Turdiform

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Apoclima
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Turdiform

Postby Apoclima » Tue May 31, 2005 11:54 pm

• turdiform •

Pronunciation: têr-dê-form • Hear it!

Part of Speech: Adjective

Meaning: Shaped like a thrush; resembling a thrush.

Notes: I am really very cleanIf you would feel a little awkward using this Good Word in conversations with your friends, there are two other variants with the same meaning, turdoid and turdine. All these adjectives can also mean "belonging to the family turdus," as do the song-thrush (Turdus musicus), Santa's favorite, the mistletoe thrush (Turdus viscivorus), and others. If you are a genuine thrush-fancier, you will want to keep your thrushes in a specially constructed turdarium. However, if you put other varieties in with your thrushes, you can't call it that any more.

In Play: This is a good word with which to attract attention to yourself in discussions with bird-watchers: "I saw an interesting little turdiform flyer in my backyard yesterday but it was green and pileated. Have any idea what it might have been?" The many types of birds that resemble thrushes provide plenty of work for today's word: "Do you happen to know the name of the lovely little turdiform creature sitting on the birdfeeder right now?"

Word History: This rather startling word comes from a Latin compound based on turdus "thrush" + forma "form". The root of turdus started out as *trozdos "thrush", but the [r] and the vowel metathesized, i.e. changed places, in Latin. In Germanic languages these two sounds held their positions and produced English thrush, German Drossel "thrush", with the diminutive suffix -el, and the Russian word, drozd "thrush".

–Dr. Goodword, Alpha Dictionary
"I do hereby comdemn this unfortunate word to the forgotten annals of that particular branch of biology called ornithology. Let this word neither be seen nor heard outside the bounds of that specialized scientific study of birds!

Sitran Apoclima, May 31, 2005"
Thrushlike works just fine for me!

Apo
Last edited by Apoclima on Thu Jun 02, 2005 1:20 am, edited 1 time in total.
'Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination.' -Max Planck

M. Henri Day
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Postby M. Henri Day » Wed Jun 01, 2005 2:39 am

Note that the «other» word comes from an entirely different Indoeuropean root, der-....

Henri
曾记否,到中流击水,浪遏飞舟?

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gailr
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Postby gailr » Wed Jun 01, 2005 11:58 pm

Great word, apo, but "orthinology" caught me up short. I have always seen this written "ornithology", as in Wikipedia's definition:
Ornithology (from the Greek ornitha = chicken and logos = word/science) is the branch of biology concerned with the scientific study of birds. It includes observations on the structure and classification of birds, and on their habits, song and flight.
A google search revealed a landslide preference for ornith- [1,100,000] over orthin- [186] (although that isn't proof of its correctness!). I was surprised to find Science Maths using the second form in its list of zoological careers.

gailr

Apoclima
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Postby Apoclima » Thu Jun 02, 2005 1:18 am

I've got to start wearing a belt! I guess my dyslexia shows... sometimes!

Thanks, gailr!

Apo
Last edited by Apoclima on Thu Jun 02, 2005 1:32 am, edited 1 time in total.
'Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination.' -Max Planck

Apoclima
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Posts: 555
Joined: Thu Feb 10, 2005 5:00 pm

Postby Apoclima » Thu Jun 02, 2005 1:30 am

Wow! I did that google search! There are alot of people out there who need to wear belts when it comes to this word!

Orthinology- The scientific study of the mountains of Middle Earth!
The Sindarin (as well as the English) vowelchanges are originally umlaut phenomena triggered by an ancient plural ending that contained the vowel i, so once again Doriathrin can be called archaic compared to Sindarin:

Eld "Elf, Elda" pl. Eldin
orth "mountain", pl. orthin
roth "cave", pl. rodhin (the voiced quality of the final consonant in the stem ROD is preserved intervocalically - perhaps Doriathrin cannot have voiced spirants finally)
urch "orc", pl. urchin
Doriathrin - the mothertongue of Lúthien

Apo
'Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination.' -Max Planck


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