AWADmail Issue 290
Jan 20, 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: Chat with Charlotte Brewer
Everything you wanted to know about the Oxford English Dictionary but were
afraid to ask. Chat with Charlotte Brewer, author of "Treasure-House of the
Language: The Living OED" at:
http://wordsmith.org/chat
Sat, Jan 19, 12 noon Pacific (GMT -8)
---------------------------
From: Anu Garg (words at wordsmith.org)
Subject: Interesting stories from the net
>From Albedo to Zugunruhe:
http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,2227650,00.html
Racing to Capture Vanishing Languages:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/13/nyregion/nyregionspecial2/13artswe.html?ex=1357966800&en=72da816eab91778f&ei=5090
http://tinyurl.com/2kn35u
And two new reviews of my latest book:
Business Standard:
http://business-standard.com/common/storypage_c.php?leftnm=10&bKeyFlag=BO&autono=311089
Outlook:
http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20080121&fname=Ten+Question
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From: Stuart Tarlowe (starlowe earthlink.net)
Subject: Re: A.Word.A.Day--dingle
Refer: http://wordsmith.org/words/dingle.html
So then, the berries found in that valley would be called...
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From: Lars Clausen (lc statsbiblioteket.dk)
Subject: feedback: dingle
Thank you for pointing out this word today. Just last week, I was
discussing it with a coworker, who didn't believe it was an actual word.
We were picking out English words from a Danish set of fridge magnets,
and "dingle" (meaning "to hang loosely" in Danish) was one of those
"this sounds like it should be a word" words, and I have now been
vindicated. It's an interesting bilingual exercise to pick words in
another language from fridge magnets. Since you're constantly seeing
words in the "original" language, you keep switching back to that
context, so it can be very hard to spot those that also mean something
in the other language.
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From: Gideon Klionsky (klionsky brandeis.edu)
Subject: Re: A.Word.A.Day--dingle
A dingle, as I learned earlier this year, is also a combination of the words
"single" and "double". I learned it because my freshman roommate never turned
up at college. Having been assigned to a "double" room, I was left as the
solitary "single" occupant of that room. Alas, I return to school from winter
break today and the residential life crew has found me a roommate. I had my
very own "deep narrow wooded valley" for four months, but I am now back in
a double room.
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From: Marjo van Patten (marjovp sbcglobal.net)
Subject: feedback: dingle
Seeing this word reminds me of the 1960's TV show Laugh-In which used the
recurring phrase 'ding-a-ling'. My family had cats, including two gentle
black-and-white giants named Ding-a-Ling. They were nicknamed Dingle and
we spoke of them as Dingle I and Dingle II.
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From: (lunasea- webtv.net)
Subject: Re: A.Word.A.Day--dingle
The word dingle is not a word to be teased from a dictionary if you are as
beguiled by Dylan Thomas as I am. Here it is, larger than life, in the
first stanza of one of his most lovely and well-known poems.
Fern Hill
by Dylan Marlais Thomas
Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
The night above the dingle starry,
...
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From: Joji Domonatani (jdomonatani colonialfiji.com.fj)
Subject: Re: A.Word.A.Day--dingle
Here's a bit of fun. Christmas is now just gone albeit for another 11 months
or so and that lovely carol "Ding Dong Merrily on High" still fresh in my
mind, today's word immediately brought up a similar sounding word. A dongle
is a small hardware device that connects to a computer to authenticate a
piece of software. So in all likelihood, there is a dongle in the Silicon
dingle.
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From: Catherine Bolton (translations bolton.it)
Subject: Re: scorbutic
Refer: http://wordsmith.org/words/scorbutic.html
Interestingly enough, the Italian word "scorbutico" (which can be a noun or
adjective) has two meanings. Like "scorbutic", it refers to scurvy, but it
is most commonly used to mean crabby, irritable, cantankerous. If you tell
someone he's "scorbutico" you're telling him what a grouch he is! Maybe it's
related to the fact that irritability is listed as one of the symptoms of
scurvy.
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From: Mary Treder (mct919 hotmail.com)
Subject: Re: scorbutic
So the educated pirate says, "Avast, ye scorbutic canines!"
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From: Jorge Dagnino (jdagnino med.puc.cl)
Subject: scorbutic
Apparently the Latin for scorbutic is a middle 16th century word derived
from the Dutch scheurbuik or ON skyrbjugr. Learned this when preparing a
dissertation on the history of scurvy, but being infected by love of words...
---------------------------
From: Ian Simpson (ian.simpson reuters.com)
Subject: Re: A.Word.A.Day--jobbernowl
Refer: http://wordsmith.org/words/jobbernowl.html
This is great. The only time I've ever heard the word was in "The Bank Dick"
when W.C. Fields tries to get dim Og Oggilby ("Sounds like a bubble in a
bathtub") to embezzle bank money to invest in the fabled Beefsteak Mine.
"Don't be a luddy-duddy! Don't be a mooncalf! Don't be a jabbernowl!
You're not those, are you?"
............................................................................
The living language is like a cow-path: it is the creation of the cows
themselves, who, having created it, follow it or depart from it according
to their whims or their needs. From daily use, the path undergoes change.
A cow is under no obligation to stay. -E.B. White, writer (1899-1985)
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