I gather from today's New York Times that a Marinara pizza or pasta sauce has no relation to seafood. If you order a marinara here in Australia and it arrives with no seafood, you demand your money back. How come a marinara has no relation to the sea in USA?

Incidentally always pronounced Crake in Scotland, I believe. And in Ireland - although with an Irish accent of course. Any Scottish or Irish correspondents here?

Came across this word for the first time today. I assumed it was a mis-spelling of milk. Four months later, he was hit with a second set of charges and a score of lawsuits, legal filings that accused him of bilking his clients of millions of dollars. This in a US paper (NY Times) about an American. ...

I am with you MTC. I have looked at Slava's two Gemutlich links in the Agora, and your comment in the 2013 entry is spot on. It is not mere 'happy'. It is warm, convivial, comfortable... - having a good time in a German way. I picture a long table with bench seats filled with large German men holdin...

Indeed, fascinating. How long do they have in the outside world? And how long after return before the decision has to be made? And what do they do when they are out - where do they go and what experiences are they supposed to have? Is there a set plan or do they just drift - presumably there are few...

I have to confess that I remember the song well.

But is the fruit inedible or uneatable?

I think a baseball is inedible but a three week old fish is uneatable - it may be edible but it wouldn't be very nice.

Neither the baseball nor the fish is esculent.

Just my use of the three words with no authority whatsoever.

David

Not much difference between a synanthropic animal and a pest. I am having terrible trouble with the possums that enjoy the lemons on my tree - they peel perfectly the fruit and leave behind the flesh - whole peeled lemons still hanging on the tree - but of course no longer eatable. Very unfair. Of c...

Love the gradual change from costly through precious to loved. But this makes all the more baffling , the use of the word dear to start a letter to someone unknown - Dear Sir (or Madam), I have always found that convention too anachronistic to be used. I never start a letter with Dear... I put the a...

Is it known how Old English was pronounced? How did the Angles say "Hleow"? If Luke- is related to the various European Cal- words, somewhere along the line, something has been inverted. And since Latin pre-dates Old English and the Romans used Calidus, then it was those pesky Angles or Sa...

Can't help with our language question Slava.

But connected to another unusual 'man' word - amanuensis. Sort of a personal servant. Patrick White, the Australian Nobel winner for literature, lived for many years with his amanuensis.

So if the opposite of demote is promote, is mote all about staying in the same job or at the same level? I am happy to mote along as long as I can continue to WFH.

Why is there no verb to mote?

And what is the connection between the splinter in your eye and your next job?

And why is the funny appendage on the top of some birds' heads called a comb?

Thanks for that, Slava. An interesting perspective and no doubt learned. I guess I was influenced by the Latin origin which has no smell attached.

I am surprised to read here that the word is for out-flows of an unpleasant sort. I had always assumed (and used the word accordingly) for a flowing out of any matter. The recent rains have brought welcome relief when the hitherto dry and dusty Warburton River became an effluvium for the parched sal...