Interesting Words (moved from Games)

Hawkwood

.

  • Civis

Robert Graves, whose "monstrous" (T.S. Eliot's word) tome The White Goddess I've been slogging through recently, wrote a fiction about the puritanical Mr. Milton, in which he is portrayed as a sullen & petulant clown who fails utterly to satisfy his young wife. One wonders whether ol' Graves maybe had a bone to pick, because his favorite verses (those of John Skelton) were among the few things Milton considered justified in being banned forever from print.
Graves was a pleasure both in pen and person, for me. If you get the chance and you haven't already, take a look at some of his old interviews on youtube. God Bless youtube.
 

Glabrigausapes

Philistine

  • Civis Illustris

Location:
Milwaukee
I don't know how this can even fall under the same OED reading for plummy:
3. colloquial.
a. Of a person's voice, speech, etc.: mellow, deep, resonant, and carefully articulated (in a way associated with the educated English upper classes); (hence) mannered, affected, posh, upper-class. Also occasionally: drawling; indistinct, as though hampered by plums in the mouth
 
E

Etaoin Shrdlu

Guest

I think of the word as primarily meaning posh; there is carefully articulated and carefully mumbled posh, and I'd use it for both. I'm unfamiliar with the second meaning.
 
E

Etaoin Shrdlu

Guest

By 'use', I don't necessarily mean that I would personally say or write it, but I'd expect it to mean something along those lines, unless it was obvious the speaker or writer intended otherwise.
 
E

Etaoin Shrdlu

Guest

I don't know what they mean by 'known', though. Having seen the word somewhere, without knowing what it meant? Being able to give a dictionary definition? I'd have said 'aileron' was something or other on an aeroplane's wing, and that a 'parsec' was, um, one of those measurements. I've seen most of the words on the female side, but I'm not sure how many of the clothes-related ones I could define except in very vague terms. By contrast, I find it difficult to say whether I've actually seen 'milliamp' or not, but one doesn't need to have come across it to work out the meaning.
 

Pacifica

grammaticissima

  • Aedilis

Location:
Belgium
رغب

This verb means "to desire" when followed by a preposition meaning "in", and "to have an aversion for" when followed by one meaning "from". That's neat!
 

Pacifica

grammaticissima

  • Aedilis

Location:
Belgium
كون

That's the factitive version of the verb for "to be". It's as if you took the verb "to be", modified it in some way by the addition or change of a sound or two, and had it mean "to cause to be".

There's nothing really surprising about it; pretty much any root can be made into a factitive. But I love it, as I do many factitives and all those other special verbs that take on additional meanings like this just by being modified somewhat.

Damn, this language is amazing.
 

Pacifica

grammaticissima

  • Aedilis

Location:
Belgium
Yes (though the Latin expression that it's derived from isn't).
 
 

Terry S.

Aedilis

  • Aedilis

  • Patronus

Location:
Hibernia
Yes (though the Latin expression that it's derived from isn't).
Sadie Vacanti - the bishop's domineering housekeeper who's really running the diocese behind the scenes.
 

EstQuodFulmineIungo

Civis Illustris

  • Civis Illustris

Sadie Vacanti - the bishop's domineering housekeeper who's really running the diocese behind the scenes.
I wonder what they say in the "una cum N," part of the Canon. Also because they say the most "papist" of all masses (the Tridentine), which has this Canon before the consecration (and transubstantiation), unlike the N.O. Mass.
 
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