AWADmail Issue 259
April 29, 2007
A Compendium of Feedback on the Words in A.Word.A.Day
and Other Interesting Tidbits about Words and Languages
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From: Anu Garg (words wordsmith.org)
Subject: Event announcement: Wordsmith chat
Is French still relevant?
Join us for a chat on French with our guest Julie Barlow, a writer,
journalist, and speaker from Montreal, Canada. She and her husband
Jean-Benoit Nadeau, are authors of "The Story of French" and the
earlier "Sixty Million Frenchmen Can't Be Wrong".
Where: http://wordsmith.org/chat
When: May 8, 2007, 6 pm Pacific (GMT -8)
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From: Anu Garg (words wordsmith.org)
Subject: Interesting stories from the net
The Power Of Speaking Ladylike:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/04/070424093752.htm
Obituary: Kelsie B. Harder, Onomastician:
http://nytimes.com/2007/04/22/nyregion/22harder.html?ex=1177905600&en=821220b919dcd41c&ei=5070
http://tinyurl.com/2l57w9
Obituary: Robert Barnhardt, Lexicographer:
http://www.nynews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070413/NEWS04/704130362
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From: Dee Johnson (dee.johnson belden.com)
Subject: Re: A.Word.A.Day--abstemious
Refer: http://wordsmith.org/words/abstemious.html
Partake as doth the bee
Abstemiously
A Rose
Is an estate in Sicily.
-Emily Dickinson
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From: Donald Vaughn (dvaughn gei-sd.com)
Subject: Voweltown
Refer: http://wordsmith.org/words/abstemious.html
My family lives in Aiea, Hawaii (on Oahu)!
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From: Christian Stone (cstone wustl.edu)
Subject: all vowels in a word
In the world of medicine, specifically gastroenterology, there exists a
vascular lesion that can bleed into the stomach. It is known by an eponym
that is hard to spell. To help training doctors remember how to spell it,
I often tell them that it contains all vowels, including "sometimes Y".
The name is Dieulafoy. (Vowels not in alphabetical order but a cool name
nonetheless).
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From: Robert Ewald (rewald ag.state.ia.us)
Subject: aeiou
I woke up in the middle of the night with a revelation: Country singer
Emmylou Harris has all the vowels in her name and "y" to boot.
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From: Mark Scheerer (markscheerer verizon.net)
Subject: Re: A.Word.A.Day--abstemious
Refer: http://wordsmith.org/words/abstemious.html
When baseball trivia questions are being tossed about, I can usually stump
the group with: "Name a Major League Baseball player who had all five vowels
in his name."
The answer is Aurelio Rodriguez, a slick-fielding third baseman who spent
much of his career with the Detroit Tigers in the 1970s.
I originally heard a television play-by-play announcer frame that
distinction as "...the ONLY Major League Baseball Player with all five
vowels...." I don't know if that's true.
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From: Robert Goleman (hortusb earthlink.net)
Subject: Re: A.Word.A.Day--caesious
Refer: http://wordsmith.org/words/caesious.html
The word, "caesious", is basically the species epithet for one of my
favorite Eucalyptus. Eucalyptus caesia does, indeed, have caesious foliage
(from grayish green to powdery gray-blue), and happens to be one of the most
beautiful among Eucs.
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From: James Friend (frienddjp comcast.net)
Subject: Caesious
As a chemist I quickly recognized the cousin of the element caesium, which
we Americans call cesium - symbol Cs. It is named after the blue color of
the lines in its emission spectrum.
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From: Rick Harrington (rhgtn sonic.net)
Subject: Re: A.Word.A.Day--anemious
Refer: http://wordsmith.org/words/anemious.html
Thank you for providing me with the word I've needed for years. When I
moved to California in 1971, I was most impressed by the way the oak trees
near the coast grew in response to the prevailing winds. These mighty oaks
grow in a way that is a physical description of the prevailing winds. Very
different from the oaks back east where I grew up, which pretty much grow
straight up in their own majestic manner. Oaks of all sorts are pretty
special.
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From: Joseph Agnew (monsieurjoe hotmail.com)
Subject: Re: A.Word.A.Day--facetious
Refer: http://wordsmith.org/words/facetious.html
I've been waiting all week for "facetious" to be word of the day! When I was
a kid, the DJ on a local radio station gave a prize of $100 to the first
listener to call in with a word having all five vowels in alphabetical
order. Thanks for helping to bring back a great memory!
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From: John Rochat (houyhnhnmland sbcglobal.net)
Subject: Consonantal Drift
Bravo! What a fun week, but I'm not sure how it might support my still-
evolving Theory of Consonantal Drift. At this point, it appears that
several million years ago, all vowels and consonants were once equally
mixed on one land mass, but as the land masses drifted across the Earth's
crust, so did the alphabet. Most interesting, this phenomenon has not
seemed random, as most of the vowels seem to have drifted to Southeast
Asia and the Pacific, and most of the consonants seem to still be centered
around Poland. Of course, there are always exceptions, with enclaves of
vowels in odd places, like Finland. Can you help me with this research?
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From: Randolph Bentson (bentson holmsjoen.com)
Subject: ...and sometimes "y"
I've enjoyed this week's list, in part because I can anticipate what'll
be next. I wrote a simple command to search for words matching the criteria
used and found twenty-three entries. The results reminded me of the phrase
"and sometimes 'y'" that's part of the list of vowels in English. I found
"abstemiously", "facetiously", "half-seriously", and "pareciously" in my list.
FWIW, the command was
grep '^[^aeiou]*a[^aeiou]*e[^aeiou]*i[^aeiou]*o[^aeiou]*u[^aeiou]*$'
/usr/share/dict/words
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From: Eric Shackle (eshackle ozemail.com.au)
Subject: Abstemious, facetious
Peter Oakley, a remarkable 79-year-old British grandfather idolized by
millions of juvenile fans delighted by his YouTube videos, is abstemious
and occasionally facetious, as well as entertaining. There's a story about
him in the May edition of The World's First Multi-National e-Book,
http://bdb.co.za/shackle
............................................................................
Language is the armory of the human mind; and at once contains the trophies
of its past, and the weapons of its future conquests. -Samuel Taylor
Coleridge, poet, critic, and philosopher (1772-1834)
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