PRONK

[Dr. Goodword]

• pronk •

Pronunciation: prahngk • Hear it!

Part of Speech: Verb, intransitive

Meaning: 1. To stot, to leap straight in the air with the back arched, bringing all four legs off the ground. Gazelles and springboks are most widely known for this behavior, but horses, sheep, and goats (especially playful kids) do it, too. 2. To prance, show off, strut.

Notes: Stot and pronk are not perfect synonyms, though they are used to refer to this peculiar ungulate behavior in different parts of the English-speaking world. Stot is common enough in Scots English, but its basic meaning is "to bounce". Someone stotting down the street in Glasgow is walking with a bounce, but the Scots also speak of rain stotting off the pavement as they stot a ball off a wall. South Africans prefer pronk, but its basic meaning is "to strut, prance, show off".

In Play: The assumption of sociobiologists and Afrikaners both is that pronking is a form of showing off among hoofed animals. Those of us having minimal contact with this kind of pronking are better served by the underlying sense of today's word: "I just saw Sue Persillias pronking down the street with her chauffeur and poodles in tow, glittering in the sun like a Christmas tree." It is very close in meaning to prance, but the connotation of jumping hoofers gives this word a slightly different aroma: "Haifa Lutin pronks all day in her dad's new Beemer, hoping to impress all the guys."

Word History: While the origin of today's Good Word remains wrapped in mystery, we do find a few words like it in the Germanic languages. It seems to have originated in early Germanic languages for we find no evidence of it in other Indo-European languages. It comes to English directly from Afrikaans, the language derived from Dutch spoken in South Africa. The Afrikaans verb came from Dutch pronken "to strut, show off". The English version has been spelled prank, leading some to believe in a connection there. More likely, the same Old Germanic word led to English prance. (We are very grateful to Tony Bowden, Audiendus in the Alpha Agora, for modestly suggesting today's Good Word without any pronking.)

[MTC]

This delightful and perfectly silly word belongs in a cartoon strip. Pronk! pronk! pronk! Bonk! bonk! bonk! (Come on, now. Get into the spirit!) With so many pretentious, polysyllabic words swaggering around it's a relief to see this happy little word skipping about like a playful kid (or antelope.)

[Slava]

Let's not forget that kids also can pronk. They are hooved animals, aren't they?

As to bonk, I'd eschew that one. It has a meaning that probably doesn't belong in your daily comics section.

In fact, just today I learned a new word based on it: bonkbuster. Something we might call racy, and most definitely not in a NASCAR sense.

[LukeJavan8]

Though they are not doing it literally the Oscar
showoffs area doing plenty of it figuratively.

[misterdoe]

Ah yes, Scots. The language we English speakers might be speaking if not for those pesky landgrabbing Normans

[LukeJavan8]

Land grabbing Normans. Avatar grabbing gremlins.
Seems mine has disappeared.

[Slava]

Land grabbing Normans. Avatar grabbing gremlins.
Seems mine has disappeared.

This is a first, to me at least. Could the site you have it on have changed its URL? If you're still in touch with the guys that helped you get it up in the beginning, perhaps they can figure it out. Good luck.

[LukeJavan8]

No, it was gremlins. Have an expert figuring things out.
I have no idea what to do. And, hey, who needs an
avatar anyway?

[Stargzer]

To stot, to leap straight in the air with the back arched, bringing all four legs off the ground. Gazelles and springboks are most widely known for this behavior, but horses, sheep, and goats (especially playful kids) do it, too. 2. To prance, show off, strut.

It reminds me of Pepé Le Pew, the cartoon skunk who pranced on his tiptoes with his back curved. We had a Black Lab who had bone cancer and had her right front leg amputated. When going slow she'd lift her back and throw her left leg forward, then jump her back legs forward to catch up. But when going fast, she'd hop on all three legs at once, just like Pepé. We often thought about painting a white stripe down her back on Halloween.

[LukeJavan8]

I think the white stripe would have been apropos! Maybe
tempera or flour? Anyhow, neat story. Animals
are great fun - mine sure are.

Gremlins still are around on this site only. Everything else
is fixed. But the avatar here must have been eliminated
by the administration. I don't know how to put one on
myself or I'd try something else.

[Slava]

Here's link to an earlier discussion on this. It was about putting actual images in a post, but that's how to do the avatar, also. You'll just upload your image and then copy the link to it and post it in the avatar line in your profile.

http://www.alphadictionary.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=4198

Hope this helps.

PS: I believe the site is now community.webshots.com.

[saparris]

I am the gremlin who helped Luke with the avatar. I noticed recently that both his and mine are missing, and I'm not sure why.

They are both on Picasa Web Albums

Mine is:
https://picasaweb.google.com/1038429685 ... 4800791074

Luke's is:
https://picasaweb.google.com/1038429685 ... 9917769586

However, when I tried to put them back, I get a message that the URL is invalid.

The last time, I was able to go to the properties for each pic and copy the URL. Now I can't find "Properties."

The only thing I've done recently in Google is set up a new e-mail address.

Any help would be appreciated.

[Stargzer]

A right-click on Luke's phantom avatar and a click on "Properties" shows:

http://lh6.ggpht.com/_bthbm8F_5MY/S3IxL ... le-New.jpg

Which Google comes back with a sort of "WTF?" screen.


Luke, try clicking on "Profile" at the top of the screen (you can right-click it and select "Open in New Tab" so you can flip back and forth). Scroll down to the bottom to the Avatar control panel and paste this link into the Link to off-site Avatar box:

https://picasaweb.google.com/1038429685 ... 9917769586

Then click the Submit button and go back to the other screen and refresh it to see if your avatar appears. If it appears humongous, go back to the Profile and delete the link and have Saparris re-save the avatar as a smaller image. The Luke-a-lele shows up as 446 x 512 pixels.

The AlphaAgora doesn't automatically shrink avatars to a fixed size, so you have to do it yourself. Mine is 66 x 80 pixels, Slava's is 65 x 100, and Dr. Goodword's is 120 x 80.

[Slava]

So, if I've done this correctly, you can now copy these links into the avatar section of your profile:

Luke:
http://thumb8.webshots.net/t/82/182/4/3 ... yhj_th.jpg

You should see

Steve:
http://thumb8.webshots.net/t/72/72/4/24 ... YSX_th.jpg

You should see

I copied them into my webshots album. If you'd rather not do it this way, let me know and I'll delete them.

Slava

[Stargzer]

They can just right-click-and-save the pictures and upload them where ever they want to.