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Seldom-used words - M to A

Moron is a term once used in psychology to denote mild intellectual disability.[1] The term was closely tied with the American eugenics movement.[2] Once the term became popularized, it fell out of use by the psychological community, as it was used more commonly as an insult than as a psychological term.

"Moron" was coined in 1910 by psychologist Henry H. Goddard[3] from the Ancient Greek word μωρός (moros), which meant "dull"[4] (as opposed to oxy, which meant "sharp" (see also: oxymoron)), and used to describe a person with a mental age in adulthood of between 8 and 12 on the Binet scale.[5] It was once applied to people with an IQ of 51–70, being superior in one degree to "imbecile" (IQ of 26–50) and superior in two degrees to "idiot" (IQ of 0–25). The word moron, along with others including, "idiotic", "imbecilic", "stupid", and "feeble-minded", was formerly considered a valid descriptor in the psychological community, but it is now deprecated in use by psychologists.[6]
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Dunning-Kruger Effect.
The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias wherein unskilled individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly rating their ability much higher than is accurate. This bias is attributed to a metacognitive inability of the unskilled to recognize their ineptitude. Conversely, highly skilled individuals tend to underestimate their relative competence, erroneously assuming that tasks which are easy for them are also easy for others.[1]
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This explains half of the GB anyway. :rolleyes:
 
Mawks, a slatternly, ignorant, stupid and dirty young woman. (Mackay, Lost Beauties of the English Language.)
 
Hello posters and thanks to Tio, Carlus, Payday and JackLuis for keeping my thread alive in my absence. All the words posted were good ones. My trip was very pleasant and it is good to be home, again.

Martinmas - noun the feast of St. Martin on November 11
 
AllardChardon said:
Hello posters and thanks to Tio, Carlus, Payday and JackLuis for keeping my thread alive in my absence. All the words posted were good ones. My trip was very pleasant and it is good to be home, again.

Martinmas - noun the feast of St. Martin on November 11
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Glad you enjoyed your trip; even gladder to see you back!

Mammock - a shred, a fragment.

Mammocks of stone. Optick Glass of Humours, 1639

[Source: Lost Beauties of the English Language, Mackay]
 
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What a sweet thing to say, Carlus. Going away certainly makes one appreciate home. I live in a very rural area of Northern California and a trip to LA, I was born in Hollywood, reminds me of several aspects I do not miss. Traffic will always be on the list, but the constant helicopters overhead is actually worse, because it never stops.

martingale - noun 1. a device for steadying a horse's head or checking its upward movement that typically consists of a strap fastened to the girth, passing between the forelegs, and bifurcating to end in two rings through which the reins pass 2.a. a lower stay of rope or chain for the jib boom or flying jib-boom used to sustain the strain of the forestays and fastened to or rove through the dolphin striker b. DOLPHIN STRIKER 3. any of several systems of betting in which a player increases the stake usually by doubling each time a bet is lost
 
AllardChardon said:
What a sweet thing to say, Carlus. Going away certainly makes one appreciate home. I live in a very rural area of Northern California and a trip to LA, I was born in Hollywood, reminds me of several aspects I do not miss. Traffic will always be on the list, but the constant helicopters overhead is actually worse, because it never stops.

martingale - noun 1. a device for steadying a horse's head or checking its upward movement that typically consists of a strap fastened to the girth, passing between the forelegs, and bifurcating to end in two rings through which the reins pass 2.a. a lower stay of rope or chain for the jib boom or flying jib-boom used to sustain the strain of the forestays and fastened to or rove through the dolphin striker b. DOLPHIN STRIKER 3. any of several systems of betting in which a player increases the stake usually by doubling each time a bet is lost
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This word also has a technical meaning in mathematical probabliity theory. Probability theory isn't my bag, so the following quote is the opening of the Wikipedia article at

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martingale_(probability_theory)

In probability theory, a martingale is a model of a fair game where knowledge of past events never helps predict the mean of the future winnings. In particular, a martingale is a sequence of random variables (i.e., a stochastic process) for which, at a particular time in the realized sequence, the expectation of the next value in the sequence is equal to the present observed value even given knowledge of all prior observed values.
 
AllardChardon said:
What a sweet thing to say, Carlus. Going away certainly makes one appreciate home. I live in a very rural area of Northern California and a trip to LA, I was born in Hollywood, reminds me of several aspects I do not miss. Traffic will always be on the list, but the constant helicopters overhead is actually worse, because it never stops.

martingale - noun 1. a device for steadying a horse's head or checking its upward movement that typically consists of a strap fastened to the girth, passing between the forelegs, and bifurcating to end in two rings through which the reins pass
2.a. a lower stay of rope or chain for the jib boom or flying jib-boom used to sustain the strain of the forestays and fastened to or rove through the dolphin striker
b. DOLPHIN STRIKER 3. any of several systems of betting in which a player increases the stake usually by doubling each time a bet is lost
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It's also part of the fittings on a modern fencing sword.
 
Martingale certainly has a lot of definitions. Thanks for adding the extra ones, Carlus and Handley.

martinet - noun a strict disciplinarian
 
A pleasant Sunday greeting to you all.

martello tower - noun a circular masonry fort or blockhouse
 
AllardChardon said:
A pleasant Sunday greeting to you all.

martello tower - noun a circular masonry fort or blockhouse
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Wikipedia has a good article on Martello Towers:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martello_tower

The original Mortella Tower (we Brits spelled it wrong) withstood considerable bombardment from Royal Navy warships, inflicting damage on the ships with red hot shot.

It was adopted by the British as a standard design of Artillery fort, slightly modified so that the major guns could fire in any direction.

They were built as defences against Napoleon's France but most never fired a gun in anger.

Martello%20Towers%20c1805.png


2776_4408.jpg
 
Og, a most interesting article on such a world-wide fort. I had no idea there were so many. Now, I have even more places to visit, once I finally reach Britain. Thanks for enlightening me, once again.

I have become a huge fan of Downton Abbey and, while watching it last night, came upon a word I did not know and one we have already passed up, so I am going back for this one;

woad - noun a European herb of the mustard family formerly grown for the blue dyestuff yielded by its leaves; also: this dyestuff
 
AllardChardon said:
Og, a most interesting article on such a world-wide fort. I had no idea there were so many. Now, I have even more places to visit, once I finally reach Britain. Thanks for enlightening me, once again.

I have become a huge fan of Downton Abbey and, while watching it last night, came upon a word I did not know and one we have already passed up, so I am going back for this one;

woad - noun a European herb of the mustard family formerly grown for the blue dyestuff yielded by its leaves; also: this dyestuff
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Woad is what the ancient Britons painted on their faces before battle. The sap is a sort-of pale blue, as I recall.
 
Handley, that makes sense. I can see Mel Gibson's blue face in my memory banks.

Marseilles - noun a firm cotton fabric that is similar to pique'
 
Handley_Page said:
Woad is what the ancient Britons painted on their faces before battle. The sap is a sort-of pale blue, as I recall.
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It had to be processed to produce a deeper blue - indigo.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isatis_tinctoria

When true indigo began to be imported from India, the French, the major European cultivators and producers of woad based indigo, passed laws against the Indian dye 'The Devil's Dye'.

The original French Denim 'De Nimes' was originally dyed blue with indigo from woad.

Mel Gibson's blue face was historically incorrect. Face painting with woad was used by the Picts. They were called 'Picts' because that was a short form of 'Painted Men'.
 
Manymong

Manymong Also menemong, of many sorts, or mixtures.

Menemong corn bread
Piers Ploughman

The word appears to be related to

Mong, preterite of ming, mingled; whence the preposition among.

There is also

Mung, preterite of ming. to ming or mingle; when the substantive, meaning the mingled food of bread, potatoes, &c., thrown to poultry. In America, 'mung news' is a common expression applied to false news, but probably having its derivation from mingled (or mung) news, in which the true and the false are so mixed up together that it is impossible to distinguish one from the other.

Source for the definitions above: Lost Beauties of the English Language, Charles Mackay, LL.D.

The word preterite (also spelled preterit) may also qualify as a seldom-used word these days, especially among monolingual English speakers:

Preterite, 1. Now Rare. Past; bygone. 2. Grammar: Past, without reference to duration.

The word refers to a tense in Spanish, and, I presume, in some other languages (such as English of the late 19th Centrury).
 
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AllardChardon said:
Og, a most interesting article on such a world-wide fort. I had no idea there were so many. Now, I have even more places to visit, once I finally reach Britain. Thanks for enlightening me, once again.

...
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Apart from spelling Martello incorrectly, the British made another mistake.

The reason the original Mortella Tower survived attack from the British battleships was misreported. The naval officers didn't want to report the real reason which was that they couldn't get close enough because the shallow water near the Tower was unsurveyed.

In any artillery duel between a land fortification and a sailing ship, the land fortification has the advantage because:

1. It is a stable gun platform unaffected by wind or tide. The gun can be aimed and will not move relative to the target. A ship's cannon will have to be fired at the appropriate point when the ship's movement and roll is correct for the target, and

2. The land fort can fire red-hot shot which would be foolhardy to do from a wooden ship, and

3. Because it doesn't have to move, its protective walls can be much thicker and heavier than a ship's wooden side.

The Mortella Tower was good, but not as good as the Royal Navy said it was.

However, had Napoleon tried to invade England, the Martello Towers would have impeded and delayed his landing by a few hours. Unfortunately, when he was considering his invasion, they hadn't been built. Doh!
 
Handley, I think demin is coarser than pique' or Marseilles fabrics, but I am not sure.

Og, thanks for setting me straight on Mel Gibson's face paint. I am not surprised it was not historically accurate. As far as the Picts go, did I ever mention I met a family of Picts, that is what they called themselves for I had never heard of them before, in Eugene, Oregon a few years ago? They were rather short, but had pointy ears and distinctly-long eye teeth, which I find attractive. (Like George Harrison's). They were a very interesting family. The Mortello Tower vs British battleship explanation was excellent, thanks for adding it.

Carlus, thank you for posting those mingling words with their etymology. I took Spanish for 5 years and preterite was used quite often.

marrow fat - noun any of several wrinkled-seeded garden peas

What does "wrinkled-seeded" mean?
 
AllardChardon said:
Handley, I think demin is coarser than pique' or Marseilles fabrics, but I am not sure.

Og, thanks for setting me straight on Mel Gibson's face paint. The Mortello Tower vs British battleship explanation was excellent, thanks for adding it.

Carlus, thank you for posting those mingling words with their etymology. I took Spanish for 5 years and preterite was used quite often.

marrow fat - noun any of several wrinkled-seeded garden peas

What does "wrinkled-seeded" mean?
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Take a peek here: LINK
 
Thank you, Handley, and that was quite an explanation.

marrow bone - noun 1. a bone containing marrow 2. plural: KNEES

It is the second definition that caught my eye.
 
One more in this group;

marrow bean - noun any of several garden beans grown primarily as field beans for their large white beans
 
Handley, I felt the same way when my mother served lima beans at dinner.

marrow(1) - noun 1.a. a soft highly vascular modified connective tissue that occupies the cavities and cancellous part of most bones b. the substance of the spinal cord 2. the choicest part: as a. the choicest of food b. the seat of animal vigor c. the inmost, best or essential part 3. chiefly Brit: VEGETABLE MARROW

marrow(2) - noun chiefly Scot: one of a pair: MATCH, EQUAL

I like "the seat of animal vigor" part best, which was completely unknown to me as one of the definitions.
 
AllardChardon said:
Handley, I felt the same way when my mother served lima beans at dinner.

marrow(1) - noun 1.a. a soft highly vascular modified connective tissue that occupies the cavities and cancellous part of most bones b. the substance of the spinal cord 2. the choicest part: as a. the choicest of food b. the seat of animal vigor c. the inmost, best or essential part 3. chiefly Brit: VEGETABLE MARROW

marrow(2) - noun chiefly Scot: one of a pair: MATCH, EQUAL

I like "the seat of animal vigor" part best, which was completely unknown to me as one of the definitions.
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For the benefit (bonefit?? :eek:) of those of us who know little anatomy and even less of the language that pertains to anatomy:

Cancellous, of or denoting bone tissue with a meshlike structure containing many pores, typical of the interior of mature bones.
 
Carlus, I truly enjoy finding unknown (to me) words inside of definitions. I was going to post cancellous myself, but you saved me the trouble. Thanks so much. In the definition "seat of animal vigor," that would include us humans, would it not?

Marano - noun a Christianized Jew or Moor of medieval Spain
 
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