Word of the Day. Post it Here

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

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

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    I would pick on Fraggle as well, he deserves it.
    Unfortunately my keyboard is packing up too!

    B's require me to waggle the key
    and V's require an enormously heavy keypress.
    My mouse keys are bound on with sticky tape.
    The laptop is just over a year old.

    I've just had a look to see where it was made.
    China.
    Junk. Now that has an interesting etymology.
     
    Last edited: Sep 16, 2007
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  3. Reiku Banned Banned

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    Sinusoidal
    - when a system oscillates and then returns back to its original starting point.
     
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  5. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    Etymology?
     
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  7. Reiku Banned Banned

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    Are you referring to the etymological relationship between the words ''sinusoidal,'' and ''oscillation?''

    Reiku
     
  8. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    No -- The rules of the Sticky are that you have to provide both the meaning of the word AND its etymology. What's the origin of the word "sinusoidal"? I think you'll find that the root of the word had nothing to do with math or physics.

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  9. Reiku Banned Banned

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    :bugeye: Well... If that's the case, then i misread what was needed. I don't know the etymological answer for sinusoidal. :shrug: Sorry.

    Reiku :m:
     
  10. cosmictraveler Be kind to yourself always. Valued Senior Member

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    drafterglow

    In fantasy sports, most commonly fantasy football, a condition where the owner is so happy with their team right after the draft that they already have a place picked out for the trophy. A false sense of euphoria which is usually followed by a last place finish and ridicule from others who remember what a moron you looked like on draft day.

    1. Mo had a serious case of drafterglow. I mean he did get Tomlinson, but the rest of his team is a disaster!
     
  11. Captain Kremmen All aboard, me Hearties! Valued Senior Member

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    It's actually got a very unexpected etymolology.
    It's from the curve you see when you glimpse a womans bosom
    through a loose dress.

    http://ualr.edu/lasmoller/trig.html
     
  12. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    I think you've abstracted that rather freely. It's the fold of the cloth in the dress itself.

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    "Sinusoid" is a fancy word for "sine wave."
     
  13. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    That's okay, this sticky sort of grew out of a few posts and the rules are not clearly stated. In any case that's a difficult etymology to locate without paying for a dictionary. Chris and I were both only able to find "sine" and we both knew that "sinusoid" was a derivative of "sine."

    In general, Merriam-Webster.com and Dictionary.com are good places to start an etymology search. Wikipedia sometimes has them, but it's not consistent.

    "Sinusoidal" is so rarely used in layman's language that if you Google "sinusoidal etymology", it sends you here.

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  14. S.A.M. uniquely dreadful Valued Senior Member

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    Copasetic, also spelled copacetic or copesetic, means very satisfactory or acceptable. It is an unusual English language word in that it is one of the few words of seemingly unknown origin that is not considered slang in contemporary usage. It is used almost exclusively in North America, and is said to have been first widely publicized in communications between the astronauts and Mission Control of the Apollo Program in the 1960s .

    Etymology

    The earliest known usage given in the Oxford English Dictionary is from the Irving Bacheller 1919 biography of Abraham Lincoln:

    1919 I. BACHELLER Man for Ages iv. 69 ‘As to looks I'd call him, as ye might say, real copasetic.’ Mrs. Lukins expressed this opinion solemnly... Its last word stood for nothing more than an indefinite depth of meaning.

    There are many theories to the origin of copasetic[1] [4] [5] [6]. It is widely accepted that it originated from some form of American slang. This conclusion stems from the slow introduction of the word into the written language mainly through use in periodicals and in character dialog in 20th century novels. Copasetic most likely originated from African American slang in the late 19th century. It was used by African Americans in the American South (most notably by Bill "Bojangles" Robinson[7]) and by jazz musicians in Harlem in the late 19th and early 20th centuries[8].

    David Mamet has written an article about its origins[9]. He suggests that "copasetic" is a contraction of "All is well, for the Cop is on the settee." The American Heritage Dictionary lists alternate spellings that include copasetty and kopasettee, lending some credence to Mamet's theory.

    Another theory [8][10][11] claims the origins are from the Creole French dialect of Louisiana, specifically from the French word coupersètique (meaning "able to be coped with"; from French couper, to cut).

    Copacetic may be a descendant of the Hebrew phrase "hakol beseder", (הכל בסדר) meaning "everything is alright", or "Hakol BeTzedek", meaning "everything is justified"[8].

    Another theory[12][13] is that copacetic may have originated from Chinook Jargon, a trade language used in the Pacific Northwest to communicate between tribes, and European traders. The preposition "kopa" is very common in the language, and "Kopasetty" may have been used to mean "doing just fine". This theory was first put forth by Donald L. Martin who stated it derives form the Chinook Jargon word copasenee ("everything is satisfactory").

    Yet another theory[8], put forth by novelist John O'Hara in 1934, claims (without evidence) that the word entered the African American slang lexicon via the italian of American mobsters. Quoting O'Hara, "I don't know how to spell the Italian, but it's something like copacetti." There is no such word in the Italian language, however.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copasetic
     
  15. Captain Kremmen All aboard, me Hearties! Valued Senior Member

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    I might have known that wouldn't get past you.

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    Yes I spiced it up a bit.
    It's probably the trickiest etymology so far,
    and I certainly didn't know it myself before researching it.

    A mistaken Latin translation of Arabic is a tough one to start off on.
    Perhaps if someone has genuinely tried to find an etymology and could not
    they could present it as a challenge. I looked it up with the intent of giving clues, but found it difficult myself.

    I do suspect that there is some connection between the sinuous shape
    and the area of a woman's dress it is connected with.
    After all a fold of cloth could be anywhere
    but who can know what was in people's minds.


    The author of the answer I've found is Laura Smoller
    A History lecturer at Little Rock Arkansaw who seems to have odd interests.
    She is currently working on:

    The Saint and the Chopped-Up Baby: The Cult of Vincent Ferrer and the Religious Life of the Later Middle Ages (book manuscript)

    "Astrology and the Sibyls" (study of the attitudes about various ways of acquiring knowledge of the future in the period 1200-1550)


    Here's her website
    http://ualr.edu/lasmoller/
    Regrettably short.


    The OED on ebay sold for $66


    Challenge. Can anyone find out the definition of the word Chockpugry?
    The best I can find is "a word ending in gry".
     
    Last edited: Sep 20, 2007
  16. Captain Kremmen All aboard, me Hearties! Valued Senior Member

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    Cryptozoology
    The prediction of the existence of an undiscovered species
    either by conversation with native peoples
    or by inference from the characteristics of some known species.

    When Darwin was studying orchids from Madagascar, he found one in which the nectar could only be extracted by a moth with a proboscis much longer than any that had ever been found. He predicted that the moth must exist.
    He was right, of course, and the moth was found 41 years later.

    Etymology
    Crypto from the Greek Kruptos = Hidden
    Zoo from the Greek Zoion = Animal.
    +Ology =Study of.

    ...........This last remark alluded to German astronomer Galle, who had searched for, and found, the planet Neptune, after French mathematician Le Verrier predicted its existence and position, from calculations on the orbit of Uranus, the then last known planet of the solar system -- a well-known case in the history of sciences, often mentioned for its significance in epistemology.
    And the idea of a close relation with the large sphingid of tropical Africa, Xanthopan morgani, which has a proboscis about 20 cm, was quite judicious and prophetic. This "cryptolepidoptere" was actually found and described 41 years after Darwin's prediction : it belonged to that very species, but it was a new sub-species, which Rothschild and Jordan named Xanthopan morgani praedicta in 1903, i.e. "predicted",which is fully justified (Rothschild and Jordan 1903). This insect has a wing span of 13 to 15 cm, of the color of a dead leaf and its proboscis is actually 25 cm (ten inches) long.


    From:
    http://perso.orange.fr/cryptozoo/dossiers/moth.htm
     
    Last edited: Sep 23, 2007
  17. Captain Kremmen All aboard, me Hearties! Valued Senior Member

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    Black Mead
    An alcoholic mixture of honey and blackcurrants.

    Etymology
    Both words are from the Old English
    Black =OE Blaec
    Mead =OE Medu

    It sounds like it might appeal to:
    A sixteen year old with undeveloped taste buds,
    granny at Christmas,
    someone with a sore throat,
    or a drunk at a party when everything else is gone

    but among RPG gamers
    it is the drink of choice for the wicked.

    From Gamewyrd, an RPG forum:

    ...........Meanwhile in the Stone Cellar...
    The massive iron door swings open,
    and a group of tall, muscular ettin stride in through the front entrance.
    The trollish bartender greeted them with a grin of jagged, sharply formed teeth.
    "Good to see you guys back in here" he grunted in his usual hoarse voice.
    The leader ettin spoke up, his deep and loud resonant voice
    filling the chamber of the Stone Cellar.
    He eyed the goods behind the counter before placing his order.
    "Aye Jumoke, always a pleasure. We'd like a keg of your finest black mead."
    "Here you go fellows" replied Jumoke as he accepted the ettin's money,
    "and here are some mugs for you as well."
    He handed the large iron keg to the ettin,
    and placed the tall stone mugs on a nearby table for them.
    The ettins all took seats at a large table,
    and after attaching the keg coupler and appropriate hose, they proceeded to help themselves to the mead. Soon the ettins were laughing and singing songs of the humans they'd killed in the merriest of tones.
    The patrons couldn't be happier; they all bragged about towns they'd looted,
    humans they'd slaughtered, and they had arm wrestling matches as well.
    The trollish bartender displayed his belching skills to all,
    much to their amusement as they all got drunk and celebrated the powers of evil........



    Change a few of the words and you've got the outlaws hanging out at Robber's Roost
     
    Last edited: Sep 23, 2007
  18. Avatar smoking revolver Valued Senior Member

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    19,083
    Etymology
    The history of a linguistic form (as a word) shown by tracing its development since its earliest recorded occurrence in the language where it is found, by tracing its transmission from one language to another, by analyzing it into its component parts, by identifying its cognates in other languages, or by tracing it and its cognates to a common ancestral form in an ancestral language

    Etymology
    Middle English ethimologie, from Anglo-French, from Latin etymologia, from Greek, from etymon + -logia -logy
     
  19. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    24,690
    A wild guess: based on the phonetic structure, it might be a mangled word borrowed from a language of India.
     
  20. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    Back in the 1960s before the internet, when curious facts weren't so easy to look up, someone wrote in to the "Playboy Advisor" and wondered what "mead" was, a drink occasionally mentioned in historical novels. The columnist replied: "Mead was an alcoholic beverage made of fermented honey, drunk by desperate people who would drink anything they could get their hands on, in medieval times when brewing ingredients were hard to come by, and has since fallen into richly-deserved oblivion."
     
  21. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    24,690
    These may all be true. Similar words with similar meanings from disparate sources reinforce each other. I'm trying to think of an example but it's too early in the morning. I'm sure you'll all think of a few.
     
  22. Captain Kremmen All aboard, me Hearties! Valued Senior Member

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    As long as men have been hunter gatherers, they will have prized honey.
    And some of it will have turned naturally to alcohol.

    Caveman 1: "ug.- You must try this. -ug"

    Caveman 2. (After a few tries): "ug- Yerknow, this cave is the besht cave that I've ever been ininin. -ug"
     
  23. cosmictraveler Be kind to yourself always. Valued Senior Member

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    fauxbia

    A faux (false) phobia.

    Mal: "My dad has a phobia of morris dancing and irish jigs"
    Me: "There's no such thing, you douche. That's a fauxbia"
     

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