Comments by sarra

  • Turkish two-level teapot.

    February 9, 2018

  • This morning I realised that 'now that my hands are clean' can't be used to describe a state in which my hands are clean before I dirty them. Thinking on this.

    July 23, 2013

  • 'like chicken' made me giggle a lot!

    April 29, 2013

  • mysa @ thelocal.se

    July 29, 2012

  • 'The suffix -ome- as used in molecular biology refers to a totality of some sort; it is an example of a "neo-suffix" formed by abstraction from various Greek terms in -ωμα, a sequence that does not form an identifiable suffix in Greek.'

    July 27, 2012

  • as an adjective. bleh.

    April 11, 2012

  • AND I've only just realised it's a double malapropism, because it goes through merci bouquet!

    March 6, 2012

  • I think it's a Metafilter-ism!

    December 22, 2011

  • "Peacefully understated yet positively twinkling, these increasingly popular Shamballa-style bracelets are artistically influenced by the use of beads as a think-peace in some philosophical traditions..."

    December 21, 2011

  • bell hooks in 'Eating the Other' (essay) uses 'work' surrounded by quotes in the sense of 'work it' - use something, profit from something (usually your booty) - this is just delicious. Commodity culture... "works" both the idea that racial difference marks one as Other... (and you'll have to read the article to see what the complement to that idea is, because it's both complex and key, so taking it out of context doesn't really work for me)

    September 12, 2011

  • apparently already had this on my 'miscellanea' list - was it for the reason I wanted to add it now, though? Listed in the sense of being an equivalent part of speech to 'without'. The interesting part is that, like 'less' used in this sense, it (edit: sometimes? My example contradicts this!) seems to imply an active taking-away. Sort of a continuum: without–absent–less. Hmm!

    examples for clarification:

    "absent any sense of morality" (synonym: 'lacking', pronunciation: /əb'sent/, /æb'sent/)

    "£40 less a £10 discount" (synonym: 'minus', prosody de-emphasises the 'less' as it would if it were replaced by 'minus' - try it)

    September 1, 2011

  • "The noble practice of excelling at dinner parties" (a book subtitle, I think). Oh for god's sake!

    September 1, 2011

  • presto change-o - this one so strongly recalls the Beano for me!

    August 28, 2011

  • Oh, god, I am so so so so so glad it's not just me! Look!

    July 17, 2011

  • only as in 'clutch purse'. 'A clutch of eggs' is fine. 'Clutch' though. RUGHGHHRHGH.

    July 17, 2011

  • Thank you! All brilliant! (I reckon if one can feel accidie, one can feel akrasia.)

    May 2, 2011

  • confused!

    April 6, 2011

  • God, not only that, but ice too...

    March 12, 2011

  • ev'rything is satisfactual!

    March 12, 2011

  • is it me you're looking for?

    March 12, 2011

  • fell out of bed

    dragged a comb across my head

    March 12, 2011

  • ouch, that was loud.

    March 12, 2011

  • DAUWN, DAUWN, DAUWN DANAUWN DANAUWM DAANAANAOUWM, DAUWN DANAAANANAUWN DAUWN etc

    March 12, 2011

  • Tunng - Bullets. Too tired to provide a YouTube link.

    March 12, 2011

  • by The Books

    March 11, 2011

  • in twisted song starters: yes, I know it's Ride On Time

    March 11, 2011

  • kept looking at 'aetiology' written on my hand in bad biro and seeing this

    March 2, 2011

  • "chork: mid-15c., now Scottish, 'to make the noise which the feet do when the shoes are full of water.' "

    http://www.etymonline.com/

    February 5, 2011

  • double-knit fabric, usually some sort of polyester mix, likely the same as ponte di roma (but ponti is what's been in the UK fashion press this year)

    December 28, 2010

  • I HATE YOU

    October 25, 2010

  • for me that's sit down, stand up

    October 25, 2010

  • flippase!

    October 25, 2010

  • Oh, god, oro, that's awful and wonderful.

    October 21, 2010

  • Pro, you're so vain never does that to me - I don't know it well enough!

    October 21, 2010

  • This one's the WORST.

    October 18, 2010

  • arf no!

    October 18, 2010

  • Actually, no, waiting for the man. Earwormed when I'm waiting for the post, or a phone call.

    October 18, 2010

  • yeps!

    October 18, 2010

  • Song which quotes the Beatles song in both lyric and tune...

    October 18, 2010

  • Song starters clue (this one might be impossible): it's not the obvious song, but one which makes reference to it. Anyone know it but me?

    October 18, 2010

  • I forgot this is one of the etymological curiosities - wonderful, wonderful, wonderful.

    October 17, 2010

  • I feel like I'm giving a bit too much insight into my life here.

    October 6, 2010

  • homophonous with the phrase in certain BrE dialects for 'oh, look' or 'here you go'. So there's a joke stuck in my head from the radio once-upon-a-time which is set in the Royal household, TV a-being watched.

    *flick*

    *flick*

    *flick*

    ''e'y'are, ERER!'

    October 4, 2010

  • dontcry: on that note, I'll off 'n' post on ER...

    October 4, 2010

  • oh, I didn't even read the comments which went before me!

    October 1, 2010

  • (or this might just be me and I might have to make a separate list)

    October 1, 2010

  • There's a number of things going on here, I think, and only some of my contributions will be the pun sort. Interesting.

    October 1, 2010

  • Sources reckon it's about consciousness and eyeballs. This makes sense, I promise (google it)

    October 1, 2010

  • I'm fascinated by this comment (not this one, the other one), whatever it means.

    October 1, 2010

  • GAAAAKSJGL.ASUMTGKHGLSGJ,.XEJGM;SELWT

    BUSWNTVUXD,L.SASDAHSHAAAAAAGGGGHHHH.

    October 1, 2010

  • Really hoping this exists because science likes terrible puns as much as the rest of us.

    September 30, 2010

  • Started me thinking about 'the living fuck' ('annoys the living fuck out of me', etc. Is the form related to '(beat/thrash/knock/club/scare/verb) the living daylights out of'? Or instead 'the living God'/'the living Christ'? Ah — I'm thinking as I type here, I think it's indeed the last one. So:

    the living Christ : the living fuck :: sweet mother of God : sweet mother of fuck.

    Homework: find a word for the anti-mincing of oaths. (see minced oath)

    (As this is a public site I should point out I'm a linguist and not an Antichrist.)

    September 29, 2010

  • oh god!

    September 29, 2010

  • (I was really hoping this would be a list, you see. Stradgers id dhe dight. Cub fly with be. Dew York Dew York.)

    September 29, 2010

  • I'b god you uder by skid.

    September 29, 2010

  • Is that a hint or a note of number-synchronicity? If a hint, I'm on Forvo you know!

    September 29, 2010

  • a phrase it took me bloody ages to remember. I knew somewhere in my mind there was a phrase somehow complement to 'face like a slapped arse' or 'face like a bulldog licking piss off a nettle', both of which use ugliness as something pretty much thrown onto a face by chance (or misfortune or stupidity…)

    The happy complement? I spent a day some weeks ago with an entirely stupid face on thanks to something-or-other ridiculously joyful (I genuinely now don't recall), and had the infuriatingly persistent tip-of-the-tongue/presque vu* moment as to what the word for it actually was, if indeed there was one. I knew it was something like 'happy as a pig in shit', except for faces — and it hit me just now, as they do. Aha!

    Interestingly there's this distinction (courtesy of Wiktionary):

    The term is ambiguous and may indicate either a genuine broad smile (e.g. smug happiness) or a fake broad smile (e.g. trying to hide or get away with something).
    Smug and fake are two sides, but I've a feeling there might be another — an obliviously happy beaming which'd indicate you might as well be eating shit since you don't know what you're doing, or that you do know and you're still happy about it. Exactly that kind of overwhelming blitheness. I might have mistakenly transferred this meaning over from pig in shit (any thoughts?) but I'm happy enough to've resolved that pesky presque vu.

    exit stage right wearing shit-eating grin

    *this phrase is actually a presque vu for me in itself!

    September 29, 2010

  • gosh, I like this.

    September 6, 2010

  • Sv. 'no subject', lit. 'subject is missing'. With samarkand and ardnamurchan, I'm seeing a pattern in my favourite words. (They have nice colours/feels, too)

    August 6, 2010

  • can't for the life of me remember what this means. doh!

    July 10, 2010

  • bilby - thank you for your comments in particular, as revisiting them now I've found that some of the terms you discussed fit perfectly!

    July 10, 2010

  • what a mess - really sorry about the encoding problems in the description since the site move. If anyone can automagic it back without me having to re-research I'd love to hear from you.

    July 10, 2010

  • heh (this is what we on another site call a 'three post ment' but) I've been in a pub that has 'gulls' and 'buoys' toilets, I think. One of my regulars has 'ducks' and 'drakes'. (I'm a duck!)

    July 10, 2010

  • also, dude, that's a goddamn awesome list of favourites. I got so distracted by the theodolite that I typed 'places' and had to catch myself.

    July 10, 2010

  • I hope I've not disappointed with the progress of ridin' through the desert on a list with no name :)

    July 10, 2010

  • I think this can be used for an object as well as a person. Mostly people, though.

    July 2, 2010

  • Marcus du Sautoy on Radio 4

    June 21, 2010

  • hee, thank you, ruzuzuzuzuzu!

    June 15, 2010

  • (Peter Day on Business Daily)

    June 9, 2010

  • 'Behind and above, the concha is bounded by the anti-helix (e), a curved fold, which commences above the anti-tragus, being separated from that part by a slight depression, passes upward and forward, bifurcates, and then ends in the groove of the helix.'

    (from an 1853 anatomy)

    June 2, 2010

  • UUUUUGGGGHHHHHHHH.

    Also, 'words which don't remotely seem to have the right meaning'.

    June 2, 2010

  • said to someone with one hand on hip

    May 25, 2010

  • :D

    May 20, 2010

  • not a strait (OED's opinion)

    May 8, 2010

  • pronounced to rhyme with 'arm'

    May 6, 2010

  • Life was equal parts filth and play, it seems.

    Which differences are you thinking of, yarb?

    April 30, 2010

  • short for wicked

    April 28, 2010

  • fart

    April 28, 2010

  • the more you fart the better you feel so let's have beans for every meal

    April 28, 2010

  • better than both bagsy and bagsy digsy. Usually used to not be it

    April 28, 2010

  • better than bagsy

    April 28, 2010

  • = 'bags I' = 'dibs'

    can be conjugated e.g. 'I bagsied that!'

    April 28, 2010

  • short for 'boffin' here

    April 28, 2010

  • petty fight

    April 28, 2010

  • should really be 'dis', but I just can't bring myself to spell it that way

    April 28, 2010

  • If Destroyed Still True.

    April 28, 2010

  • oh! In the English Midlands it meant to cry shamefully.

    April 28, 2010

  • ah I messed this up! More phonetically correct version in a bit.

    April 20, 2010

  • syn. of pootle

    March 31, 2010

  • jemandem (god's sake!)

    March 24, 2010

  • found at dict.leo.org as translation for 'Geduld' (patience)

    March 24, 2010

  • Oooooooooooooooh. I think I have some of these.

    March 20, 2010

  • रसमलाई (Hindi), રસમલાઇ (Gujarati), ਰਸ ਮਲਾਈ (Punjabi) (NB I don't trust my spelling!)

    March 17, 2010

  • I've added approximately a zillion, but hearing every one of these additions on the radio always leads to a happy little repetition from me.

    March 12, 2010

  • Ridiculous but true name of a BBC foreign correspondent.

    March 12, 2010

  • yes!

    March 12, 2010

  • If said in exaggerated Highland accent.

    March 12, 2010

  • Oh, dear lord, his full name is Benedict Timothy Carlton Cumberbatch. I might hyperventilate.

    March 12, 2010

  • Oi! He's Benedict Cumberbatch. And very nice in both name and face, too.

    March 12, 2010

  • The man? (The legend?)

    March 12, 2010

  • Good one! I don't see that happening with Netherlands, so that's something to chew on.

    March 12, 2010

  • Ooh, I was going to remove Vatican, but see here (especially the page title): http://www.vatican.va/

    March 12, 2010

  • I don't think they really are though - would you really say 'I'm going on holiday to Solomon Islands'? Maybe one would, I suppose. But 'I've just bought a house in (the) Ukraine' or 'Didier Drogba is the best-loved footballer in/of/who plays for (the) Ivory Coast'.

    March 12, 2010

  • That is, I've not heard Seychelles sans article. Does it happen?

    March 12, 2010

  • They're plural - I'll add an exception (like Bahamas, Netherlands, Maldives)

    March 12, 2010

  • before I learnt its metaphorical meaning, this is what 'rubicon' meant to me, and nothing more:

    March 1, 2010

  • cob as in round bread roll. A roll or barm etc elsewhere in the country.

    February 26, 2010

  • or tara, though that never looks right written down. Has the emphasis on the 'ra', more or less, and means 'byee!'

    February 26, 2010

  • 'the outdoor' is the offy, or off-license.

    February 26, 2010

  • The passage or alley between two terraced houses. In Sheffield it's a gennel.

    February 26, 2010

  • all fixed, bilby love!

    February 18, 2010

  • उपेक्षा (Sanskrit)

    note to self: क ka plus ष ṣa makes क्ष kṣa, a lovely ligature!

    February 18, 2010

  • ध्यान (Sanskrit)

    February 18, 2010

  • संसार (Sanskrit)

    February 18, 2010

  • शून्यता (Sanskrit)

    February 18, 2010

  • वेदना (Sanskrit and Pāli)

    February 18, 2010

  • oh no! :(

    February 18, 2010

  • a soapstone

    February 15, 2010

  • How industrious is Satan served. I was formerly one of his active undertemptors and had my influence been equal to my wishes I would have carried all the human race with me. A common drunkard or profligate is a petty sinner to what I was.

    —John Newton, 1778

    February 11, 2010

  • synonymous with 'I bet' at the end of a sentence ('lives with his mum, I shouldn't wonder') - where the sentence stress is on the word immediately preceding the 'I'

    January 13, 2010

  • How did I forget Man?!

    January 11, 2010

  • heh!

    January 11, 2010

  • to give mushycuddlekisses to a small child

    January 11, 2010

  • My family used to sing that to me while munching me to death.

    January 11, 2010

  • or 'words I forgot to list when I first encountered them'

    January 8, 2010

  • 'but her boat is still moored at its usual berth' (Radio 4 news)

    December 20, 2009

  • Welsh phrase. To have a bell in every tooth = be a loudmouth.

    December 6, 2009

  • file under 'words I had completely the wrong idea about for years upon years' (along with prodigal, etc)

    November 29, 2009

  • Edward Elgar tried, at 43, to take up the trombone, but wasn't very good at it:

    'He didn’t do it very well and often played a note higher or lower than the one he wanted ... and as he swore every time that happened I got into such a state of hysterics that I didn’t know what to do.

    Then he turned on me: 'How can you expect me to play this dodgasted thing if you laugh?''

    Daily Telegraph article

    November 26, 2009

  • ♪♫ Hot tamales and they're red hot! Yes, she's got 'em for sale... ♫♪ (Robert Johnson)

    November 24, 2009

  • The remaining broken characters (a small percentage) will most likely remain broken, an unfortunate side effect of my having been sloppy with Wordie's db in the early days.

    Does this go too for list descriptions? As I've a recent one that's broken I don't know whether this is an oversight, a to-do or a DB effect that's going to stick around. Thank you for doing all you can to get things up and running already!

    November 12, 2009

  • Comments on my profile used to have their encoding skewed, but that's been fixed now - hope that means the rest of the text will be fixed incrementally.

    November 12, 2009

  • Also, recently looked up: vajayjay and well-laid. Should I be posting this on synchronicity? ;)

    November 12, 2009

  • oh phew! I couldn't find the comments or lists at all - now I can. Thank goodness not as much has been lost as I thought.

    November 12, 2009

  • 'When a noun or an adjective explaining or modifying the subject is used to complete the predicate, it is called an attribute complement. John Smith is an author. The apple is sweet. Verbs that require attribute complements are called copulative verbs…'

    — Henry Wyman Holmes, Composition and Rhetoric, p340

    November 2, 2009

  • 'The object also may need added words to complete the meaning of the predicate. Such words are called objective complements. They elected Henry captain. He painted the house white.'

    — Henry Wyman Holmes, Composition and Rhetoric, p340

    November 2, 2009

  • ?

    October 25, 2009

  • hee!

    October 21, 2009

  • A ligature, like æ. In Dutch crossword puzzles you get only one square for an ij.

    October 20, 2009

  • sal'fish and

    October 20, 2009

  • GODDAMN THIS. FIX?

    October 20, 2009

  • without so much as a…

    OED (oddly, unhyphenated): 'An expression of apology for not having asked permission; the asking of permission.'

    October 20, 2009

  • e (Vietnamese): to fear.

    October 20, 2009

  • You know 'quartile' and 'percentile', right? 'Tertile' is analogous (if that helps).

    October 16, 2009

  • Indonesian: guard/watchman (v rough idea)

    September 28, 2009

  • This is the one that people always shout at me whenever I mention the uke - if not that, then either 'Leaning on a Lamppost' or 'With my little ukulele in my hand' or, in non-Formby shocker, 'Ukulele Lady'...

    September 22, 2009

  • First recorded by the California Ramblers in 1925, my file says.

    September 22, 2009

  • Singing 'Girlfriend in a Coma' to the tune of this one is pure joy.

    September 22, 2009

  • So good they named him twice?

    September 22, 2009

  • Perfectly, terribly, often unbearably patronising phrase, such that I don't quite believe it's ever possible to utter it innocently.

    September 22, 2009

  • After years of scowling at the fact that no-one served an all-day breakfast after approx. 11.30 in the morning, I eventually realised that it's so called as it's meant to last you all day.

    You can also get it in a tin. It's probably best if you don't ask.

    September 18, 2009

  • ?

    September 8, 2009

  • adj. meaning 'big'

    September 8, 2009

  • Name for an enormous number of grasses commonly used for lawns. My favourite is creeping bent, though upland bent is a close second.

    September 4, 2009

  • 'everyone' can be read as singular or plural. Like 'lego'. Mass noun or count noun. So you can have it both ways - everyone (the mass) can add themselves, or everyone (each component person) can add him/her/themself.

    I don't believe in the word 'themself'. We don't have 'oneself' in that context, I reckon, because 'oneself' already has a first-person meaning and can't handle a third-person one on top of that.

    August 30, 2009

  • Or any God-free recruitment drive as well, actually.

    August 27, 2009

  • God botherers out on on their usual recruitment drive.

    August 27, 2009

  • 'Is this custom or term British?' shows how it's grammatical.

    Never heard of them though.

    August 27, 2009

  • Make one up? Damn. I was going to be a sly cad and add 'The The' and 'Duran Duran' (and their covers band, 'Duran Duran Duran')

    August 27, 2009

  • yes - but in a different country :)

    August 23, 2009

  • Like this one.

    August 22, 2009

  • Have just noticed first that I like this word quite a bit more than I thought I did; second, that the reason is it's linked in form and so in feeling with words like 'elegant'.

    August 20, 2009

  • Not allowed!

    August 18, 2009

  • here's why there's nothing even close to it in English English, apart from pharynx: http://forvo.com/word/larynx

    August 18, 2009

  • Dutch for 'remaindered book'

    July 30, 2009

  • "a grass that grows wild around Marrakech"

    July 28, 2009

  • The banyan's Ficus benghalensis, c_b.

    The Banyan tree is named after "banians" or Hindu traders who carryout their business under the tree. (source)

    July 28, 2009

  • They shall not pass, used internationally as an anti-fascist slogan. More info on origins and usage.

    July 21, 2009

  • Gosh, a word I haven't heard for years and now found I newly dislike. The 'ung' makes it sound like the smell of cannabis.

    Also, Google ad for flatulence-filtering underwear? Such wonders are there in the world...

    July 20, 2009

  • Soleirolia soleirolii, plant of the nettle family, also known as baby's tears, angel's tears, peace-in-the-home, pollyanna vine, mother of thousands, the Corsican curse, and Irish moss.

    July 20, 2009

  • NOT "LITERY". The number of times I've heard this on the radio, out of the mouths of otherwise well-spoken individuals. For shame.

    July 20, 2009

  • not bloody pronounced "unpresidented"

    July 20, 2009

  • properly síneadh fada: the acute accent as used in Irish

    July 3, 2009

  • beautiful WordNet definition

    July 1, 2009

  • 'That is so' (''appen it is'). Yorkshire dialect.

    June 22, 2009

  • "Great, someone else is doing it."

    The joke? Have a look at the first letter of each word...

    June 18, 2009

  • I'm totally puzzled as to how I actually knew that, now.

    June 18, 2009

  • tabatas: Tabata intervals, named after the head of the team who devised them. http://www.rosstraining.com/articles/tabataintervals.html

    June 17, 2009

  • hehehe, I like that, pro.

    June 16, 2009

  • Fourth sneeze means you have a cold!

    June 16, 2009

  • ...third sneeze means disparagement. Then yottsu-ijo wa kaze no moto...

    June 16, 2009

  • ...two sneezes for criticism. Then san-kenashi...

    June 16, 2009

  • One sneeze for praise. Then ni-kusashi...

    June 16, 2009

  • Ah, I have this transliterated differently at afiyat bashe.

    June 16, 2009

  • The response to being blessed for a sneeze in Iran. See afiyat bashe.

    June 16, 2009

  • 'I wish you good health', said after a sneeze. The response? Elahi shokr, 'Thank God for my health!'

    'In Iran one sneeze is bad luck but a second sneeze clears the slate and everyone is relieved. So, like seeing magpies!'

    June 16, 2009

  • "la concentration de la population urbaine dans les villes les plus importantes d'un pays"

    June 15, 2009

  • Rastafarian/Jamaican. Brothers. Kinship or peer bonds.

    June 14, 2009

  • goodness, unlisted. UK slang. Blood, as in bredren, as in mate. Sounds more like bled. Phoneticise our vowel please researchers. (Not you.)

    June 14, 2009

  • No, eeeeecht. It's a fabulous German word that I think I like best to translate as "proper". "Das ist echt Scheiße" = "That's proper shite." as in "a well and truly awful situation".

    Current UK slang would translate it as "well", viz. "das ist echt gut" = "that's well good" (innit blud).

    June 14, 2009

  • but I do remember this one! I wonder if one could describe it as a kind of subjunctive? I haven't got a clue, it's 3.30am. But "falls x" can be translated as "should x (be the case, etc.)"

    NB context of this comment is strictly German

    June 14, 2009

  • another one I don't remember at all in any meaningful, rootsy way — how? Surely in four years of German learning I must have used it quite enough.

    June 14, 2009

  • oddly, one of the all-purpose words that has vanished entirely from my reflexive language centre (see some of the other words in this list). a clutch of explanation from dict.leo.org

    June 14, 2009

  • file under: German words that crop up when I try to speak another language. Means "but/just/simply/merely". I miss this word in French with a mighty passion.

    June 14, 2009

  • file under: German words that crop up when I try to speak another language. Means "now".

    June 14, 2009

  • file under: German words that crop up when I try to speak another language. Means "week".

    June 14, 2009

  • file under: German words that crop up when I try to speak another language. is a wonderful all-purpose word, although the French donc may have taken its place recently.

    June 14, 2009

  • file under: German words that crop up when I try to speak another language. Means "hours".

    June 14, 2009

  • file under: German words that crop up when I try to speak another language. Means "one and a half".

    June 14, 2009

  • Must be said with the correct inflection: 'Fuck me!' meaning 'Gosh, what a surprise!'.

    June 10, 2009

  • German equivalent of the Czech 'to je pro mne španělská vesnice', or 'I'm sorry, I haven't a clue'. Lit. 'they're Bohemian villages to me'.

    June 10, 2009

  • 'I'm sorry, I haven't a clue' in Czech. Lit. 'it's just a Spanish village to me'.

    June 10, 2009

  • 'Thanks be to God!'

    Response to a sneeze in Arabic.

    June 8, 2009

  • The response to a sneeze in Madagascar. Means 'alive!'.

    June 8, 2009

  • Chicken-yawn comes before cock-crow. It's that early, you see.

    June 5, 2009

  • discussion sur 'rebelot(t)e'

    May 31, 2009

  • God yes. Hurrah for you!

    May 25, 2009

  • un nom tel superb!

    May 23, 2009

  • Spoke too soon… four against five is tricky.

    May 23, 2009

  • I think I have. And no, I'm not. I can only do in kit terms, but I'm proud of learning two-against-three, three-against-four and four-against-five polyrhythms.

    May 23, 2009

  • also related to isorhythms

    May 22, 2009

  • 'fixed' words, innit? ;)

    May 4, 2009

  • I like the word, and I do use it. Hallo too, rolig!

    May 4, 2009

  • Hallo! More specific, indeed. Some homonyms like bank have distinct meanings in the English we speak, but in the Oxford English Dictionary there's a long long note on the origins of bank-the-place-where-we-keep-money, which ends 'The word is thus ultimately identical with BENCH and BANK2, and cognate with BANK1.'

    May 3, 2009

  • whimsical measure of speed

    April 18, 2009

  • (Fr.) to read something at one's leisure, lit. with rested head

    April 18, 2009

  • mundi tuesdi wensdi thursdi freyedi satdi sundi. But I was actually thinking of 'wed'nsday', whether -day or -di.

    April 16, 2009

  • note to self

    April 14, 2009

  • Love your 'also on'. Gave me a smiling pleased giggle.

    April 11, 2009

  • Thank you! I noticed when I was on 1,999 and thought "ooh" but didn't pay any attention to my 2,000th - so I'm not sure which it was. I added a couple of thousand-related words as my 1,000th and 1,001st.

    Ah, hold on, I can work it out… justiciable! The thousandth was millenary. (Followed by mother of thousands)

    April 11, 2009

  • ow ow my brain ow.

    April 10, 2009

  • I'm no Christian, but why/what/how on God's green earth…? is too good a phrase to miss out on.

    April 5, 2009

  • OED: 'obs. derivative form of EARWIG; cf. OE. eárwicasga and mod. Suffolk dial. arrawiggle, and see WIGGLE v.'

    Just brilliant.

    March 27, 2009

  • Not sure how accurate this is, but a preliminary reference: http://www.organicearrings.com/Materials_Info___Sources.html

    March 17, 2009

  • Not sure how accurate this is, but a preliminary reference: http://www.organicearrings.com/Materials_Info___Sources.html

    March 17, 2009

  • er stRategy?

    March 12, 2009

  • "rubbish"

    March 4, 2009

  • "to buff is to remove graffiti"

    March 4, 2009

  • When we were at 6th form we used to refer to our boyfriends as our birds. (from a talkboard — surprised and pleased me)

    March 3, 2009

  • I've not seen it used in this way before, but it's just perfect:

    I want a Netbook and having been looking at different ones for a few days, but am now snow-blind from all the reviews.

    (also snowblind)

    February 27, 2009

  • See stimulus package. Yes.

    February 27, 2009

  • “What do you think of the stimulus package that President Obama is ramming through Congress at the moment?” — somewhere on the BBC World Service the other week

    February 27, 2009

  • A lot of the Wordie links on the RSS feed seem to be to lists which don't exist? e.g.:

    beavers build dams -> http://wordie.org/lists/198837

    where do you go to my lovely -> http://wordie.org/lists/129220

    unbirdly -> http://wordie.org/lists/198568

    etc.

    February 19, 2009

  • Clearing through my father's papers after he died, I found his photo folder. A real one, made of battered shagreen. In it was a picture of his long-dead brother; one of his father as a young man; one of his wife as a 13-year-old girl with her mother and sister. Pictures of the dead. Pictures of people who could not be seen in reality, ever again, kept private in his desk drawer.

    Michael Bywater in the Independent

    February 13, 2009

  • Click the little "OE" icon above and be enlightened!

    February 4, 2009

  • Swedish, "the language of honour and of heroes". Comes from an Esaias Tegnérs poem of 1817 & is used nowadays with a smile of slight irony, I think.

    February 2, 2009

  • skip, you missed the deliberate irony in that headline!

    I am slightly miffed that no-one's reported on my bestickering, long ago, an apostropheless St Philip's Place (also Birmingham). You heard it here first. Or last.

    February 2, 2009

  • borrowed definition: "riding so hard that your pulling on the bars results in your sitting right on the tip of the saddle. Which would have a rivet on it if it were a proper leather one."

    January 27, 2009

  • o_O

    January 25, 2009

  • kiitos bilby!

    January 24, 2009

  • Take the figure in Kennedy’s "ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country�? and "we must never negotiate out of fear, but we must never fear to negotiate." The classical rhetoricians called it antimetabole, though modern speechwriters prefer to refer to it as the reversible raincoat.

    Geoff Nunberg at Language Log

    January 24, 2009

  • I am becolden. *snuiven, kuchen*

    January 24, 2009

  • THE FLU

    January 24, 2009

  • i have a cold. :(

    (You can also say "minussa on nuha", lit. "in me there is a cold")

    January 24, 2009

  • January 24, 2009

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