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The Ascona. The car that's always there when you get back to it.
This is a colour called "Cockroach Dropping"


Yes, you can tell.
The Ascona had nightmare written through it like a stick of tooth rotting rock.
But we are way off topic.
Better do some word of the day stuff.

Ascona. Name given to rot box of a car.
Derives from a town in the Ticino, the Italianate southernmost Canton of Switzerland.
Ascona is famous for its ancient remains, and its Jazz Festival.
Italian style Jazz. I wonder what that is like.

Etymology
The modern municipality of Ascona is first mentioned in 1224 as burgus de Scona.
Burgus means a castle, de means "of" and Scona is possibly a person's name.
Alternatively, an old name of the town in German was Aschgunen,
which is German for ash lagoon. An ash lagoon is reclaimed wetland.
There is certainly wetland in the area, so that explanation is quite a good bet.

It probably does not derive from the Gaelic term "sgonn",
meaning a shapeless mass or large mouthful, suggested as the origin of the word scone.
Though a shapeless mass describes the car well.

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The Opel Ascona. A shapeless lump. This is it in a colour called "Typhoid"


As for the Citroen, like Ford, the name comes from the manufacturer's surname.
Founded in 1919 by French industrialist André-Gustave Citroën (1878–1935),
Citroën was the first mass-production car company outside the USA,
and pioneered the modern concept of creating a sales and services network that complements the motor car.
Within eight years Citroën had become Europe's largest car manufacturer and the 4th largest in the world.
Wiki

Citroen is the Dutch word for Lemon.
For some reason, the family added a diaeresis on arrival in Paris.
Can anyone suggest why they would have done that?

The Citroen family moved to Paris from Amsterdam in 1873. Upon arrival, the diaeresis was added to the name, changing Citroen to Citroën.
A grandfather had sold lemons, and had changed the consequent name Limoenman "lime man" to Citroen (Dutch for "lemon").
From Wiki

 

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Bulgarian
достатъчно
Pronounced Dostatechno, it means 'enough'

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I have always called it buhl-GARE-ee-ah

 

I came across a curious little word today: scurr.

—Thomas Hardy, Far from the Madding Crowd, Chapter 20

The onomatopoeic meaning is obvious from the context; however I’m unable to find the word in any dictionary. Perhaps it’s just an ad hoc coinage by Hardy? :scratchin:

 

Lovely description.
The trouble with Hardy is that you could dwell on one small description for so long that you'd never get to read the whole book.

I have found scur as a boy's name with an unusual origin.

[ syll. (s)cur, sc-ur ] The baby boy name Scur is pronounced as SKER- †. Scur is of Old English origin. The name's meaning is 'born during a storm'. A form of Scur is the name Scurr.
http://www.babynamespedia.com/meaning/Scur

There is also a word "Skerry"

A skerry is a small rocky island, usually defined to be too small for habitation; it may simply be a rocky reef. A skerry can also be called a low sea stack.
The term skerry is derived from the Old Norse sker, which means a rock in the sea. The Old Norse term sker was brought into the English language via the Scots language word spelled skerrie or skerry.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skerry

Possibly Scurr is a local Dorset word.
There is a Low German word Scheren, which means to move to and fro, which is the action of sharpening.
This gave rise to Shear, the removal of wool with a sharp set of blades.
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=...6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=indo european sker&f=false

 

He used it several times. The onomatopoeic meaning is not obvious to me. What is it, is it the sound?

Another word that bugs me, well, title that bugs me is...

Ozymandias

There are several essays on the net claiming it means ruler of air. It’s obvious that the poem is referring to Ramesses ll but here’s the only reference that supports the claim that Ramesses is also known as Ozymandias in the Greek sources.

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:2008.01.0540:book=1:chapter=47:section=4

“He is also known as Ozymandias in the Greek sources, from a transliteration into Greek of a part of Ramesses' throne name, Usermaatre Setepenre, "Ra's mighty truth, chosen of Ra"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramesses_II

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozymandias#Smith.27s_poem

 

Sound of a scythe being sharpened
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=As9I0M-0hA8

The sound of a nighthawk:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qpsyjmda5Q

And the sound of creaking rope.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UH3LsshSAG8

The sound in each case is periodic, rasping, and rising in tone.

The Corncrake makes a similar sound, and the "crake" part of its name is onomatopoeic.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8aLM-5Ob48
Scurr is not onomatopoeia I think.

 

Wrong species. The Common Nighthawk does not live in England. The bird Hardy is referring to is the European Nightjar (Caprimulgus europaeus), which is called “nighthawk” in some regions.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDmpL6P3Djg

 

The sound of a Nightjar is called "Churring".
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=...6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=nightjar corncrake&f=false

 

I don’t think it is an onomatopoeia word. I don’t think it is the sound of anything. I think he meant skur, as in scour.

The nighthawk scours.

The rope scours.

The whetting scours.

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=scour

 

Why "scour"?
How does that fit?

 

I don’t know. I was thinking that the rope and whetting was scraping/rubbing something and the hawk was scouring, as in search for something.
Scour:
1) To clean by rubbing or scraping.
2) To move quickly in search of something.

There’s also skirr, which is related to scurry but that doesn't really seem to work.
1) To move rapidly, esp. with a whirring sound.

Beats me. :shrug:

 

hyper homophobe - someone so homophobic that they are afraid of any word or phrasewith homo in it

 

Homophobic.
Someone who would be worried if anyone said they were homophobic,
in case someone else thought that meant they were homosexual.

 

Peace

 

juste to mention a word of interest, and mention 'that perhaps an English language flaw of not yet having graduated to 'neat word combinations of value seems somewhat of an error for a time now . for instance here I give a word of the day; healthynonattachment : a synonym of the word would be "worth"

 

I would leave such mystifying concatenations to the Germans.

 

"Healthynonattachment" sounds like your wifi is working properly.