Seldom-Used Words

[CharleyH]

Originally Posted by oggbashan

Translation - there may not be equivalent single words but the meaning can usually be conveyed by a phrase.

The apocryphal test for translating from English to Russian and back again is:

"out of sight, out of mind" which is supposed to come back as "invisible idiot".

Try translating onamatopeia into another language with a single word.

Og

Portuguese: Onomatopeia.

[AllardChardon]

What about English words commonly used incorrectly like awe and awesome? Not even close to how it is actually used!

[CharleyH]

Originally Posted by oggbashan

Translation - there may not be equivalent single words but the meaning can usually be conveyed by a phrase.

The apocryphal test for translating from English to Russian and back again is:

"out of sight, out of mind" which is supposed to come back as "invisible idiot".

In Portuguese, "longe da vista, longe do coração" (literally: far from sight, far from the heart). Nothing gets lost in translation.

[CharleyH]

Originally Posted by AllardChardon

What about English words commonly used incorrectly like awe and awesome? Not even close to how it is actually used!

nice transition.

[AllardChardon]

Although overused in the 60s, most horribly as I recall;

macho, a shortened version of machismo, has the same problem. A one word definition simply will not suffice.

[CharleyH]

Originally Posted by AllardChardon

Although overused in the 60s, most horribly as I recall;

macho, a shortened version of machismo, has the same problem. A one word definition simply will not suffice.

Fascinating topic, Allard. I hope it continues. Off to bed now, sorry.

[trysail]

Hark! I see a
cete of badgers,
a slothe or sleuth of bears,
a sounder or singular of boars,
a murder or horde of crows,
a convocation or congregation of eagles,
a scattering or sige or sedge of herons,
a mob or troop of kangaroos,
a charm or troubling or hover of hummingbirds,
an unkindness or murder of ravens,
a murmation or filth of starlings,
a scurry of squirrels,
a knot or knab of toads,
and a bale or dole or nest or turn of turtles!

[AllardChardon]

Trysail,

I do believe you get the award for the most seldom-used words, most especially because you used them in one sentence. Well done and shows true imagination.

Thanks

Here's another;

consistory - solemn assembly, council, either a church tribunal or governing body

[AllardChardon]

This one was too good to pass up and one I have always wondered about. It was not in my dictionary, so this is what an internet search brought forth.

lollygag
Definition: "dawdle, dally," 1862, lallygag, Amer.Eng., perhaps from dialect. lolly "tongue" + gag "deceive, trick."

Lollygag is American born and bred. It made its first appearance in print in the 1860s. The indefatigable Evan Morris, known to his fans as The Word Detective, says the clue might be in "loll." Morris says this "is a very old word originally meaning 'to droop or dangle'. We use 'loll' today to mean to relax or pass time idly, the sort of behavior that vacations are designed to encourage. There seems to be a plausible connection between this 'utterly relaxed' meaning of 'loll' and the 'wasting time' sense of lollygag."

Notice we're speaking of "loll" not "lall." "Lall" means 'to make imperfect l- or r-sounds, or both, often substituting a w-like sound for r or l or a y-like sound for l'. "Lallying" doesn't sound very restful, does it?

According to the Cassell Dictionary of Slang, "loll" is also an old dialect word that means 'tongue'. That might elucidate the kissing part. To make things even sloppier, Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology suggests the 'gag' in lollygag was employed for its sense of 'stuffing', or 'filling'. This leaves us with a vivid picture of a tongue being thrust down the throat.

This picture of tongue-thrusting is further supported by an 1868 tirade from an Iowa newspaper, the Northern Vindicator, writing of "the lascivious lolly-gagging lumps of licentiousness who disgrace the common decencies of life by their love-sick fawnings at our public dances."


So is it lounging around aimlessly or french kissing in public?

[trysail]

There are many mentions of "skylarking and lollygagging" in accounts of 18th and 19th century shipboard life— the days of "wooden ships and iron men." In that context, the phrase meant ( and continues to mean ) lazing about or goofing off.


Without citing specific books, I've encountered the phrase in Richard Henry Dana's Two Years Before The Mast or Herman Melville's Typee, Omoo, White Jacket or Moby Dick or in Patrick O'Brian Aubrey/Maturin series or C.S. Forrester's Hornblower series or Nathaniel Philbrick's works.

[AllardChardon]

Trysail,

Thanks for the clarification on lollygag. It was used in the movie, Bull Durham, I think, in the shower room scene when the coach called his team a bunch of lollygaggers that brought the word to my mind in the first place.

And my final entry for the day -

fecund - fruitful in offspring or vegetation, prolific; intellectually productive or inventive to a marked degree; syn. fertile

Bon nuit!

[R. Richard]

Adjective:
eldritch (comparative: more eldritch, superlative: most eldritch)

Unearthly, alien, supernatural, weird, spooky, eerie.

[AllardChardon]

A nice grouping from the ba section;

bawcock - a fine fellow

bawd - madam or prostitute

bawdy - obscene, lewd

bawdry - unchastity; offensively suggestive, coarse or obscene language, bawdiness

[AllardChardon]

Here's today's entry:

vade mecum - a book for ready reference, manual, something regularly carried about by a person

[trysail]

I stumbled on huscarls whilst reading Bryan Sykes' Saxons, Vikings, and Celts: The Genetic Roots of Britain and Ireland ( New York, New York 2006 ).

http://forum.literotica.com/showpost...&postcount=419

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

[Tio_Narratore]

gules - red-tinted, as on a coat of arms; used poetically to refer to the color red or to things, such as blood-stained cloaks, stained red.

[AllardChardon]

Very interesting, Trysail, never heard that one.

This next one is familiar, but its origin was not.

hussy - (alter. of housewife) a lewd or brazen woman, a saucy or mischievous girl

[AllardChardon]

So, I had to look up brazen and made of brass was first up with sounding harsh and loud like struck brass and the color of polished brass following and the one I was looking for last, impudent, shameless, as in brazen hussy!

Thank you, contributors!

[Xelebes]

From Trysail's Housecarl/Huskarl, we get the word churl, which is, in times past, the common man or more recently a lower ranked common man.

Thrall is another word for slave.

[Tio_Narratore]

defenestration - the act of eliminating political opponents by throwing them out of a window. The earliest known incident seems to be the First Defenestration of Prague (yes, it does seem to be a particularly Czech approach to political change) in 1419 when a group of Hussites threw the city council out the window.

[AllardChardon]

Tio, thanks for the great word and history lesson in one! My only thought was typically female, who cleans up the mess after a defenestation? Yuck! I can only hope half wild dogs and maybe pigs did most of it.

Back to brazen hussy for a moment. After all these years of hearing this term, I now wonder if the word brazen was also meant for the bleached and therefore bronze color of hair as well as the shameless part. Food for thought.

sub rosa- under the rose, french, the ancient custom of hanging a rose over the council table to indicate all present were sworn to secrecy: in confidence: secretly

Now I understand the significance of the rose in ancient french artwork a little better.

[MzDeviancy]

Hebetudinous:

Lacking mental and physical alertness and activity: lethargic, sluggish, stupid, stuporous, torpid. Slang dopey. See action/inaction.
Lacking in intelligence: blockheaded, dense, doltish, dumb, obtuse, stupid, thickheaded, thick-witted. Informal thick. Slang dimwitted, dopey

[AllardChardon]

whited sepulcher - from the simile in Mt. 23:27 - a person inwardly corrupt or wicked but outwardly virtuous or holy: hypocrite

[krissive69]

.....

[MzDeviancy]

Originally Posted by Tio_Narratore

defenestration - the act of eliminating political opponents by throwing them out of a window. The earliest known incident seems to be the First Defenestration of Prague (yes, it does seem to be a particularly Czech approach to political change) in 1419 when a group of Hussites threw the city council out the window.

I use that word all the time. Like when I'm driving and my ingrate passenger complains about my driving, I threaten to defenestrate them.