Search found 18 matches

by DavidLJ
Tue Sep 23, 2014 3:47 pm
Forum: Good Word Discussion
Topic: Petrichor
Replies: 12
Views: 14220

Re: Petrichor

What a fine word, and such a pleasant post!

Where and how did you find it?

-dlj.
by DavidLJ
Sun Aug 10, 2014 4:19 pm
Forum: Good Word Discussion
Topic: Pernicious
Replies: 21
Views: 38187

Re: Flagitious

Flagitious may very well describe the late Saddam Hussein. In the interest of pushing my American friends just a wee tad in the direction of balance, however, let me remind them that the only "weapons of mass destruction" found in Iraq were the helicopters and "agricultural chemicals&...
by DavidLJ
Mon Aug 04, 2014 5:53 pm
Forum: Good Word Discussion
Topic: Hacker
Replies: 18
Views: 21793

Re: Hacker

I learned the word hacker in its computer sense when I was on staff of the MIT AI Lab in 1971, which was probably pretty close to the start. The "Web," i.e. ARPAnet, the ancestor of today's Internet, at the time had just seven nodes, and I was user #300. The meaning of the word was pretty ...
by DavidLJ
Sat Dec 28, 2013 3:21 am
Forum: Good Word Discussion
Topic: Gobemouche
Replies: 4
Views: 6966

Re: Gobemouche

...which I guess gives us our pointer of the day to gobstopper, gob-smacked and "Aww shutcher gob."

-dlj.
by DavidLJ
Wed Oct 09, 2013 2:46 am
Forum: Good Word Discussion
Topic: Quidnunc
Replies: 10
Views: 12452

Re: Quidnunc

A fine explanation of why the simplified wite so grates on prissy classicists like me!

-dlj.
by DavidLJ
Wed Oct 09, 2013 1:36 am
Forum: Good Word Discussion
Topic: Gamut
Replies: 8
Views: 10288

Re: Gamut

I think Slava's gamutlich is wonderful, and tremble that it will jump out at me, with an umlaut, any day. Its wicked henchman gamutlichkeit won't be far behind either. The invention reminds me of Alvin Toffler's excellent adhocracy. Is there a good word, or a Good Word, for felicitous concoctions of...
by DavidLJ
Wed Sep 18, 2013 8:56 pm
Forum: Good Word Discussion
Topic: Fritter
Replies: 12
Views: 16636

Re: Frittering away

I was nagged with uncertainty after I posted above, but am relieved to find that what I wrote seems to be correct. Here are some of the related entries from the http://www.etymonline.com, a site which I trust more than thefreedictionary.com, which has some obvious errors in it: friable (adj.) Look u...
by DavidLJ
Wed Sep 18, 2013 7:01 am
Forum: Good Word Discussion
Topic: Fritter
Replies: 12
Views: 16636

Re: Fritter and frit -- broken glass, but fried, not friable

I found this one interesting because it taught me a bit about, and led me to learn a bit more about "frit," the packaging material proposed for the long term storage of nuclear waste. Nuclear medicine and nuclear power generation necessarily leave wastes, some of which are no more harmful ...
by DavidLJ
Sun Sep 01, 2013 7:39 pm
Forum: Good Word Discussion
Topic: Tittle
Replies: 22
Views: 25459

Re: Tittle

If MTC can distract himself from his concern with my personal qualities, perhaps he'd like to consider that "tittle" occurs only in one place in English usage, in the "jot and tittle" of the Bible.

Both are obviously of Hebrew and/or Aramaic provenance: yod and titl.

-dlj.
by DavidLJ
Sun Sep 01, 2013 5:43 am
Forum: Good Word Discussion
Topic: Tittle
Replies: 22
Views: 25459

Re: Tittle

Latin, eh?

Ya don't think maybe it might have had something to do with the Hebrew טיטל, pronounced "tittle," which in the Bible is translated as "tittle"?

-dlj.
by DavidLJ
Sat Aug 17, 2013 3:19 am
Forum: Good Word Discussion
Topic: Plaintiff
Replies: 3
Views: 5428

Plaintiff

You say "plaintiff" is an orphan word with no relatives, and I immediately ask "But what about `plaint'?" I check with http://www.thefreedictionary.com/plaint, and there it is: [1175–1225; Middle English < Middle French < Latin planctus a striking or beating (the breast) in grief...
by DavidLJ
Sun Aug 11, 2013 4:17 pm
Forum: Good Word Discussion
Topic: Supine
Replies: 15
Views: 19626

Re: Supine

I'm reminded that back in the 1960s Stokeley Carmichael once said "The position of women in The Revolution is to be prone," to which Angela Davis archly replied "I assume he means supine."

-dlj.
by DavidLJ
Wed Jul 31, 2013 6:40 am
Forum: Good Word Discussion
Topic: Carminative
Replies: 8
Views: 9282

Re: Carminative

I would have thought that the French root was clear enough: the sound of carding cotton or flax is certainly fart-like.

-dlj.
by DavidLJ
Fri Jul 19, 2013 10:51 am
Forum: Good Word Discussion
Topic: Lagniappe
Replies: 13
Views: 17837

Re: Lagniappe

Dr. Goodword can always be relied upon to make somethng up out of thin air when he doesn't know what he's talking about and is too lazy to do his homework. (William Safire and Edwin Newman did the same early in their careers in the word game, but cleaned up their act after they were caught one or tw...
by DavidLJ
Sun Jun 23, 2013 5:47 am
Forum: Good Word Discussion
Topic: Cosmogony
Replies: 10
Views: 12621

Re: Cosmogony

Good Doctor, I think you're being disingenuous about the origins of God and the universe. It seems pretty obvious to me: The Big Bang is the technicque God used for creating this particular universe. God was created by random quantum variations of the void. Aren't you glad you brought the question u...

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