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Post by Little Jack Horner on Mar 3, 2021 19:54:47 GMT
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Post by Verbivore on Mar 3, 2021 21:09:15 GMT
Thanks, LJH. I was waiting for someone else to start the March thread; the title in my head was, oddly or not, Marching forwards. So there! I couldn't find anything worth posting, but perhaps I was distracted by a couple of days of minor surgeries for BCC, SCC, and malignant keratoma; this land of sunlight has its drawbacks.
As for your Neanderthals: I've met a few, though their lexicon doesn't extend beyond a few grunts.
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Post by Verbivore on Mar 4, 2021 0:06:09 GMT
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Post by Verbivore on Mar 4, 2021 0:10:10 GMT
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Post by Little Jack Horner on Mar 5, 2021 13:59:44 GMT
Thank you, Vv, for those links, especially the talk by John Halpern which I had missed in my visits to TEDtalks.
Less thoughtful, but I have noticed the childlike pleasure some of us get from strange place names. I have just discovered a new-to-me one: the settlement of Stank within the town of Barrow-in-Furness in the UK county of Cumbria.
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Post by Verbivore on Mar 5, 2021 21:48:15 GMT
Naïve, or deliberately (if inappropriately) humorous usage? From ABC News Online (para #10): "Then there's the marijuana crops that were found nearby, but despite some promising early tips, this lead fizzled out." (Just in case there's a jargon gap: tips are the early-stage flower buds that, upon maturity, become the pot-smoker's or grower's prize.)
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Post by Verbivore on Mar 5, 2021 22:55:39 GMT
That fellow in a hurry, Oliver Sudden
I’m accustomed to the term all of a sudden. In a recent news article I read of an American using the variant all of the sudden.
Has anyone else encountered the variant?
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Post by Dave Miller on Mar 6, 2021 7:26:32 GMT
That fellow in a hurry, Oliver SuddenI’m accustomed to the term all of a sudden. In a recent news article I read of an American using the variant all of the sudden. Has anyone else encountered the variant? I’ve never heard that, Vv - and don’t expect it to catch on, as it’s slightly more difficult to say.
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Post by Verbivore on Mar 6, 2021 8:06:35 GMT
That fellow in a hurry, Oliver SuddenI’m accustomed to the term all of a sudden. In a recent news article I read of an American using the variant all of the sudden. Has anyone else encountered the variant? I’ve never heard that, Vv - and don’t expect it to catch on, as it’s slightly more difficult to say. Olither Sudden. Definitely harder to say. I shall stick with the British Oliver.
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Post by Little Jack Horner on Mar 6, 2021 11:15:29 GMT
I have never hear “all of the sudden”. I was taught that all of a sudden was inelegant and one should say “suddenly”.
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Post by Verbivore on Mar 10, 2021 10:19:50 GMT
Some time back I posted about the early term for someone who watches TV: a looker-in. Here, @ 1:02:47, begins an interesting list of terms suggested at the time. (The video is the BBC documentary The Birth of Television.) The list of offerings includes: television-looker, looker; television observer; tele-seer; tele-perceptor; televist; tele-gazer; tele-spector; tele-sight; tele-scriber; bairder … It was the Beeb itself that started using viewer.
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Post by Verbivore on Mar 11, 2021 21:54:16 GMT
I couldn't find a dictionary confirmation of this, but found it interesting; mayhap others could shed further light (over their smashed avo breakfast, of course).
"Grown in Mexico for 9,000 years, the avocado has come a long way since the 16th century, when Spanish conquistadors disparagingly called it aguacate, after ahuacatl, Aztec for testicle."
One suspects those conquistadors were somewhat optimistic, or boasting, about the resemblance of their orchids* – at least sizewise – to the green fruit.
* orchid: from modern Latin, based on Greek orkhis, literally ‘testicle’ (with reference to the shape of its tuber). An orchidectomy is a more obscure name for the surgical removal of one or both testicles.
In the newspaper I worked for, there was a monthly advert for meetings of the local orchid society. "Having trouble with your orchids?" – the ad heading – always managed to amuse me (small mind, I know).
As it's my breakfast time, I'd better go and smash an avo.
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Post by Little Jack Horner on Mar 12, 2021 12:29:36 GMT
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Post by Verbivore on Mar 12, 2021 19:55:01 GMT
Thank you, LJH. Quite interesting: nymphs, satyrs, bacchanalia, bollocks … . Time to make the toast for my avos.
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Post by Little Jack Horner on Mar 16, 2021 21:02:01 GMT
I have just asked an on-line thesaurus for a synonym for “couldn‘t care less”. The thesaurus wondered if I actually meant “could care less”. What is the world coming to? Or, to what is the world coming?
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