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Post by Little Jack Horner on Jul 28, 2017 19:54:48 GMT
> At my seminary college were not a few Murkins (it was a 7th-Day Adventist institution, so a somewhat Americanish campus culture prevailed).<
Vv. I have no idea what this means. What is a Murkin [capital M] and what has it to do with 7th-Day Adventists, please.
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Post by Dave Miller on Jul 28, 2017 20:07:46 GMT
Vv's little joke. He means "American" (which they pronounce rather amusingly as "murkin"). Look up murkin to get the joke ...
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Post by Twoddle on Jul 28, 2017 21:42:10 GMT
President George W Bush often addressed his "fellow merkins" on the subject of "waging war on tourism", as I recall.
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Post by Twoddle on Jul 28, 2017 21:53:52 GMT
… At my seminary college were not a few Murkins (it was a 7th-Day Adventist institution, so a somewhat Americanish campus culture prevailed). I assume, then, that 7th-Day Adventists can read; Mormons definitely can: in fact they've written their own book of fairy stories. I'm not too sure about Jehovah's Witnesses, though, because the ones who occasionally knock on my door and shove silly comics through it, while I'm still in bed on a Saturday morning, seem incapable of reading the "No cold callers" sign that's staring them in the face. Perhaps I should add, "No God-botherers" to it.
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Post by Little Jack Horner on Jul 28, 2017 22:33:24 GMT
When I was a young man, I had a friend who insisted he had an infallible way if dealing with what he called "God botherers" who called at his door. He said he would show enthusiasm for discussing their ideas provided they would join with him in seeking prayerful guidance from his god. Sometimes, he told me, they would half agree, only to be confronted by his declared worship of Zeus (or was it some other Classical god? I forget after nearly sixty years).
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Post by Twoddle on Jul 29, 2017 9:38:13 GMT
When I was a young man, I had a friend who insisted he had an infallible way if dealing with what he called "God botherers" who called at his door. He said he would show enthusiasm for discussing their ideas provided they would join with him in seeking prayerful guidance from his god. Sometimes, he told me, they would half agree, only to be confronted by his declared worship of Zeus (or was it some other Classical god? I forget after nearly sixty years). I'm told that the way to get rid of JWs is to tell them that you're a devout Jesuit. Apparently even the most ardent JW won't waste time arguing with a Jesuit (but keep your wife and children hidden or it tends to give the game away).
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Post by Verbivore on Jul 29, 2017 14:14:04 GMT
Twod: Any good Jesuit could argue or rationalise his way out of anything; it's the order's speciality. I reckon there are more agnostics in the Society of Jesus than one could poke a bishop's staff at. (My personal observations at close quarters.)
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Post by Verbivore on Jul 29, 2017 15:04:10 GMT
… At my seminary college were not a few Murkins (it was a 7th-Day Adventist institution, so a somewhat Americanish campus culture prevailed). I assume, then, that 7th-Day Adventists can read; Mormons definitely can: in fact they've written their own book of fairy stories. I'm not too sure about Jehovah's Witnesses, though, because the ones who occasionally knock on my door and shove silly comics through it, while I'm still in bed on a Saturday morning, seem incapable of reading the "No cold callers" sign that's staring them in the face. Perhaps I should add, "No God-botherers" to it. Thanks, Dave, for clearing up LJH's bemusement. Yes, Murkins / Merkins (I see it spelt both ways) with an uppercase M = the citizens of Murka / Merka; but lowercase merkins = chest and pubic wigs (fergawdsake!). Yes, Twod, the seven-day adventurers can read. Only too well. Further, they can read into any text whatever they want to read into it. Like the LDS, the SDAs have written their own volumes of fairy tales – a veritable mountain of them – and tribes of people choose to be deceived by them. (I once ripped apart and burned about 30 such volumes before their influence damaged my sons, who were just learning to read. It was only the second time in my life I've deliberately damaged a book. The other was in a teenage rage when I burned Mater's bible in revenge for her burning my copies of Krafft-Ebing's Psychopathia Sexualis, Vidal's A Thirsty Evil and Baldwin's Giovanni's Room along with Sexual Life in Ancient Rome, Sexual Life in Ancient Greece, and Sexual Life in Ancient Egypt. Yes, I was a "broad" reader at a tender age. Enid Blyton never really did anything for me. LOL) When, as a theol. student in the '60s, I was out tramping the streets and knocking on doors in the church's annual Appeal for Missions (its only such public begging effort from non-believers, whereby the "missionaries" try to push "free" "literature" onto their victims while trying to extract money for same. "This book can give you eternal life – while you can put clothes on some godforsaken savage!" – and similar fertiliser – being the kind of push-lines employed.) We were instructed, most sternly, to honour clear "sod off" signs; there was little point in "casting our seed upon stony ground" (as per the parable in Mark's gospel, not as in the fable of Onan's premature dismounting). Looking back 50 years I still have clear memories and "pictures" of that radically different life and its quirks, yet somehow I can't connect them to any reality of the here-and-now me. Must be going dotty(/ier) in my dotage. LOL PS: I have found the strategic placement of particular signage in the driveway to cause many a 30-point turn or lo-o-ong wobbling reverse. I place mine at the beginning of "mission season" each year (coming up in September!) and am never bothered by any evangelical soul-savers. The wording on the sign: Clothes-optional zone. If nudity offends, you have the option to leave. It works! Watching their desperate scrambles to get their oversized 4WD people-movers back out the gate can be quite an amusing diversion.
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Post by Verbivore on Jul 31, 2017 7:02:25 GMT
Today at work I encountered this, er, interesting spelling of corroborate: cooberate.
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Post by Little Jack Horner on Jul 31, 2017 12:01:15 GMT
"The bitter pay dispute has taken several twists and turns, with [Cricket Australia] recently threatening to take the stoush to an independent umpire were it not resolved."
A sentence from an ABC News report I retrieved today. I would like to know whether "stoush" is standard Australian or slang or a colloquialism or what. I looked the word up and found it to be a noun and a verb. As a verb, it was defined as "stonker", a verb of which I had never heard.
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Post by Verbivore on Jul 31, 2017 12:10:44 GMT
LJH: Stoush is definitely an ANZ term in common use, meaning "To thrash or beat (a person); to punch or strike; to fight". Stonker (n) Something that is very large or impressive of its kind; a ‘whopper’. Stonker (v): trans. To render useless; to put out of action, thwart. Also, to kill, destroy; to defeat or outwit. Now chiefly as pa. pple. To be stonkered is also to be drunk or otherwise out of it (e.g. from extreme fatigue).
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Post by Verbivore on Aug 2, 2017 9:52:46 GMT
An aarrgghh! moment:
Thrice yesterday at work I encountered the common misuse of simplistic when the appropriate word was simple, dammit! (I also meet it frequently generally.) I suspect this is an example of some people's attempts to "sound educated" – or tendency to overcorrect.
Then in the evening its use twice in online narrations gave me the irrits yet again.
I'm sure had someone pressed my button once more yesterday with a misapplied simplistic I'd have broken something! LOL
Three such offending misuses were in descriptive "literature" accompanying the tool (kitchen scissors that come apart for cleaning): a three-step process to (re)assemble the "separable" scissors; another in the description of the tool itself; and the final straw was the description of the scissors' use as simplistic.
The scissors had two parts (each one blade and one handle, more or less mirrored, as one might expect) with a joining mechanism (male/female) in their middles. The tool was simple: two parts only, and a joining system that was uncomplicated and self-obvious (a hole and a pin). They were as simple to use as any other scissors. But NOT simplistic!
The instructions (text only, no supporting graphics) were: 1. Hold blades so that centers [yep] mesh. 2. Click and turn to lock blades together. 3. Reverse process to disassemble.
I insist that both the scissors and their accompanying instructions were simple, not at all simplistic. The scissors' design had obviously been well considered, sophisticated, and was far from simplistic. Their use and assembly were quite plain, to the point of the text instructions' approaching overkill.
Am I alone in this grump?
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Post by Dave Miller on Aug 2, 2017 10:11:59 GMT
No, Vv, you're not alone. A similar misuse is "electronic" when the writer means "electric". A fan driven by an electric motor is electric. A device "containing components such as microchips and transistors that control and direct electric currents" is electronic. All part of making things longer and more complex-sounding, to sound cleverer.
I will admit that the rise of electronics has meant that this distinction is likely to fade away.
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Post by Verbivore on Aug 2, 2017 12:24:18 GMT
No, Vv, you're not alone. A similar misuse is "electronic" when the writer means "electric". A fan driven by an electric motor is electric. A device "containing components such as microchips and transistors that control and direct electric currents" is electronic. All part of making things longer and more complex-sounding, to sound cleverer. I will admit that the rise of electronics has meant that this distinction is likely to fade away. Yes, Dave, that is a fading distinction it seems; another I regret.
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Post by Little Jack Horner on Jan 16, 2018 13:11:15 GMT
Earlier this month (!) we discussed the use of the singular they and some rejected the use of “it” when referring to persons.
More years ago than it is safe to recall, I read some books by Edith Nesbit, she who wrote The Railway Children. In particular, I read the children’s book The Story of the Amulet, written in 1906. I have just re-read it and noticed that she carefully uses the neuter third person singular after words such as “everyone”.
“I hope you notice that they were not cowardly enough to cry till their Father had gone; they knew he had quite enough to upset him without that. But when he was gone everyone felt as if it had been trying not to cry all its life, and that it must cry now, if it died for it. So they cried.”
It reads strangely to me but I can’t fault the logic of the grammar.
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