Seldom-Used Words

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Trysail, I have never heard of that one before, either, and I wonder how many readers here have. Thanks for adding it. how about this one;

pandowdy - noun a deep dish apple dessert spiced, sweetened with sugar, molasses, or maple syrup, and covered with a rich crust
 
...

panoply - noun 1.a. a full suit of armor b. ceremonial attire 2. something forming a protective covering 3.a. a magnificent or impressive display b. a display of all appropriate appurtenances

I missed commenting on this.

There are several Tudor panoplies on display in the Tower of London, including a figure of Henry VIII on horseback with his ceremonial armour for himself AND the horse. That was a panoply. By Henry VIII's time full armour was for display only, not for use.

Possessing a full panoply of armour in Tudor times was conspicuous consumption, like owning a very expensive imported sports car would be today.

In earlier centuries, when armour was practical on the battlefield, noblemen and monarchs would have a display panoply of armour, and a plainer suit for actual use in war. The cost was enormous. Adjusted for modern day values, a simple panoply intended for war would cost the equivalent of a large four-bedroom house. The display armour would be double that, about 500,000 to 750,000 pounds Sterling - say a million US dollars.

At one battle when the English met the Scots, it was said that one English knight carried more value on his body than ten Scots farms.

Panoplies could also include retainers dressed in your livery. If you travelled with say fifty retainers finely dressed in your colours, wearing your badge or miniature coat of arms, your panoply was making a strong statement about your status.

Several English monarchs passed sumptuary laws regulating who could wear what materials or styles of clothing. Those laws were intended to stop the middle classes out-panopling the nobility with conspicuous consumption. The repeated introduction of those laws showed that the attempt to stop people apeing their betters failed miserably.

It is still true today. High-earning sportsmen tend to have a modern equivalent of a panoply, but their panoply is made up of expensive houses, expensive cars, and sometimes trophy women...
 
Og, I am so glad you went back. It is a wonderful word and I hope to use it properly one of these days. Thanks for the history of the word, it really helps to retain it for future use.

I could not pass this one by, even though everyone is familiar with the word;

Pandora - noun a woman given a box by Zeus from which all human ills escaped when she opened it
 
Trysail, I have never heard of that one before, either, and I wonder how many readers here have. Thanks for adding it. how about this one;

pandowdy - noun a deep dish apple dessert spiced, sweetened with sugar, molasses, or maple syrup, and covered with a rich crust

A sort-of Apple Pie ?
Sounds tasty.
 
A very Happy Mother's Day to all who celebrate this day for that reason;

This next word has little to do with motherhood, but was next in line (backwards);

pander(1) - noun 1.a. a go-between in love intrigues b. a man who solicits clients for a prostitute 2. someone who caters to or exploits the weaknesses of others
 
A very Happy Mother's Day to all who celebrate this day for that reason;

This next word has little to do with motherhood, but was next in line (backwards);

pander(1) - noun 1.a. a go-between in love intrigues b. a man who solicits clients for a prostitute 2. someone who caters to or exploits the weaknesses of others
 
I love the sound of this next word, seldom-used or not;

Pandemonium - noun 1. the capital of Hell in Milton's Paradise Lost 2. HELL 3. not cap: a wild uproar: TUMULT
 
We must have missed...

panopticon n. a building, as a prison or library, so arranged that all parts of the interior are visible from a single point.

...dating from the 1760s in England, devised by Jeremy Bentham.... pretty much part of the Big Brother is Watching tradition.
 
We must have missed...

panopticon n. a building, as a prison or library, so arranged that all parts of the interior are visible from a single point.

...dating from the 1760s in England, devised by Jeremy Bentham.... pretty much part of the Big Brother is Watching tradition.

Many Union Workhouses were built as panopticons. The function of a Union Workhouse was to provide accommodation for the unemployed poor and the frail elderly at far less cost to the Parish Ratepayers than the smaller village workhouses.

If a Workhouse was built as a panopticon, a single overseer could watch more inmates than in a traditional building. That reduced staff costs.
 
Hullo Allard. Sorry I've been MIA for a bit. It was all very chaotic, including a supposedly spayed but now probably pregnant pussy-cat and the school treating Piglet like a gurrl not a budding scientist :rolleyes:. I have come in to catch up here before even going in my own thread (where I am still wanting to view some hilarious videos posted by Ogg).

I'm wondering if the Buddhist garden is going well? The pheasant eye narcissi have come out in my garden, they're always a bit behind the other daffodils and in a local park combine beautifully with some scarlet tulips.

daffodil-pheasant-s-eye-bulbs-624-p.jpg


I offer the word

pinkie

meaning your little finger, as a feeble excuse for posting.

It's not very often used nowadays, and, am I right, was mostly used in talking about the 'pinkie ring' - a man's ring worn on the little finger.

I loved paranymphe, and the Diamond Rock, and the pandowdy sounds delicious!
:heart:
 
So lovely to see you and your beautiful flowers here today, Naoko, along with the wonderful gentlemen contributors. The Buddha garden is doing well and I hope to post some pictures soon. I have been so busy getting my medicinal garden ready for this year's harvest that I barely got the pictures of my lovely tulips, daffodils and irises before they were gone. One must stop and smell the roses occasionally. I will have to look into your thread this evening, when my chores are done. As far as pinkie goes, my fondest recollections involve "keep your pinkie finger up" while drinking from a lovely porcelain tea cup.

Tio, once again you have posted a word that is not even in my incomplete dictionary. Thank you very much for your time and attention.

pandect - noun 1. a complete code of the laws of a country or system of law 2. a treatise covering an entire subject
 
So lovely to see you and your beautiful flowers here today, Naoko, along with the wonderful gentlemen contributors. The Buddha garden is doing well and I hope to post some pictures soon. I have been so busy getting my medicinal garden ready for this year's harvest that I barely got the pictures of my lovely tulips, daffodils and irises before they were gone. One must stop and smell the roses occasionally. I will have to look into your thread this evening, when my chores are done. As far as pinkie goes, my fondest recollections involve "keep your pinkie finger up" while drinking from a lovely porcelain tea cup.

Tio, once again you have posted a word that is not even in my incomplete dictionary. Thank you very much for your time and attention.

pandect - noun 1. a complete code of the laws of a country or system of law 2. a treatise covering an entire subject

:eek: don't look at my thread! :D:D. Well, you can if you like. It's full of pictures of scantily clad Arabic beauties, although Ogg has posted some hilarious videos which I am desperately trying to create the time to go and check out. I set the thread up as a subversive effort to lure people in and make them occasionally read pieces of information countering occasional Islamophobic remarks I noticed. It's been embarrassingly successful although there aren't as many anti-Islamophobic postings as you might suppose. LOL.

And now I have to immediately rush off and brush the Piglet hair, having mistakenly thought I might have 10 minutes to do a bit of AHing.
:rose:
 
Another 'p'

Then there's -

plumb bob - n. 1. A bob of lead or other heavy material forming the weight of a plumb line.


Rolls off the tongue ... figuratively speaking.
 
Welcome, Rexbrookdale, yes we have used plumb bobs several times at my house during building projects. They work exceptionally well.

Naoko, I am not at all sure I will have the time this week to visit your thread, due to the strict gardening schedule I have myself on, along with Mother Nature, and the exhausted state in which I return to my domicile to prepare food. After dinner, I can barely get up to do anything at all, except to go to bed. LOL

pancratium - noun an ancient Greek athletic contest involving both boxing and wrestling
 
Welcome, Rexbrookdale, yes we have used plumb bobs several times at my house during building projects. They work exceptionally well.

Naoko, I am not at all sure I will have the time this week to visit your thread, due to the strict gardening schedule I have myself on, along with Mother Nature, and the exhausted state in which I return to my domicile to prepare food. After dinner, I can barely get up to do anything at all, except to go to bed. LOL

pancratium - noun an ancient Greek athletic contest involving both boxing and wrestling

I think that's just as well! LOL. It's a very scandalous thread.

I had the cub scouts round to tea today, they are quite young and horribly precocious. The favourite chemical element of one of them is plumbum (you can imagine how they roll around laughing at that!), the Latin for Lead.

I've been consuming inordinate amounts of Prosecco. I'm entitled considering I learned a few days ago the eminent article I wrote with a colleague is going to be published! at the time I had to content myself with a virtual glass in the Naked Party lounge but today I saw Prosecco was on special offer so I treated myself, LOL.

I'll be back soon to post some piccies of the garden, where the Pheasant Eye narcissi are out at the same time as our clematis montana rubens, such is the effect of the late Spring here.
:rose:
 
Naoko, darling, I am an erotica writer, so scandalous is the perfect fit for me. I know I seem quite lady-like on here, and most of the time I am, (as truly scandalous women tend to be very poised), but get a few Patrons into me, and my parents' truck-driver school of obscenity, mixed with the influences of Lenny Bruce, comes out and fucking this and fucking that leaps from my mouth, aplenty. Once I get started, it only gets worse. I do try to keep a cork in it, but it doesn't always work. LOL

pancake landing - noun a landing in which the airplane is leveled off higher than for a normal landing causing it to stall and drop in an approximately horizontal position with little forward motion
 
A quick post, before getting on my gardening gear for the day's toil;

panada - noun a paste of flour or bread crumbs and water or stock used as a base for sauce or a binder for forcemeat or stuffing
 
Naoko, darling, I am an erotica writer, so scandalous is the perfect fit for me. I know I seem quite lady-like on here, and most of the time I am, (as truly scandalous women tend to be very poised), but get a few Patrons into me, and my parents' truck-driver school of obscenity, mixed with the influences of Lenny Bruce, comes out and fucking this and fucking that leaps from my mouth, aplenty. Once I get started, it only gets worse. I do try to keep a cork in it, but it doesn't always work. LOL

pancake landing - noun a landing in which the airplane is leveled off higher than for a normal landing causing it to stall and drop in an approximately horizontal position with little forward motion

Now there's a name I've not heard in years. I remember the LP cover: Very stark plain light and a figure with a cigarette in his mouth, the smoke curling upwards.

I must look him up on You Tube sometime soon

And a true "Pancake" landing does not often involve the landing gear.
It's a real mess and a horrible job to clear up.
 
Handley, I recently watched All That Jazz about the choreographer/director Bob Fosse, who directed Lenny Bruce's film, Lenny, in 1974. It reminded me of the world before Lenny, a world when no one ever said the "f" word, especially not to elders or parents. Man, did he change everything in that respect. Most people on here don't remember a world without saying fuck in some form, TV, or pantyhose. LOL I do.

panache - noun 1. an ornamental tuft (as of feathers) esp. on a helmet 2. dash or flamboyance in style and action: VERVE
 
LOL, I will be delighted to see you in the thread, Allard, whenever you have time. You have been warned! It consists of rude piccies posted by myself and TxRad with kind but incoherent comments of appreciation from others, occasionally interspersed with exchanges between MatthewVett and myself about Islam, orientialism and left-handed pianists.

I sometimes go in Isolated Blurt and pretend to say *ffffffuckingah* specially for McKenna in my posh English voice (I have a very English accent although I'm Scottish living in Wales). Perhaps we should do a special audio recording with rude words in lots of different accents.

I've done a 'search thread', and I can't really believe that nobody's posted

Peleponnesian

as in Peleponnesian war, and meaning the peninsula in Southern Greece. I shall pop it in here as my ticket to ride anyway. I promise flower piccies soon. I went picking wild garlic with my friend (the Swiss Army wife) the other day, and hope to blog the photos once I've written my lesson plan, fed my family, had a meeting and ... there was something else, I know. Oh yes, got some sleep. LOL.
:rose:
 
Naoko, I will see you there, at some point.

This next word is for the sufferers like me;

palynology - noun a branch of science dealing with pollen and spores
 
Naoko, I will see you there, at some point.

This next word is for the sufferers like me;

palynology - noun a branch of science dealing with pollen and spores

Gosh, I get terrible hay fever too. I suddenly started suffering one summer when I was 19. I have a nasal spray now which works very well, although this year (fingers crossed!) I've not had the hay fever yet. Maybe because it's still raining here! LOL.

I am very thrilled with this word I've found:

A Pooter (sometimes, usually by Americans, referred to as an aspirator or aspirator gun) is a device used in the collection of insects, crustaceans or other small, fragile organisms, usually for scientific purposes.

And here is a pooter for £3 including tax:

Invicta-Pooter_2.jpg
 
Naoko, that is a very great word and thanks for posting a picture with it. In case no one has ever said so, local bee pollen is a wonderful remedy for all kinds of pollen fever issues. I pour about a teaspoon's amount into the cup of my hand and just pop it into my mouth and chew it up. It can be added to smoothies and the like, but I prefer mine plain. It takes about a week to build up the immunities to pollen, but soon enough the teary eyes, runny nose and overall lethargy leave for good. Of course, fall has it's own set of pollens, so I usually have to do it all over again at that time. I hope this helps you this year.

paludism - noun MALARIA
 
My goodness, this week went fast. Happy Saturday to you, all.

paludal - adj of or referring to marshes and ferns: MARSHY
 
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