[Blind Sapper]

Fucktard is one of my personal favorite variations of the root word "retard". While not politically correct, it is one ofthe staples of modern English language, and indeed, art.

[Blind Sapper]

Must...stay...awake...
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Word of the Week: 4/18/2012: Mumpsimus : n, One who sticks obstinately and wrongly to their old ways.

"Looks like old Bob's still shooting anyone wearing gray who walks by his house. He thinks they're Rebels from the Civil War." "That silly mumpsimus."
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Etymology of an idiom:“You’re pulling my leg!”: an expression used to show doubt in the veracity of a statement, i.e.: "you must be kidding me"; "I don’t believe what you just said".

Taken from some obscure website: If you try to pull someone’s leg, you try and make them believe something that isn’t true. “You’re pulling my leg!” is another way of saying “I don’t believe what you’re saying” or “You must be joking!”.

This saying has its origins in the criminal world of 18th and 19th century London. In those days street robbers often worked in gangs of two. One would trip up the unsuspecting victim and the other would remove his money and other valuables while he was lying on the ground. The robber didn’t literally pull the victim’s leg but caused him to stumble and fall and then lose his valuables.

Quote: "He's got a photographic mind. Too bad it never developed."

-- Leopold Fechtner

[Blind Sapper]

Word of the Week: 4/25/12: Brachydactylous: n, Having short and blunt fingers.

The brachydactylous man had some difficulty getting potato chips out of the Pringles tube.

Etymology of an idiom: “Armed to the teeth”: Being heavily armed or having an excess of weapons.

This phrase originated during the 1600 during the age of colonization and pirates. In that day, pirates in the Caribbean armed themselves very heavily whenever they raided a port or boarded a ship. They carried as much as they could so they would not have to reload their flint-lock pistols, which only fired one shot each, very often. They famously carried knives between their teeth, as they had no more room to store them. They were then “armed to the teeth”.

Quote:

"I can resist everything except temptation."

Oscar Wilde

[Blind Sapper]

Word of the Week: 5/2/12: abacinate: v,to blind by putting a hot copper basin near someone’s eyes

Bob: Hey, that guy really bugs me. Let’s go abacinate him.

Guy: Sure, whatevs man.



Etymology of: "Take it with a pinch of salt" --

To take a statement with 'a grain of salt' or 'a pinch of salt' means to accept it but to maintain a degree of skepticism about its truth.


The idea comes from the fact that food is more easily swallowed if taken with a small amount of salt. Pliny the Elder translated an ancient antidote for poison with the words 'be taken fasting, plus a grain of salt'.

But why is it said like this?



Pliny’s Naturalis Historia, 77 A.D. translates thus:

After the defeat of that mighty monarch, Mithridates, Gnaeus Pompeius found in his private cabinet a recipe for an antidote in his own handwriting; it was to the following effect: Take two dried walnuts, two figs, and twenty leaves of rue; pound them all together, with the addition of a grain of salt; if a person takes this mixture fasting, he will be proof against all poisons for that day.

The suggestion is that injurious effects can be moderated by the taking of a grain of salt. --copy/pasted from www.phrases.org.uk




The 'pinch of salt' variant is more recent. The earliest printed citation that I can find for it is F. R. Cowell's Cicero & the Roman Republic, 1948:

"A more critical spirit slowly developed, so that Cicero and his friends took more than the proverbial pinch of salt before swallowing everything written by these earlier authors."

Quote: "Beware of the young doctor and the old barber."
--Benjamin Franklin

[Use Of Weapons]

Re: "pinch of salt" -- http://www.worldwide.../qa/qa-pin2.htm suggests that Pliny's suggestion was a straightforward report of what the king in question did to make himself proof against poisons, but that the report was read by his readers as meaning they should discount the method. 'with a pinch/grain of salt' thus became a shorthand for reportage of dubious quality.

[Blind Sapper]

Because he died, I get it. Some people think that common opinion or mistakes made by said population can't change things...at least now we know that it can change idioms that we take for granted. You know, this may be the oldest one yet.

[Blind Sapper]

Word of the Week: gongoozler : n, an idle spectator or loiterer

Michael: I just arrested about ten of those lord-darned loiterers that were whatching some poor bloke getting mugged.
Barney: Bloody gongoozlers.

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Etymology of an idiom: "A frog in my throat" - The feeling in the back of one's throat one gets when suffering a cold, often resulting in hoarse speech and difficulty breathing.

"This is probably an American phrase. There are many examples of its use in the USA from the late 19th century, but none from other English-speaking countries until the middle years of the 20th century. The earliest reference I can find is from an advertisement for a proprietary medicine that adopted the term as its name, in The Stevens Point Journal, November 1894:

"The Taylor Bros. say that 'Frog in the Throat' will cure hoarseness. 10 cents and box."

In December of the following year, The Middletown Daily Argus ran a similar advert for a rival product:

"Throat Lozenges - Our own formula for 'frog in the throat' - tickling might cough - hoarseness, etc. 10C a box." copy/pasted from www.phrases.org.uk

In any case, most likely this phrase came from the sound that someone with a throat cold makes when speaking, muc like a frog, not the thought that an actual frog is lodged in the ill person's throat.

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Quote:
"That awkward moment when you step into the van and realize there is no candy."
-- Anonymous

[worry]

Now you're just making stuff up.

[worry]

Here's a neat little page on Contronyms, which are words that through the quirks of language are antonyms of themselves. http://www.rinkworks...ontronyms.shtml

[Use Of Weapons]

worrywort, on 10 May 2012 - 08:34 PM, said:

Here's a neat little page on Contronyms, which are words that through the quirks of language are antonyms of themselves. http://www.rinkworks...ontronyms.shtml

Those are very cool :-D Language is weird, innit. My favourite I think is 'cleave'.

Weird word of the day: 'skirl' (n, v.) -- a high-pitched, shrieking or wailing sound; production of such a sound, e.g. the sound of bagpipes or piccolo.

[worry]

That instantly reminded me of the Skirling Pass in ASOIAF, and indeed it was so named because of the sound the winds make when rushing through the mountaintops.

[Shiara]

rapscallion
1690s, alteration of rascallion (1640s), a fanciful elaboration of rascal (q.v.). It is the parallel term of now-extinct rampallion (1590s), from M.E. ramp (n.) "ill-behaved woman" (mid-15c.), which is probably connected to the definition of romp in Johnson's Dictionary (1755) as "a rude, awkward, boisterous, untaught girl."

This post has been edited by Shiara: 16 May 2012 - 06:17 AM

[Shiara]

I just reckon this spiky dude's name is cool: Dracorex Hogwartsia





EDIT: ...okay, I am less impressed now that I know that the Latin name is derived from Harry Potter, instead of the other way around

This post has been edited by Shiara: 16 May 2012 - 06:58 AM

[Blind Sapper]

Am I the only person here who wants a pet dinosaur?
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Word of the Week: 5/16/12: Mesonoxian: adj., of or pertaining to midnight

Paulo loved to play the tuba for his girlfriend, Lupe, on their romantic mesonoxian excursions.

Etymology of an idiom: “Once in a blue moon” – used to describe an action or event that happens rarely.

There are two major etymologies on this one: The oldest is the use of the phrase to describe when the moon actually turned blue (which it actually does sometimes, but that is beside the point) which, of course, was never. The phrase was used sarcastically to describe an event that would never happen.

“Tom is asking Kate for her hand in marriage? I’ll be at that wedding on the night of a blue moon.”

The more recent usage of this saying describes something that does not happen very often. In some months, the lunar cycle is able to move through twice, resulting in a second full moon, referred to as the “blue moon”. This doesn’t happen too often, however, so the idiom is quite appropriate.

Quote:

“Television has made dictatorship impossible, but democracy unbearable.”

- Shimon Peres

[worry]

I wonder if the "blue moon" of the second etymology has its own roots in the first!

[Use Of Weapons]

More detail on the origin of the shift in meaning at http://www.worldwide...rds/tw-blu2.htm. Apparently, it's due to a misunderstanding of moon phases by a compiler of Trivial Pursuit questions. Who knew?

[Use Of Weapons]

Seriously, look up phrase etymology at worldwidewords.org. It's by far the best reference site I've ever seen, and isn't afraid to say 'we don't know'.

[worry]

That's awesome. It's such a game of "telephone" through the years, meaning-wise at least, if not the words themselves changing.

[Shiara]

worrywort, on 17 May 2012 - 12:31 AM, said:

That's awesome. It's such a game of "telephone" through the years, meaning-wise at least, if not the words themselves changing.

I'm assuming that the "telephone" game might be similar to, if not exactly the same as the game I know as "Chinese whispers".

[worry]

Yes, exactly. I suppose it's called "telephone" here because of older notions of how gossip got transmitted. That's another one for the ol' worldwidewords.org maybe.