Seldom-Used Words

[oggbashan]

Originally Posted by AllardChardon

I liked this word immediately, even though I have never encountered it before;

roman-fleuve - noun a distinctively French novel in the form of a long, usually easygoing, chronicle of a family, community or other social group

The French have other words for particular styles of novels such as:

roman policier = detective story often with a policeman as the detective e.g. Maigret.

roman à quatre sous = penny dreadful

roman noir = thriller

roman à thèse = novel with a message

roman d'aventures = adventure

roman de moeurs = social novel

roman cyclique = saga

[trysail]

Originally Posted by oggbashan

The French have other words for particular styles of novels such as:

roman policier = detective story often with a policeman as the detective e.g. Maigret.

roman à quatre sous = penny dreadful

roman noir = thriller

roman à thèse = novel with a message

roman d'aventures = adventure

roman de moeurs = social novel

roman cyclique = saga

roman à clef • n., French for novel with a key, is the term used for a novel describing real life, behind a facade of fiction.







Og, I'm surprised you missed this one.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_%C3%A0_clef

[oggbashan]

Originally Posted by trysail

roman à clef • n., French for novel with a key, is the term used for a novel describing real life, behind a facade of fiction.






Og, I'm surprised you missed this one.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_%C3%A0_clef

It wasn't intended to be a complete list. There are several more because "roman" can mean a complete fiction e.g. an autobiographical roman purports to be an autobiography but is more fiction than fact (and probably ghost-written).

[AllardChardon]

That was the next entry I was going to post, roman a clef, oh well.

Romaic - noun the modern Greek vernacular

[Tio_Narratore]

Originally Posted by oggbashan

The French have other words for particular styles of novels such as:

roman policier = detective story often with a policeman as the detective e.g. Maigret.

roman à quatre sous = penny dreadful

roman noir = thriller

roman à thèse = novel with a message

roman d'aventures = adventure

roman de moeurs = social novel

roman cyclique = saga

By "Penny Dreadful," I take it you mean "Dime Novel?"

[trysail]

Originally Posted by Tio_Narratore

By "Penny Dreadful," I take it you mean "Dime Novel?"

*chuckling*

Yanno, those French people have a different word for almost everything.

-Navin R. Johnson (Steve Martin)
"The Jerk"
Screenplay by Carl Gottlieb, Michael Elias and Steve Martin

[AllardChardon]

It is a great name, Penny Dreadful, and has a wonderful history that Og shared here a while back, much to my delight.

roly-poly - noun 1. a sweet dough spread with a filling, rolled, and baked or steamed 2. a roly-poly person or thing

[trysail]

navvy • n., A laborer employed in the excavation and construction of a road, railroad, or canal.

[Tio_Narratore]

Originally Posted by trysail

navvy • n., A laborer employed in the excavation and construction of a road, railroad, or canal.

You'll find it used in the "modern" era in Gordon Lightfoot's "Great Canadian Railroad Trilogy"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yzo6Otpgj-E

[oggbashan]

Originally Posted by trysail

navvy • n., A laborer employed in the excavation and construction of a road, railroad, or canal.

A contraction of "Navigator", one who constructed Navigations or Canals in 18th and 19th Century England. When the Railway Age arrived, Navvies had the skills needed to construct the railway lines.

Last weekend we visited a Sussex farm where my wife's ancestors worked in the early 19th Century. The navvies who built the railway line across the farm lived in brick huts close to the route. The skimpy foundations of those huts, which were demolished in the 1960s having been used by generations of hop-pickers, are still visible.

The quote "Life was nasty, brutish and short" could have applied to navvies.

There is a much more extensive site of navvies' huts close to the Ribblehead Viaduct on the Settle to Carlisle line. That site was notorious in its day for riotous behaviour. It had been sited well away from any existing town or village because navvies were unwelcome as neighbours. The US equivalent of navvy villages were either short-lived mining towns that grew as ores were found and died when the ore was exhausted, or the railhead towns that moved as the transcontinental lines were built.

[oggbashan]

Deodand is a thing forfeited or given to God, specifically, in law, an object or instrument which becomes forfeit because it has caused a person's death.

[AllardChardon]

I truly enjoy the world of words and their history. Thank you, gentlemen. I hope i have not posted this one before, because it seems familiar;

rodomontade - noun 1. bragging speech 2. vain boasting or bluster: RANT

[oggbashan]

Originally Posted by AllardChardon

I truly enjoy the world of words and their history. Thank you, gentlemen. I hope i have not posted this one before, because it seems familiar;

rodomontade - noun 1. bragging speech 2. vain boasting or bluster: RANT

Origin of RODOMONTADE French, from Middle French, from rodomont blusterer, from Italian Rodomonte, character in Orlando Innamorato by Matteo M. Boiardo
First Known Use: 1612

Rodomonte

PS. Initially I thought there was a reference to Rodomonte in Helene Hanff's 84 Charing Cross Road. I was wrong. In her letter of March 10, 1961, she refers to Rhodope aka Rhodopis that she dramatised as "Aesop and Rhodope" for the Hallmark Hall of Fame. Only afterwards did she find out that Rhodope was "the most famous prostitute in Greece". Oops!

[patrick1]

Back at navvy, where I live in the Pennines there's quite a lot of lore about navvies and their temporary encampments when they made railways, canals and later reservoirs. There's a whole online book about navvies, here's a paragraph about the naming:

<< Canal navvies, rough and lowering but not yet thought monkey-like, began by calling themselves Excavators, Cutters, Diggers, Bankers, and Navigators (because they made inland navigations). When navigator was shortened to navie or navey, nobody knows. Navvy — so spelt — was first used in print in the 1830s. In the 1850s they called themselves Pinchers and Bankers, as well as navvies and navigators. By the 1870s they were Thick Legs and Blue Stockings, as well as navvies. By the 1890s they were Bill Boys, Tradesmen, Excavators, and navvies. In the twentieth century they were Pick-and-Shovel men, men who followed public works (the posh phrase, that, for polite society) and navvies. >>

Here's the link: http://www.victorianweb.org/history/...ullivan/4.html

Patrick

[AllardChardon]

Thank you, Og, for that wonderful article on Rodomonte, a great name, indeed. And thank you, Patrick, for that wonderful read about navvys. I must say the list of names for the time period are the best I have ever seen.

rockoon - noun a small rocket carried to a high altitude by a balloon and then fired

[AllardChardon]

Here is a great word combination for the weekend;

rock and rye - noun rye whiskey flavored with orange, lemon, and occasionally pineapple and cherry

[trysail]

piebald • n., a piebald horse or other animal, a pinto of grey and white or black and white coloring.
• adj., having irregular patches of two colors, typically black and white.





Another word I've seen a hundred times but never previously bothered to run to ground.

Piebaldism is a rare autosomal dominant disorder of melanocyte development. Common characteristics include a congenital white forelock, scattered normal pigmented and hyperpigmented macules and a triangular shaped depigmented patch on the forehead.

Although piebaldism can be classed as partial albinism, the vision problems associated with albinism are not usually present as eye pigmentation is normal.

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

[AllardChardon]

Thanks, Trysail, I love the pinto breed and have dreamed of owning one of my own, since I was a little girl, but I had never heard that term for them before.

roc - noun a legendary bird of great size and strength believed to inhabit the Indian Ocean area

[Handley_Page]

Originally Posted by AllardChardon

It is a great name, Penny Dreadful, and has a wonderful history that Og shared here a while back, much to my delight.

roly-poly - noun 1. a sweet dough spread with a filling, rolled, and baked or steamed 2. a roly-poly person or thing

Please forgive my joining this one late, but :-
Roly-Poly is also a term for a very large lady.

There used to be a troupe of dancers on TV called the Roly-Polys and they were all of them big girls. (a not-very-good example:- http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=GB&v=faen6MlWzFw

[Tio_Narratore]

Originally Posted by Handley_Page

Please forgive my joining this one late, but :-
Roly-Poly is also a term for a very large lady.

There used to be a troupe of dancers on TV called the Roly-Polys and they were all of them big girls. (a not-very-good example:- http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=GB&v=faen6MlWzFw

It's also a term for an isopod, also called a pill-bug, which rolls its segmented body into a ball when it's disturbed. Other terms for it include wood-louse and sow-bug. They feed on decaying wood and other rotting plant material.

[AllardChardon]

That is what we called those bugs, when I was a kid. I loved catching one and making it roll into a ball several times over, before letting it go, again. Thanks, Tio, for the nice trip down memory row.

Robin Goodfellow - noun a mischievous sprite in English folklore

[patrick1]

From Midsummer Night's Dream:

<< Either I mistake your shape and making quite,
Or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite
Called Robin Goodfellow. Are not you he
That frights the maidens of the villagery,
Skim milk, and sometimes labour in the quern,
And bootless make the breathless housewife churn,
And sometime make the drink to bear no barm,
Mislead night-wanders, laughing at their harm?
Those that Hobgoblin call you, and sweet Puck,
You do their work, and they shall have good luck.
Are you not he? >>


Patrick

[AllardChardon]

Thanks, Patrick, for reminding me where I had seen Robin Goodfellow's name before.

robe de chambre - noun DRESSING GOWN

[trysail]

ambigram • n., an ambigram is a typographical design or artform that may be read as one or more words not only in its form as presented, but also from another viewpoint, direction, or orientation.




What fun! It's not often that a word helps define itself ( be patient, sometimes it takes a couple of seconds ):

[Handley_Page]

Originally Posted by Tio_Narratore

You'll find it used in the "modern" era in Gordon Lightfoot's "Great Canadian Railroad Trilogy"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yzo6Otpgj-E

[off topic]
Pure magic
[/on topic]