AWADmail Issue 289
Jan 13, 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 at wordsmith.org)
Subject: Interesting stories from the net
Arabic Lessons:
http://nytimes.com/2008/01/06/books/review/Worth-t.html?ex=1357275600&en=ce5a1da8e3b45c33&ei=5090
http://tinyurl.com/2v3qx5
Take a Literary Tour of Unique U.S. Bookstores:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/travel/2004116062_webbookstores10.html
And here are two reviews and excerpts from my recently-released book:
The Olympian:
http://www.theolympian.com/living/story/318975.html
Seattle Times:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/living/2004105661_markrail06.html
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From: Anu Garg (words at wordsmith.org)
Subject: 2008 calendar for Wordsmith Chat
Wordsmith Chats are online events where you can chat with invited
guests and ask questions on topics related to words, languages, etc.
We'll kick off the 2008 season of Wordsmith Chat with the following authors.
See more details at http://wordsmith.org/chat
Charlotte Brewer, author of "Treasure-House of the Language: The Living OED"
Chat topic: The Making of the Oxford English Dictionary
Sat, Jan 19, 12 noon Pacific (GMT -8)
Seth Lerer, author of "Inventing English"
Chat topic: The Journey of the English Language
Wed, Feb 6th, 7pm Pacific
Ben Yagoda, author of "When you catch an adjective, kill it"
Chat topic: Friend Me, Pimp My Ride, and Signage: Or, the Ever-Changing
Parts of Speech
Mon, Feb 25, 6pm Pacific
Michael Erard, author of "Um...: Slips, Stumbles, and Verbal Blunders, and
What They Mean"
Chat topic: Verbal Blunders and What They Mean
Mon, Mar 17th, 6pm Pacific
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From: Jeb Raitt (jbrmm266 aol.com)
Subject: Re: A.Word.A.Day--mare's nest
Refer: http://wordsmith.org/words/mares_nest.html
My father, an avid fisherman, used that term to describe the mess that occurs
when a fishing line gets tangled in a reel as a result of any number of mishaps.
Mer's nest? (French mer: sea)
-Anu Garg
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From: Dennis Butler (jbutler uabmc.edu)
Subject: Mare's nest
I wonder if there is not another sense to the term. I work in sleep disorders
and a nightmare has nothing to do with horses. If I recall correctly, that
use of the term "mare" derives from older German and connotes a devil so
nightmares are really night devils. A devil's nest makes a good interpretation
as well.
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From: Tisha Havens (thavens insurancetechnologies.com)
Subject: Re: A.Word.A.Day--dog's letter
Refer: http://wordsmith.org/words/dogs_letter.html
The rumor going around back in my playground days was that R is the
dog's letter because the shape of the R suggests a rear view of a dog
"lifting its leg".
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From: John Ascenzi (ascenzi email.chop.edu)
Subject: Re: A.Word.A.Day--dog's letter
Perhaps we can also refer to R as the pirate's letter. Think "Arrrhh."
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From: Sarju Shah (sarju.shah ct.gov)
Subject: Re: A.Word.A.Day--dog's letter
There are also dog letters: http://www.csudh.edu/dearhabermas/dogltr.htm
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From: Emanuela Ughi (emanuela.ughi gmail.com)
Subject: sheep's eyes and other animals
Refer: http://wordsmith.org/words/sheeps_eyes.html
The term sheep's eyes reminds me the analogous Italian
"occhi di triglia" = mullet's eyes.
It has the same meaning, but I have no idea of the reason!
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From: Alison Huettner (pondalorum aol.com)
Subject: Re: A.Word.A.Day--Donkey's years
Refer: http://wordsmith.org/words/donkeys_years.html
I read a story somewhere about a woman who wanted to buy a donkey for her
children. She found a place that sold donkeys, and negotiations on a price
were almost complete when she happened to ask how long donkeys live.
"About 30 years," was the answer. The woman gulped, reconsidered, and asked,
"Um... can you sell me a really OLD donkey?"
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From: Jane Wells (dockriver yahoo.ca)
Subject: donkey's years - or ears?
I first heard this word while temping in London, where I worked with a
number of East End women. I never saw it written, just heard people say
things like "Oh, I haven't seen him in donkey's." I understood the full
expression to be "donkey's ears" and that it was Cockney rhyming slang,
examples of which are: donkey's ears - years; plates of meat - feet; rabbit
and pork - talk (pork and talk actually rhyme in a cockney accent). The
whole phrase is never used, you just say the first word, as in "Listen to
me rabbitting on", to mean talking a lot. My father's favourite was "on your
tod" which means "on your own" and came from a reference to a once-famous
jockey "Tod Sloane- all alone".
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From: Doruk Salanci (doruksal gmail.com)
Subject: feedback: donkey's years
Hello from Ankara! The phrase "donkey's years", has a similar term in the
Turkish language that goes as "esek sudan gelinceye/dönene dek/kadar". Here,
"esek" is "donkey", "su" is "water", "gel-" is for "to come", "dön-" is for
"to return" and "dek/kadar" stands for "till/until". Thus, the Turkish
phrase may be translated into English as "till the donkey comes/returns from
the water", of course, "water" standing for a water source to satisfy thirst
or bathing needs.
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From: Carsten Kruse (c-kruse t-online.de)
Subject: Re: A.Word.A.Day--donkeys_years
Funny enough, I read "donkey's ears" at first before I realised it's
"donkey's years". This shouldn't happen to a native since this misreading is
based upon my confusing it with the German term "Eselsohren = Donkey's ears"
which stands for "dog-eared" in German.
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From: James D Brown (jdbrown hawaii.rr.com)
Subject: cat's paw
Refer: http://wordsmith.org/words/cats_paw.html
The third usage of cat's paw is well known to sailboaters. Turbulent
downdrafts leave discontinuous little rippled patches on the water that can
look like the tracks of a gigantic invisible cat walking on the water. They
are common downwind of cliffs or tall obstacles. I used to sail at West
Point, where the winds often come off the palisades and can be viewed from
them as the footfalls of a slightly tipsy cat.
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From: Marc Beschler (hfarmer juno.com)
Subject: cat's paw
Just a guess, but given my own cats' habit of occasionally pawing the
surface of their water dishes, it could spring from observance of such
a habit and the resulting resemblance to the effect the wind creates.
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From: Paul Hamilton (satyr77 att.net)
subject: cat's paw
I'm a contractor and certified cat magnet. Wherever I go, customers' cats or
neighborhood strays will happen along to supervise, obtain scratchings, or
just hang out.
A very handy tool which I bought many years ago when learning framing
carpentry was a cat's paw which is used to remove a nail:
http://www.rd.com/content/cats-paw-nail-puller/
In this case, it's not someone but something used as a tool by another.
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From: John Burbidge (burbidge centurytel.net)
Subject: Cat's paw
Growing up in Western Australia, I was familiar with a wildflower called the
Cat's Paw. Not quite as spectacular as the larger and better-known Kangaroo
Paw, it nevertheless was a welcome sight each spring with its orangey-red
hues. Its botanical name is Anigozanthos humilis in the family
Amaryllidaceae. Here is a link I found to a picture of the plant.
http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~vm5s-tjm/e/ewa/catspaw.htm
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From: Gordon Walker (gordonwalker roadrunner.com)
Subject: Cat's paw
Wasn't there a replacement shoe heel called Cat's Paw? That was back in the
Great Depression when one resoled and reheeled one's own shoes. That is back
when the devil was a boy.
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From: Reiko Umeda (umeda daido-it.ac.jp)
Subject: Japanese equivalent to Tailor's wife
In Japanese, we have Kouya no Shirobakama (The white clothes of a dyer:
Kouya or Konya, Kon: navy-blue, Ya: shop, no: of, Shiro: white, hakama:
old days' pants), which could be translated into "The tailor's wife is worst
clad" or "The shoemaker's children go barefoot."
It's amazing that we have similar expressions in different cultures, isn't it?
............................................................................
If a homological adjective is one that is true of itself, e.g.,
"polysyllabic", and a heterological adjective is one which is not true of
itself, e.g., "bisyllabic", then what about "heterological?" Is it
heterological or not? -Grelling's Paradox
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