call the present-day inhabitants of the south of Great Britain "Britons," since they are the descendants of Germanic occupiers who marginalized the true Celtic Britons, and of course of the subsequent Norman French occupiers who carried on the tradition. The Scots have a better claim to the name since they are at least a Celtic people.
     
  16. Captain Kremmen All aboard, me Hearties! Valued Senior Member

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    The nerd being drunk backwards refers to the nerds habit of studying while the jocks (US word) are partying. It is the reverse of drunk. He's sober.


    Ozzy Osbourne might do well these days to bite the head off his appalling wife, Sharon.

    Churchill's speech is like the rolling English road.
    It gets there via a circuitous and picturesque route.

    Have you got access to an OED. I'd like to see a proper definition of Hypozeuxis. I don't trust these online versions.
     
  17. Killjoy Propelling The Farce!! Valued Senior Member

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    `
    Carcajou
    'kaa(r)ku`joo

    Carcajou is the old French pronunciation for Kwi'kwa'ju, the name given by the Micmac People to the wolverine, a small and fierce carnivore of the Canadian wilderness.

    In the Micmac People's tongue, Kwi'kwa'ju means "evil spirit".
     
  18. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    24,690
    I don't have an OED. Wikipedia has an exhaustive treatment of zeugma, including hypozeuxis, which is its opposite. It even includes Winston Churchill's example from the OP.

    I can see how the second and third examples could be condensed, e.g. "Fear leads to anger which leads to hate which leads to suffering."

    I do not see how the first one can be condensed, so I don't understand why it needs to be identified as a hypozeugma. It is phrased as concisely as it can be without losing details of the meaning, e.g., "People in the diverse group performed various actions."
     
  19. Captain Kremmen All aboard, me Hearties! Valued Senior Member

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  20. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    Why would anyone want:
    • A hard copy that can't be searched with an automated word processor;
    • A 36-year-old edition that doesn't reflect the technology, politics, culture and foreign borrowings of a very lively third of a century;
    • Even more infuratingly small print than a normal dictionary?
     
  21. Oli Heute der Enteteich... Registered Senior Member

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    As the old saying has it: you can't grep dead trees.
    Hard copy still has advantages though.


    [Edit]
    Pick on Fraggle time;
    Infuratingly??? WTF?

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    Last edited: Sep 16, 2007
  22. Pandaemoni Valued Senior Member

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    Hyperhedonia

    The feeling of an abnormally great pleasure in any act or happening.

    Etymology
    From Gk. hyper (prep. and adv.) "over, beyond, overmuch, above measure" and hedonikos "pleasurable," from hedone "pleasure," related to hedys "sweet."


    Now, whenever I find it amusing to endlessly flip a coin, play with magnets or rubber bands, or otherwise engage in mindless diversions, I will know what to call it.
     
  23. Captain Kremmen All aboard, me Hearties! Valued Senior Member

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    An old copy of one of the world's greatest works of scholarship is better than none at all. It's the result of tens of thousands of hours of research by hundreds of cloistered supernerds. At the moment, someones going to get that for $30 inc postage. Bargain!

    A dictionary this size will always be behind anyway. It's like painting the Forth Bridge. Once you're finished, you need to begin again at the other end.
     
    Last edited: Sep 16, 2007

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