Seldom-Used Words

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I have an old (1952, same age as me) O'Keefe and Merritt gas oven, converted to propane, with a large grill in the center and a broiler with a rack that raises and lowers. I still love warming my ass cheeks on it in the winter and would not want to live without it, it is such a work of art, cooking-wise, of course. The AGA looks similar, and I wonder what the letters stand for, A G A or is it a name on its own, Aga.

persnickety - adj PERNICKETY

pernickety - adj 1. having extremelly exacting standards: FINICKY 2. requiring great precision: TICKLISH

Pepperidge Farms!!!!!!
 
I have an old (1952, same age as me) O'Keefe and Merritt gas oven, converted to propane, with a large grill in the center and a broiler with a rack that raises and lowers. I still love warming my ass cheeks on it in the winter and would not want to live without it, it is such a work of art, cooking-wise, of course. The AGA looks similar, and I wonder what the letters stand for, A G A or is it a name on its own, Aga.

...

The original Aga was designed to be produced in the UK based on Swedish originals.

The history of the company doesn't give an origin for the name.

It was a fantastic improvement on the coal ranges then in use. I remember my great-aunts using a coal range with an open fire in the centre. That coal range, even though much smaller, would use three times the fuel of an Aga.

In the 1920s and 1930s, gas and electric cookers in the UK were difficult to control effectively. An Aga was consistent in its heat but not variable. To change cooking temperature you had to use one of the other two, three or four ovens of the Aga. The coolest was for raising dough (and an ideal temperature for cats to rest in).

The techniques of cooking on a Aga varied from a modern cooker. The heat is constant, 24/7, which can be a nuisance in hot summers.

The main advantage of an Aga to a housewife was that it was clean! There was no need to blacklead the stove daily. Any spills or coal dust could be wiped off with a damp cloth.

Great-aunts' kitchen range was like this:
vic+kitchen+range.jpg


Compare with an Aga:
hot-afro-aga-Cape-Dutch-via-remodelista.jpg
 
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Og, that may be true, but you do use ticklish in its many definitions more than we do.

ticklish - adj 1. sensitive to tickling 2.a. TOUCHY, OVERSENSITIVE b. easily overturned: UNSTABLE (a canoe is ~ to handle) 3. requiring delicate handling: CRITICAL (a ~ subject)
 
Oh you are torturing me with all these gorgeous Agas and range ovens! My bum feels so cold in snowy Blighty and our horrible small oven (inherited from previous house owners with the worst taste in the world) has handle bars on it so even if I light that, I will have to contort myself into a very strange position to press my cheeks on it.

I'll have to write my own Aga saga! with pink wellies with ribbons and werewolves instead of shaggy-haired dogs ROFLOL!

persiflage (pûrs-fläzh)
n.
1. Light good-natured talk; banter.
2. Light or frivolous manner of discussing a subject.

From the French persifler, to banter; from the Latin per-, intensive pref. + French siffler, to whistle

:rose:
 
Point of information: AGA is an acronym taken from company's Anglicized name - Aktiebolaget Gas Accumulator.

Oh you are torturing me with all these gorgeous Agas and range ovens! My bum feels so cold in snowy Blighty and our horrible small oven (inherited from previous house owners with the worst taste in the world) has handle bars on it so even if I light that, I will have to contort myself into a very strange position to press my cheeks on it.

I'll have to write my own Aga saga! with pink wellies with ribbons and werewolves instead of shaggy-haired dogs ROFLOL!

persiflage (pûrs-fläzh)
n.
1. Light good-natured talk; banter.
2. Light or frivolous manner of discussing a subject.

From the French persifler, to banter; from the Latin per-, intensive pref. + French siffler, to whistle

:rose:
 
Og, that may be true, but you do use ticklish in its many definitions more than we do.

ticklish - adj 1. sensitive to tickling 2.a. TOUCHY, OVERSENSITIVE b. easily overturned: UNSTABLE (a canoe is ~ to handle) 3. requiring delicate handling: CRITICAL (a ~ subject)

It's such a useful word. It's down to shades of seriousness.
One can describe a situation as "ticklish" or even "tricky" and not mean exactly the same thing. One implies that a certain dexterity is needed but it CAN be achieved, the other means that it may not be wise to go near it as it's unstable (like a ticking bomb).

Either can be used to underplay the seriousness of a problem.
 
haver - verb Scottish, talk foolishly, babble.

Best illustrated by The Proclaimers I would walk 500 miles

I think The Proclaimers use of 'haver' (removed from late versions) describes the state of incoherence caused by the actual presence of the one you love.
 
Welcome to the word thread, KillerwithWords. Nice to have you along.

Persian lamb - noun 1. the young of the Karakul sheep tht furnishesskins used in furriery 2. a pelt obtained from karakul lambs older than those yielding broadtail and characterized by very silky tightly curled fur
 
I am going to skip over Perseid, Persephone, and Perseus, because they are all well-known, but I wanted to acknowledge their place;

per second per second - adv per second every second - used of a rate of acceleration over an indefinite period
 
I am going to skip over Perseid, Persephone, and Perseus, because they are all well-known, but I wanted to acknowledge their place;

per second per second - adv per second every second - used of a rate of acceleration over an indefinite period

like gravity ? 32ft/sec/sec
 
I suppose, Handley, I really am not sure.

perry - noun the expressed juice of pears often made alcoholic by fermentation
 
Good day, posters, I hope the weather is pleasant where you are.

perron - noun an outdoor stairway leading up to a building entrance or a platform at its top
 
I suppose, Handley, I really am not sure.

perry - noun the expressed juice of pears often made alcoholic by fermentation

I grew up (a bit) in the home town of the makers of Babycham. Babycham is perry put into tiny bottles with a baby chamois depicted on them and sold at an exorbitantly over the odds price. It was a huge success! I could see every day from the windows of our school a huge plastic baby chamois on the factory roof and the walls of the local prison.

babycham.jpg
 
Plumber isn't a seldom used word, especially in stories here where play can be made on pipes needing attention. I like how it derives from the delicious Latin word for lead, though: Plumbum. Plum bums might also occur on here, although less frequently than plumbers one imagines.

:heart::rose::heart:
 
Plumber isn't a seldom used word, especially in stories here where play can be made on pipes needing attention. I like how it derives from the delicious Latin word for lead, though: Plumbum. Plum bums might also occur on here, although less frequently than plumbers one imagines.

:heart::rose::heart:

One must not forget the Plumb Bob or plumb weight, together with it's bit of string. It is a way of getting a Very Very accurate vertical line; so good the Ancient Egyptians used it in the Pyramids and later.
It's used today in the Building Trade, of course.

A similar weight thing is used to "plumb the depths" by use of a cord marked in length /depth. Nelson's Navy used it a lot.
 
Handley, my son used to do cement work and used a plumb weight often.

Plum Bums is a great title for a spanking story. LOL I never would have figured out what babycham was from the name. Thanks, Naoko.

perquisite - noun 1. a privilege, gain, or profit incidental to regular salary or wages; esp: one expected or promised 2. GRATUITY, TIP 3. something held or claimed as an exclusive right or possession
 
Handley, my son used to do cement work and used a plumb weight often.

Plum Bums is a great title for a spanking story. LOL I never would have figured out what babycham was from the name. Thanks, Naoko.

perquisite - noun 1. a privilege, gain, or profit incidental to regular salary or wages; esp: one expected or promised 2. GRATUITY, TIP 3. something held or claimed as an exclusive right or possession

You're right! A story about a plumber and spanking called Plum Bums. ROFLOL! The plumb line will surely also come into it somewhere.

:kiss:
 
One must not forget the Plumb Bob or plumb weight, together with it's bit of string. It is a way of getting a Very Very accurate vertical line; so good the Ancient Egyptians used it in the Pyramids and later.
It's used today in the Building Trade, of course.

A similar weight thing is used to "plumb the depths" by use of a cord marked in length /depth. Nelson's Navy used it a lot.

One of my first proper tasks in a Naval Dockyard was to do stocktaking of Oil Fuel in the Tank Yard. It was in the winter of 1962/3 - the coldest for many years. I had to climb up an unguarded vertical ladder, kicking the ice of each rung, unbolt the inspection hatch after warming the nuts with a blow torch, then drop a plumb bob on a measured line of brass chain to the surface of the Oil Fuel which was solid. I also took the air temperature.

Back in the office I had to consult typed tables which gave me the amount of Oil Fuel in the tank that compared to the depth I had taken with the plumb bob, then adjust both the length of the brass chain and the density of the Oil to the air temperature I had recorded.

Then back to the Oil Fuel Depot to repeat the process for the next nine tanks. It took me three days to do all ten.

I cursed that plumb bob and the brass chain. My fingers were too cold to work it easily.
 
My word! I hope you were very careful. ;)

xxx

Of course! I was a highly trained Officer.

(Which means, of course, that I had a skilled technician beside me who knew what he was doing, and he assured me that there was absolutely no chance of damaging my nuts or setting fire to the Oil Fuel. I wished I had his confidence in my abilities.)

P.S. Which reminds me. I was sent on an Admiralty training course in South Wales to a location that was then Secret. It isn't now, but I'll refrain from embarrassing the guilty:

I'm not sure what we were supposed to learn. We spent most of the daylight hours of two weeks deep underground learning mysterious secrets that meant nothing to us then or since.

Why? Because the training officer had just returned to his native South Wales after many years away in the further flung parts of the Commonwealth including Singapore and the Falkland Islands. His wife and children were still en route from Hong Kong so he wanted to tour his old haunts, particularly the public houses. At the end of each day's training we would go to the underground canteen, fill up with stodgy food, climb into the Royal Navy minibus and start a pub crawl.

By the end of the evening the least drunk of us, usually me, had to drive us back to our hotel, which was also a public house. As residents, closing time didn't apply to us. We would stagger off to bed about 3 am and be back underground by 9am for another day's training...

Somehow the powers-that-were-then had decided that part of the extensive underground area was an HM Ship, and therefore had a wardroom that served duty-free alcohol whenever the sun was above the yardarm. Since we couldn't see the sun, and the facility operated 24/7, so did the wardroom bar.

Even at the end of the course I couldn't recall what earthshattering secrets we had been taught, but we had a sound education in South Wales brews. We all received certificates of competence and high marks for completing the course but since the subject was secret, the certificates didn't specify what we had been taught - so I still don't know.

A few months later, the powers-that-were decided that even the fact that we had been two weeks in this unnamed place in South Wales was a threat to National Security and our uninformative certificates were re-classified as Top Secret and destroyed.

Not only do I not know what I was taught, I cannot prove it.

But I knew that some Welsh beers were better than others.
 
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Truly, Og, you have the best stories. No way to prove you were ever there. That is funny. If not for your memory, all would be grand.

perpetual calendar - noun 1. a table for finding the day of the week for any one of a wide range of dates 2. a calendar having the years uniform in the correspondence of days and dates
 
Truly, Og, you have the best stories. No way to prove you were ever there. That is funny. If not for your memory, all would be grand.

perpetual calendar - noun 1. a table for finding the day of the week for any one of a wide range of dates 2. a calendar having the years uniform in the correspondence of days and dates

The Anglican Book of Common Prayer used to include a Perpetual Calendar for working out the dates of moveable feasts such as Easter.

At the latter part of the 18th Century, copper coins were in short supply in the UK. Enterprising manufacturers produced tokens usually valued at one penny or a half-penny, that could be redeemed at stated places.

They usually circulated in a limited area such as a large town or city, but some were used over a wide area. Some of them were frauds and there was no money backing them, but most were genuine but a nuisance if say you had a token penny issued in Shrewsbury, and redeemable there, and you were in Lincoln.

But one token producer had a bright idea. He stamped a perpetual calendar on one side of his token coins. People found them useful and would keep them, instead of redeeming them. Every time they did that, he made a profit. :rolleyes:
 
Og, I love the inventiveness of the human brain. If there is a way to make a buck, it will be done. Take the tape lint roller, for example. Before its invention, I used a special lint brush, which had to have the animal hair removed by hand when full. Now, you just peel off the sticky piece and are ready to go after more. Pet owners, like myself, find it invaluable, especially before leaving the house. LOL

perpend(1) - vb to reflect on carefully: PONDER

perpend or perpent(2) - noun a brick or large stone reaching through a wall so as to appear on both sides of it and acting as a binder
 
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