rolig has looked up 2377 words, created 89 lists, listed 3747 words, written 3008 comments, added 57 tags, and loved 6 words.
Comments by rolig
Comments for rolig
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Oy, count-nouning, Noice.
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Thanks for mirror rim - nice!
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Just stopping by to say you're awesome.
You're awesome. -
Thank you!
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Got the message in my email. You can remove the comment now if you want. Thanks.
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Hi rolig, how can I contact you privately?
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You're fun. :-)
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Hi Rolig --- want to try again? John and Tony edited your list title.
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Hi rolig -- any luck getting word pages to load yet?
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We miss you!
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It was a little easier to do certain things on Wordie--but there are lots of functions here that I'd have wished for there too. If you want to suggest something, we generally post questions/suggestions/bitching/complaining/all-purpose-comments at feedback.
Hope you stick around. :-) -
Yes, rolig -- we miss your wit and rigor. Not to mention the Slovenian updates!
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Nice to see you stopping by, rolig. :-)
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You cannot escape the charge that you have previously engaged in the amazing pastime that is IDENTIFY THE WORDIE.
You are therefore prime target material for inviting to IDENTIFY THE WORDIENIK.
The whole of the bit of Wordnik that joins in on this would be truly honoured should you participate this time round.
Easily find the right page right now because it is currently the most commented on list shown on the Community page. -
"Rolig has added 72 lists containing 3,480 words, 56 comments, 56 tags, 50 favorites, and 2 pronunciations."
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Rolig sneaked in a post a few days ago. :-)
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I miss rolig.
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Rolig! You're back! (Or are you?)
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I was just reading zelena zelena and thinking about how much I appreciate your comments - especially the ones about etymology. Thank you!
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rolig! I miss you!
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Me too! Funny, Pro, I was just coming here to do the same.
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I just wanted to say hi.
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Rolig, just wanted to let you know that there are indeed situations in which moving from certain parts of the site to other parts of the site logs you out. Engineers are working on it. The rest of us are putting wood on the fire.
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I'm unable to hear your pronunciations! I can play the audio files, but they all come across as a few seconds of silence (or white noise). Are you previewing them before saving, just to make sure your microphone's working?
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I hope you'll pronounce some words and phrases in Slovene.
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Thanks for getting back to me on the Czech no/ano question. I was curious because I think Latvian (a Balto-Slavic language) has a word spelled "no," which means something more like "of" or "from."
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Hi rolig, wanted to apologize for the character encoding issues that have appeared on some of your lists. It's my doing--the Wordie database was kind of a mess after a few years not always careful noodling. We did the best we could moving things over, but some characters got a bit mangled.
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Hello helpful rolig,
I had been asking Milosrdenstvi about the etymology of the Czech no/ano, but Milosrdenstvi said that would be probably more up your alley. Any suggestions?
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Thanks for offering to pack her alpaca. That's a big help.
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It would make me extremely happy to come to Slovenia someday. In that case, I will bring some home-made fufluns.
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wow thaz cool
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WOW, crasy comments dude!
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Thank you; a labour of love.
I find your lists and comments unique and noteworthy.
It's hard to know what's a goodly time to reach comment or word quantities here...there's a bizarre absence of date-stamping on Wordie. Does anyone know why? -
Thanks, Pro! I wasn't really paying attention. I have no idea when I hit my fourth chiliad.
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3008 words, rolig! Congratulations! I can't see your recent activity, what's your 3000th entry?
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What does "23" mean? As in "23 squidoo!"
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done.
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Thank you. I don't know why fate hadn't led me to Wordie (and kimchi) earlier.
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I'm a Bosno, actually, though it's always tricky; half the time I tell people Yugoslavian just because that's my sense of things.
I take it you're Slovenian? -
Thank you :) Im still trying to get the whole concept of Wordie :P
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Norsk? :P
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The distinction between 'dis-' and plural '-s' is that the former is derivational, the latter inflectional. The non-existence of a free noun *'scissor' doesn't mean that the bound base 'scissor' can't be used in various ways: by conversion it can be used as a verb; it can take plural endings to become a free noun; and it can be used as a noun in attributive function ('scissor parts').
It's a bit difficult to see because in English bases almost always have free existence: unlike in Latin or Greek where there's no such thing as simply the 'word for' X, but rather a bound base with obligatory complex inflexion. -
I thought of "interstice" in terms of something "standing", but it has a sense of "liminality" also. Thanks for the suggestion.
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On *scissor, *underpant, *hijink—sorry, I only saw this yesterday—I've had a look through a couple of books and the closest I can find is the CGEL term bound base. They distinguish bases from affixes, so 'lighthouses' contains bases 'light' and 'house', and 'disperse' and 'discombobulate' contain bound bases, ones that can't exist as words once the affix 'dis' is removed. Some pluralia tantum bound bases have some marginal independent (or loosely-bound) existence in attributive constructions, as in 'trouser leg', 'scissor blade'.
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Thanks for your help, rolig
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Oh, good point! I probably should have spelled it with an apostrophe. I created a new entry for b'icicle. Much funnier! Thanks!
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Oh, good point! I probably should have spelled it with an apostrophe. I created a new entry for b'icicle. Much funnier! Thanks!
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*32-tooth smile*
Phantom Limb is waiting for you. -
Witajcže K'nam, I'm a 5th generation Texan whose family came from Reichswald Hoyerswerda Germany in 1854. Unfortunately I know nothing about either Sorbian dialect/language.
I'm only really able to answer anything about my Sorbian ancestors from right at and after the time they left Lusatia Germany.
rolig commented on the word erinaceus
The adjective exists, only it is spelled differently: erinaceous. Feel free to use this word, spelled correctly with the adjectival -ous suffix, to describe any hedgehoggy acquaintances you may have.
May 21, 2012
rolig commented on the word sublime
Outstanding! Thank you, Ruzuzu, for this.
*feeling a little sad, and a little curmudgeonly about the fact that modern dictionaries don't make references like "the leap of Curtius into the chasm, or the death of the martyr Stephen". Today it's all about quantifiable information with little thought to knowledge and none to wisdom.*
May 19, 2012
rolig commented on the word cloud-built
Interesting, mtc. Baratynsky's "wondrous city" has a very different connotation than "Cloud Cuckoo Land", but the latter certainly belongs on my states-of-mind-from-absurdistan-to-zion list.
Ruzuzu, Baratynsky and I go way back. I was introduced to him by Pushkin and Nabokov, with an added endorsement from Brodsky.
May 15, 2012
rolig commented on the word Cloud Cuckoo Land
Originally mentioned by a character in Aristophanes' play The Birds.
May 15, 2012
rolig commented on the word cloud-built
I love the Century Dictionary.
Btw, in my real life I am translating the poems of the Russian poet Yevgeny Baratynsky. Here is one that seems appropriate:
Now and then a wondrous city
from floating clouds will coalesce,
but the wind need only touch it,
and it’s gone without a trace.
Thus the momentary inventions
of poetic fantasy
vanish at the merest breath of
meaningless activity.
(1829)
Translated by Rawley Grau
May 15, 2012
rolig commented on the word MacGuffin
Coined by none other than Alfred Hitchcock. I placed this on my bywords list (for now at least) because this sounds like a person's name; presumably the MacGuffin in movie could be an (unnamed) character.
Feb 24, 2012
rolig commented on the user RamonaF
As someone who doesn't play violent role-playing video games I am not interested in having my images taken anywhere near WOW, thank you. And if I want any jism-layered group montages (especially of the fraternity variety), I know a few select websites where to find them.
And by the way, SPAM ALERT!!!!
Feb 16, 2012
rolig commented on the word Pied Piper
I think the Piper is called "pied" because he wears clothes made of different colored patches, like a harlequin.
Feb 5, 2012
rolig commented on the word auroch
Sadly, in his notes to Lolita (The Annotated Lolita), the otherwise seemingly erudite Alfred Appel Jr. believes that "auroch" is the singular of "aurochs", a word Nabokov uses in the all-important penultimate sentence of the novel.
Feb 5, 2012
rolig commented on the word turpid
"I loved you. I was a pentapod monster, but I loved you. I was despicable and brutal, and turpid, and everything, mais je t'amais, je t'amais!"
Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita, ch. 32.
Feb 5, 2012
rolig commented on the word pornography
"In modern times the term 'pornography' connotes mediocrity, commercialism, and certain strict rules of narration. Obscenity must be mated with banality because every kind of aesthetic enjoyment has to be entirely replaced by simple sexual stimulation which demands the traditional word for direct action on the patient. … Thus, in pornographic novels, action has to be limited to the copulation of clichés. Style, structure, imagery should never distract the reader from his tepid lust."
— Vladimir Nabokov, "On a Book Entitled Lolita"
Feb 5, 2012
rolig commented on the word klarnica
2010, kakovostno, suho, Vipavska dolina, Mansus - družinsko posestvo Makovec, Brje na Vipavskem 79, SI-5263 Dobravlje
Jan 29, 2012
rolig commented on the word pinela
A dry white wine indigenous to the Vipava valley in Slovenia (according to the Slovene Wikipedia, for what it's worth, this variety was first mentioned in 1324). The excellent bottle I tried (2006 vintage) came from the Sončni škol cellar in Renče.
Jan 29, 2012
rolig commented on the word hryvnya
The difference between the spellings hryvnia and hryvnya for the Ukrainian гривня is one of English transliteration, specifically how to transliterate the Ukrainian Cyrillic letter я. In both transliterations the letter before the "a" does not represent a separate syllable, but only the softening (palatalization) of the "n". Other possible renderings would be "hryvnja", "hryvňa", "hryvn'a", and "hryvña", since the letter "j", the caron, the apostrophe, and the tilde are all conventional ways (in separate systems) of indicating such palatalization. Curiously, the Oxford American Dictionary gives "hryvna" as its main headword (despite indicating the iotization of the a in its pronunciation guide), with "hryvnia" as an "also". (I can understand why it might make sense to reserve the y-transliteration for the Ukrainian vowel "y"/"и", though the same argument can be made for preserving "i" for the Ukrainian vowel "i".)
LesHerasymchuk is right, though, about the history of the Ukrainian language: both Ukrainian and Russian (as well as Belorusian) come from Old East Slavic (the language of the medieval state known as Kievan Rus); Ukrainian does not come from Russian. In terms of continuity, it is more accurate to say that Russian comes from Old Ukrainian (though linguists don't usually use that anachronistic term, preferring instead "Old East Slavic"). And it is also true that Russian was profoundly influenced by Church Slavonic, a by-product of Old Bulgaro-Macedonian (a South Slavic language). I don't know whether modern Ukrainian has been as deeply influenced by Church Slavonic.
Jan 21, 2012
rolig commented on the word Vegetable Lamb of Tartary
Which is the correctly cased form, yarb? I would guess the lowercase barometz, since this is the name of a type of (mythical) entity (like unicorn), not a personal name (like Pegasus).
Jan 21, 2012
rolig commented on the list ada-or-ardor-vladmir-nabokov
Well, since it's Nabokov, there could well be a Slavic solution. In Slovene the verb gugati means "to rock"; a gugalnik is a rocking chair, while a gugalnica is a swing. The Russian word for "to rock or swing" is different (качаться / kachat'sya), but I wondered anyway if there was a cognate. It turns out that Dahl's mid-19th-c. dictionary includes the word гугала / gugala (from a northern Russian dialect) which means "swing" (noun) and, indeed, the verb гугаться / gugat'sya, "to swing". So I would suggest that Nabokov playfully Englished this as "google", meaning something like "sway back and forth".
Jan 20, 2012
rolig commented on the list stuffie-you-haven-t-lived
Jenn, I love the list but don't understand the title: "You haven't lived unitl you've had…" Is that it? Am I missing something idiomatic?
Jan 16, 2012
rolig commented on the word -trix
Ah, Ru! This -trix is for dames.
Jan 12, 2012
rolig commented on the word erazma
Erazma / Erasma (2004– ), a.k.a. Razmica, Razmička, Razma-Taz, Tazma-Raz, Tazma, Razi, or just Raz.
Jan 12, 2012
rolig commented on the word aglaja
Aglaja / Aglaia (2004– ), a.k.a. Glajca, Glajko, Glajkica, Glajka, Glajči, Glajči-Glu, or just Glaj.
Jan 12, 2012
rolig commented on the word nastasya
My beautiful, beloved, sweet-spirited, wise and deeply mourned feline companion Nastasya / Настасья (1986–2003), a.k.a. Nastenka, Nastechka, Nastka, Nastusya, Nusya, Nuska, Nus / Настенька, Настечка, Настка, Настусья, Нусья, Нуська, Нусь, or more formally, Anastasia / Анастасия.
Jan 12, 2012
rolig commented on the word gam
A curious choice as a collective for an order of gamless mammals!
Jan 11, 2012
rolig commented on the word Maecenas
In Russian and Slovene and, I expect, many other languages this name has become a common noun referring to a patron of the arts, especially someone who supports a particular artist, writer, or art institution.
Jan 5, 2012
rolig commented on the word conventional implicature
In a statement, this is "a commitment to an extra message that (metaphorically speaking) comes through on a second channel, without adding anything to the factual content of what is said." –Geoffrey K. Pullum, "A wee conventional implicature", Language Log, http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3650#more-3650
Pullum gives the examples of "damn" in such statements as "Somebody stole my damn guitar" and "wee" in Scottish usage: "I'll just be going off for a wee cup o' tea":
"It seems to me that wee has a similar syntactic privilege of occurrence — you can just pick a salient noun at random and stick wee on that — but the semantic contribution is just an optimistic and comforting attitudinal overtone: rather than the vague impression that the speaker is pissed at the situation, which is what damn conveys, wee supplies a vague impression that the speaker is being helpful and optimistic and that things are going to be just fine."
Dec 25, 2011
rolig commented on the word notional
This is a word I've been encountering recently -- it feels academically faddish -- in the sense of "ideological" or perhaps simply "purported": In an article in the New York Times Book Review on the (obviously) important role of the Bible in Western literature, the author, referring to Faulkner and Dostoevsky, writes: "The failure of the notionally Christian worlds of Russia and Mississippi to be in any way sufficient to the occasion of Christ among them would be a true report always and everywhere." (Marilynne Robinson, "The Book of Books: What Literature Owes the Bible," NYT Sunday Book Review, 22 Dec. 2011)
Dec 25, 2011
rolig commented on the word apricity
Thanks, ru! But Nancy's citation there simply confirms my point. Ammon Shea (the guy who read the OED), writes about the word: "The OED does not give any citation for its use except for Henry Cockeram's 1623 English Dictionarie." This is a white elephant of a word, a verbal knick-knack: it sits on the shelf and people say, "Oh, how pretty!" but nobody really knows what to do with it except display it as a pretty word. And when you do try to use it (right now, a certain @impropaganda has Tweeted®, "Hope the weather holds for some beautiful southern apricity!") you end up sounding precious, arch, or pompous.
Dec 22, 2011
rolig commented on the word apricity
The fact that all of the examples, and even the Tweets®, merely cite this word and do not use it make me wonder if it is in fact a word that people say (or more likely, write). This seems more like a museum piece than an "actual word".
Dec 21, 2011
rolig commented on the list king-in-uruk
Ah, yes, the world's first story was also its first same-sex love story.
Dec 21, 2011
rolig commented on the word grocery
This is astonishing. I was born and grew up in Baltimore, where I lived for some 30-odd years, and I never noticed that anyone said "groshery".
Dec 21, 2011
rolig commented on the word stood god
A rhyme in the hymn "O God, Our Help in Ages Past".
Dec 21, 2011
rolig commented on the word gone sun
A rhyme in "O God, Our Help in Ages Past".
Dec 21, 2011
rolig commented on the word blessing ceasing
A rhyme in "Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing".
Dec 21, 2011
rolig commented on the word come home
A rhyme in "Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing", "O God, Our Help in Ages Past" and many other hymns.
Dec 21, 2011
rolig commented on the word ebenezer pleasure
A rhyme in "Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing".
Dec 21, 2011
rolig commented on the word ebenezer-pleasure
From "Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing".
Dec 21, 2011
rolig commented on the word blessing-ceasing
From "Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing".
Dec 21, 2011
rolig commented on the word come-home
From "Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing" (and many other hymns).
Dec 21, 2011
rolig commented on the word homeschooling
It occurred to me today that this is a retronym, which only appeared once it became standard practice to send young children out of the home to receive a primary education. Until the 19th century, or thereabouts, young children, if they received any education at all, were educated at home.
Dec 18, 2011
rolig commented on the word Never let a time traveler have his picture taken with you if you don't know why he's smiling.
Spooky.
*Disappointed there are no visuals.*
Dec 16, 2011
rolig commented on the word pointing at the moon
Thanks, leaden! What beautiful work this is! So I suppose one message in the image is that happiness points the way to enlightenment but is not enlightenment.
Dec 16, 2011
rolig commented on the word pi-stachio
I suppose this is a much larger version of the µ-stachio (mu-stachio)?
Dec 15, 2011
rolig commented on the word needless needles
In her view, acupuncture was little better than quackery; "needless needles" she called it.
Dec 14, 2011
rolig commented on the word pointing at the moon
This is a wonderful image! Very Zen. Do you know anything about where it comes from?
Dec 14, 2011
rolig commented on the word union
the opposite of ion.
Dec 9, 2011
rolig commented on the word wears
I could imagine "wear" being used as a count noun in a situation where someone was comparing the durability of different items (their various "wears" after a year of use, for instance), but it's hardly elegant English. It is simply a matter of count-nouning the already existent deverbal noun "wear".
Dec 7, 2011
rolig commented on the word giant weta
Apparently, one of these, recently found on Little Barrier Island in New Zealand by Mark Moffatt, is the biggest insect in the world. Click on the following link (if you dare), for more:
http://gizmodo.com/5864195/the-worlds-biggest-insect-is-so-freaking-huge-it-can-eat-a-carrot
Dec 3, 2011
rolig commented on the word semiotically nostalgic
me too.
Dec 1, 2011
rolig commented on the word pyroscaphe
An early word for a steamship.
Dec 1, 2011
rolig commented on the list dyslexic-s-delight
Wonderful!
A simple but evocative (meta-)palindrome is mirror rim.
Dec 1, 2011
rolig commented on the word spongiform pustule of Kogoj
Apparently, this was named after the Croatian Dr. Franjo Kogoj, of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Zagreb.
I suppose in certain circles it's a wonderful thing to have a pustule named after you.
Dec 1, 2011