I never realized what a resource this lace list was! I have a passage from a Ph.D. dissertation on ancient Israelite history, written in French. Writing makes it clear that our characteristically obsessive-compulsive French Ph.D. candidate was trying to impress his professors. You know, like he found and used all 50 French words for "however", he used excess wording like crazy, and he rarely forms definite conclusions. It happens to be one of the few key works on the subject it deals with (which is some nomads running around southern Palestine ca 14th and 13th centuries who the Egyptians wrote down worshipped Yahweh). Dictionaries can't make head or tale of it. I could be a technical phrase, or something bound to the history of the period, but Google isn't finding it nor its component words in any context that makes sense. french.about.com's forum can't help me - and they not only decipher this guy's formal and archaic advanced features of writing, but can often find even Egyptological vocabulary.
I once searched a phrase in google and used its translation service - and learned that my Palestinian nomads wore loincloth decorated with nipples (instead of "testicles" that the dictionary provided), and that California Indians shook nipples out of trees, crushed the nipples between stones into a powder, soaked tannic acid out of them, and ate the mash - where the correct translation was "tassels" (and acorns in the case of the California Indians). I haven't tried Babblefish and will, now that I know of it. But I wonder if anyone here actually knows. What means "coureurs de sable"? Whatever it means, it required surrounding two regions of Palestine with a guard of Egyptian soldiers to control them. Dictionary says, "runners of sand", "womanizers of sand" and "race car drivers of sand". Yours, Dora - To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing the line: unsubscribe lace [EMAIL PROTECTED] For help, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]