qroqqa has looked up 2076 words, created 26 lists, listed 2406 words, written 1523 comments, added 229 tags, and loved 0 words.
Comments by qroqqa
Comments for qroqqa
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bilby misses you. I do, too.
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Dear qroqqa,
Thank you for your comment on curry. I especially like the bit about the "mediaeval eggcorn."
Yours truly,
ruzuzu -
"qroqqa has added 24 lists containing 2,235 words, 227 comments, 227 tags, 2 favorites, and 0 pronunciations."
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We miss you and your illimitable founts of etymological wisdom!
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Would you pronounce your username?
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Thanks for your suggestion (a week and a half ago!) regarding my question about how to refer the "singular" of a pluralis tantem. I think I understand the notion of a "bound base", but I am not sure that applies to units like *scissor, *hijink, and *trouser, since the -s in the pluralis tantum is not really an affix in the way that dis- is in discombobulate, but a grammatical ending (or perhaps this distinction is irrelevant?). In other words, when we remove the ending from scissors, we still have a hypothetical noun that acts like real nouns in certain ways, notably, it can serve as a verb ("She scissored her way through the crowd") or a modifier ("The scissor pieces lay on the table, waiting to be assembled"). Would lexeme work in such cases?
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Hi, Qroqqa! I am looking for a way to refer to the hypothetical singular form of a pluralis tantem, e.g. *scissor, *underpant, *hijink. Are these lexemes? I figured that you would be the Wordie to ask about this.
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Happy New Year qroqqa, there's only us on Wordie!
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I just wanted to say that I really appreciate your citations and contributions to this site and I'm glad you're here.
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For the record, qroqqa is about the only Maltese word I know.
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Time for a cookie! Perhaps a Maltese treat for us here?
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Hi qroqqa. I'd appreciate a Maltese miaow here.
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qroqqa, thank you for your help on the braggadocio recipe. Can I just ask you to use a narrower definition of "English word"? Risotto and espresso are Italian, Morocco is a country, and Lobelia is borrowed from the scientific name.
I can't believe no wasn't there yet!
Thank you! -
Yay! You know, there is a secret subgroup of biologists here on Wordie. But it's so secret that I can't talk about it.
qroqqa commented on the word Crow
It is aided in this deception by being a master of disguise. The crow appears as a small, nondescript bird who passes unnoticed as it cases other birds' nests, selects a suitable one, and goes into labour, spurning epidurals and the machine that goes ping! in favour of a low-key delivery of its eggs, which typically come in clutches of six to eight. The gentes or tribes of crow are classified by the pattern of their egg: paisley, batik, or piñata.
One crow in San Diego Zoo passed the last twelve years of its life as a peacock, and the deception was only discovered on autopsy.
Jun 6, 2013
qroqqa commented on the word codware
Put not youre handes in youre hosen youre codware for to clawe.
—wise advice; source given by the OED as:
a1475 J. Russell Bk. Nurture (Harl. 4011) in Babees Bk. (2002) i. 135
May 20, 2013
qroqqa commented on the word Beltane
Of unknown etymology. The second element might be related to the Irish for "fire", or it might not. The OED of 1887 finished up its etymology with this pungent and Rabelaisian criticism, words I fear will not make it through when it's revised for the third edition:
The rubbish about Baal, Bel, Belus, imported into the word from the Old Testament and classical antiquity, is outside the scope of scientific etymology.
May 14, 2013
qroqqa commented on the word Umwelt
To break out of the circle of the Innenwelt into the Umwelt generates the inexhaustible quadrature of the ego's verifications.—Lacan
May 13, 2013
qroqqa commented on the word flourit
Possibly unrelated to the real word floruit, indicating when someone flourished, and used when their birth and death dates are not known.
May 7, 2013
qroqqa commented on the list nouns-first-attested-in-shakespeare
The vagaries of attestation. The 2nd edition OED has a line from Love's Labour's Lost, dated 1588, as its first use: 'Once more Ile read the Ode that I haue writ'. Then follows a 1589 quotation from Puttenham.
The 3rd edition has corrected the L.L.L. date to 1598, thus making Puttenham an antedate. (And it notes the 1598 spelling was Odo, changed to Ode in the First Folio.) It now also has a 1579 quotation from Spenser, plus a 1538 dictionary entry—which shouldn't really count, as it's not a use.
And why are my italic tags not coming out, eh?
Apr 26, 2013
qroqqa commented on the word competitive arousal
I bet I find it more arousing than you do.
Mar 20, 2013
qroqqa commented on the word completly
unfortunatly . . .
Mar 8, 2013
qroqqa commented on the word foward
The rest of us are all curious, nay agog, about when you use this supposed word.
Mar 6, 2013
qroqqa commented on the list my-god--its-full-of-stars
Cepheid variable, gravastar, MACHO
Mar 5, 2013
qroqqa commented on the word death sandwich
Informally dubbed by researchers the 'Genesis Death Sandwich', this pattern offers the first clear example of this common rhetorical structure being used in the text describing the creation of the universe.
—New analysis of Genesis reveals 'death sandwich' literary theme, Phys.Org, 20 Feb. 2013
Feb 20, 2013
qroqqa commented on the word horsemeat
What on earth did you think they put in them? Prime cuts of delicious free-range, organic, rare breed, heritage beef, grass-fed, Eton-educated, humanely slaughtered, dry-aged and hand-ground by fairies with a pinch of pink Murray River salt and a twist of black pepper?
—Giles Coren in The Times, on the discovery of horsemeat, or indeed any meat, in Tesco Everyday Value Burgers
Feb 19, 2013
qroqqa commented on the word zblbl
Czech for "he became silly". Alternative form zblbnul. Masculine past participle of zblbnout "become silly", from blb "fool". Thus also zblbla "she became silly", zblbl jsem "I (m.) became silly" etc.
Feb 13, 2013
qroqqa commented on the word languist
I should say, sometimes there’s a distinction made between languist and linguist. A languist is somebody who can speak a lot of languages. A linguist is somebody who is interested in the nature of language.—from an interview with Chomsky. And a word I'd never heard of till now.
Feb 11, 2013
qroqqa commented on the word kast
(1) Also the actual Hobbitish word rendered in English by mathom.
(2) Wordnik thinks this is an error for last and is supplying misinformation accordingly.
Feb 8, 2013
qroqqa commented on the word Fleur du Maquis
A Corsican ewe's milk cheese covered with rosemary, juniper berries, and chillis. *slurp*
Feb 8, 2013
qroqqa commented on the word macrobian
True dat. A lesser-known but equally interesting fact is that ancient Macrobia was named for its diet. The royal family having been particularly impressed by the fare at a macrobiotic restaurant they had patronized, they granted it a royal warrant, ordered that all their subjects should eat macrobiotic, and changed the kingdom's name to Macrobia. The country lasted until it was swallowed up by a coalition of neighbouring kingdoms Vegetaria, Atkinsia, and Eggandbeansia.
Feb 8, 2013
qroqqa commented on the word unitranche
According to Investopedia, unitranche debt is: A type of debt that combines senior and subordinated debt into one debt instrument; it is usually used to facilitate a leveraged buyout. Whatever that means. And it's all over the Interthingummy, so why hasn't it appeared here before?
Feb 8, 2013
qroqqa commented on the word tree-shaking
According to Google, "Dart can be compiled to JavaScript, so you can use it for web apps in all modern desktop and mobile browsers. Our JavaScript compiler generates minimal code thanks to tree-shaking." —Google trumpets Dart release as first stable version in phys.org news
A computing term I've never encountered before: looking through the code and eliminating things that are never used.
Oct 18, 2012
qroqqa commented on the word clade
The problem is that two 'definitions' found on the Internet are mutually inconsistent. That's got nothing to do with what a clade is. Clades are defined by descent; there's no actual need for any two members of a clade to share any particular inheritance. A clade is a species together with all its descendants.
Nov 21, 2011
qroqqa commented on the word niche
'Niche market', however, doesn't show what part of speech it is. It is natural to suppose 'niche' is a noun in that phrase (as in 'stock market', 'bear market'). It is the ability to be modified by adverbs that shows it has (for some people) become a noun.
Nov 14, 2011
qroqqa commented on the word head-first
According to the new reverse dictionary thingy, the definition of this word contains the word 'columbium'.
Jun 22, 2011
qroqqa commented on the word flerovium
This name was once briefly suggested for nobelium, which may be enough to scupper it with the IUPAC.
Jun 22, 2011
qroqqa commented on the list killjoy-et-al
There's at least one French/English pair of surnames: Boileau = Drinkwater. Then there are the Rabelaisian names that get translated with the same structure: Baisecul = Kissebreech. Do-nothing is a translation of the old French fainéant kings.
Jun 16, 2011
qroqqa commented on the word fickfack
What a silly word. Isn't this what we standard English speakers call the paxwax? And q.v. for alternatives: 'Also called paxywaxy, packwax, faxwax, fixfax, and whit-leather.' I bet that last one is made up.
Jun 14, 2011
qroqqa commented on the word work related upper limb disorder
Apparently another new term for RSI and its little friends.
Jun 10, 2011
qroqqa commented on the list phonestheme--cr---or-kr
There are two, surely: an abrupt one in crash, crack, crunch, crumple, crinkle and a slow one in creep, crawl. I suppose creak, crumble could partake of both.
Surprisingly, cranberry might be relatable to these after all, if its etymon crane has any kind of abrupt cry.
Jun 10, 2011
qroqqa commented on the word sertanista
[José Carlos Meirelles] is a "sertanista" – the name given to a select few people who scour the Amazon jungle is search of isolated peoples and then set up a remote outpost to monitor and protect them from contact with "civilisation".
—Al Jazeera, 24 June 2008
Jun 10, 2011
qroqqa commented on the word zero
Zero, a Word sometimes us'd especially among the French, for a Cipher or Nought (0).
—Phillips's New World of Words, 1706
Jun 8, 2011
qroqqa commented on the word candid
'Candid' does not mean "white". It comes from a Latin word meaning "white" or "candid".
Jun 2, 2011
qroqqa commented on the word kine
Actually the pronouns mine and thine do, but kine doesn't. The -ine is the Germanic form of the adjective ending more familiar from Latin-derived equine, porcine, etc. Greek also had it*; crystalline is the only English inheritance of this that I can recall.
Kine on the other hand is a double plural: first by umlaut alone, [ku:] becoming [ky:], then picking up the -n plural.
* Hm, apparently the -i- was short here, so perhaps not the same ending after all.
Jun 1, 2011
qroqqa commented on the word puerarchy
Plus archy, Latin for . . . oh, wait. So it'd be a paedarchy or tecnarchy then.
May 27, 2011
qroqqa commented on the word stupiphany
I read this on Wordnik yesterday, and didn't understand what oroboros had taken so long to tumble to. Wished oroboros had included a definition. Looked at it today . . .
May 26, 2011
qroqqa commented on the word omne trinum perfectum
Trium (genitive as in trium virorum) does seem to be an error that has crept in. Older books pretty consistently favour trinum. (Tritium in Google Books is a scanning error for italic trinum.) One source gives ternarium, which would I suppose be synonymous, as in the adverbs trini/terni. Annoyingly, Perseus is now filtered at work so I can't do the proper checking.
May 23, 2011
qroqqa commented on the word toward
I thought BrE was pretty neutral about all the other -ward(s) words, and was surprised to see how much 'forward' preponderates over 'forwards': about 10 in 1 in both Ngrams and the BNC.
Examination of the BNC shows that much of this can be put down to common constructions like 'look forward to', 'put forward' (a proposal etc.), where only the one is possible.
May 20, 2011
qroqqa commented on the word toward
The current AmE preferred form of 'towards', and has been since 1900, as illustrated strikingly on Google Ngram Viewer. Other -ward(s) words don't have anything like so dramatic a history.
In BrE it's always been very much a minor variant, but it may have started to come into regular use in recent years.
May 19, 2011
qroqqa commented on the user kretenack
Full of termites and gradually falling into the large pit next door, but you won't have to worry too long, as it's in line for compulsory acquisition for a freeway next year.
May 16, 2011
qroqqa commented on the word unsigmatic
Not sigmatic, that is not formed with sigma: said of Greek aorists and futures. In the case of aorists also called second aorist.
May 3, 2011
qroqqa commented on the word bakkushan
From English back + German schön "beautiful", weirdly compounded in Japanese. As a (supposedly) foreign word it is written in katakana.
Apr 27, 2011
qroqqa commented on the word caw
Actually Maltese ċaw, pronounced basically the same as the Italian ciao, its origin.
Apr 27, 2011
qroqqa commented on the word kappatic
Formed with a kappa, in the Greek perfect tense. Compare the sigmatic aorist and future.
Apr 1, 2011
qroqqa commented on the word species
It's not plurale tantum, as it readily occurs as both singular and plural in syntax; however, the two forms are the same, like sheep and aircraft.
This problem hadn't occurred to me before, but I agree in theory that singular species's is possible. However, we use apostrophe-only with certain singular words, such as classical names ending in multiple sibilants: Xerxes', Rameses', Jesus'. It's the difficulty of pronouncing the extra syllable that recommends the apostrophe-only, as it would in the narcissus' petals.
Mar 30, 2011
qroqqa commented on the word harrassed
None of the below. ['hærəst], with the vowel of hat, not hair.
Mar 21, 2011
qroqqa commented on the word teratonym
-onym- "name", rather
Mar 21, 2011
qroqqa commented on the word Eden
Actually the Hebrew begins with the consonant `ayin.
Mar 4, 2011
qroqqa commented on the word demolishment
No occurrences in BNC (571 for demolition).
Feb 17, 2011
qroqqa commented on the word Schweinefleischpastete
A more impressive term than pork pie.
Feb 15, 2011
qroqqa commented on the word physiogamy
I wonder could it be unlisted because it's a misspelling of physiognomy? What relation -gamy "marriage" might have to the art of studying the face is unclear to this little black duck.
Jan 28, 2011
qroqqa commented on the list lost-for-word
Is it contrapposto you're after? That at least is close.
Jan 27, 2011
qroqqa commented on the word giviak
Whole auks stuffed into a seal carcass and left to ferment. (How can I be the first to even look this up?)
Jan 25, 2011