At least we've stayed on thread. Or lanyard, in this case.

I think rhyming compounds are like higgledy-piggledy or helter-skelter and not necessarily any old rhyme. I could be wrong about that, and, if so, I expect to be corrected willy-nilly.

Let's face it, just how much was Yiddish influencing American English in the early 1960s?

Oy, it only had to influence one good Mensch, and - mazeltov! - the rest would be history.

I'm surprised nobody asked NASA whence it originated. It's possible that whoever coined it is still alive.

Also, in Doc's "dreamy example" I was certain that the word "riparian" would make an appearance.

The question naturally arises, If we have eternal, why do we need today's Good Word? I've often thought that when these extra syllables have been added to words (or extra words to phrases,) it may have been done originally to have a passage conform to the meter of a poetic work. I have no evidence ...

I'll have to think about that. I'm not sure I give a handful for the difference beween a thread and a chatroom. Virtually every topic I've seen here is off target by the fourth or fifth post, even among the many, many threads in which I have not taken an active role. Most participants seem to be enj...

It was a jesting reference to our earlier discussion of "patronym-patronymic"

Several of you have mentioned a spell checker; I've not been able to find one in this program. Any tips? (besides composing in Word and copying into this environment.)

A synonym (not a synonymic, mind you) for the noun, "bloom," is "efflorescence" both in the sense of "flower" and in the sense of stuff accumulating on the surface. In industry (masonry, foundry work, etc.) the two are used interchangeably, as they are in chemistry, to ...

I'm with you on that. Those things don't work me up at all. My grandmother called her GE appliance a "frigidaire" until the day she died. She even called it an ice box now and then.

I just noticed the second definition of this word...I knew about the first, but not the second. Nice to have a word better than "that stuff"... While "rorulent," an adjective, describes the plum with the stuff on it, the stuff itself is called "bloom." It's very common...

Thanks for your thoughts on that.

So we were just being critical, when, in fact, the misunderstanding was diacritical.

And wine-making (they are losing their dominance in the world market because of this,) and cheese-making, and, and, and every other aspect of their socialist lives. I hope they wake up before it's too late, because if there is an Eden that blesses Mankind with all the necessities of life in a small ...

Do you lay awake at night thinking up these things/?? In a way: My job involves a good deal of translating technical things into language that non-scientists can understand. I don't think I did a good job on this one, so... Let's try a sports example: You are participating in the hammer throw. You ...