Seldom-Used Words

[Tio_Narratore]

How about frestive adj. Fidgeting about while waiting for the speeches to end and the festivities to begin.

 

[AllardChardon]

I know this word, but like the sound of it so much, I wanted to post it here for remembrance;

resplendent - noun shining brilliantly: LUSTROUS

 

[CarlusMagnus]

Slightly Off-Topic

I just thought I'd point out that I've started a companion thread, entitled Commonly Misused Words, to this thread here in the AH.

---CarlusMagnus

 

[AllardChardon]

Good to know, Carlus, I will check it out, soon.

resile - verb RECOIL; RETRACT; esp: to return to a prior position

 

[Handley_Page]

Good to know, Carlus, I will check it out, soon.

resile - verb RECOIL; RETRACT; esp: to return to a prior position

please give an example of this word. I may have a real use for it - like - now !

 

[oggbashan]

please give an example of this word. I may have a real use for it - like - now !

The more usual use is the adjective resilient, like a rubber band that resiles to its original shape when tension is released.

 

[AllardChardon]

I was thinking a snake might resile after a strike, but a rubber band is more to the point, thanks, Og. Resilient is akin to elastic.

repung - verb archaic to offer opposition, objection or resistance ~ vt: to contend against: OPPOSE

 

[CarlusMagnus]

repung - verb archaic to offer opposition, objection or resistance ~ vt: to contend against: OPPOSE

Did you mean "repugn"?

Which is to "repugnant" as "resile" is to "resilient."

 

[AllardChardon]

Yes, I did mean repugn, like in repugnant, but misspelled it! How funny, thanks for catching that, Carlus.

I did not know the first definition of this word at all;

repudiate - vt 1. to divorce or separate formally from ( a woman) 2. to refuse to have anything to do with: DISOWN 3 a. to refuse to accept; especially: to reject as unauthorized or as having no binding force b. to reject as untrue or unjust (~ a charge) 4. to refuse to acknowledge or pay

 

[oggbashan]

...

I did not know the first definition of this word at all;

repudiate - vt 1. to divorce or separate formally from ( a woman) ...

It used to be common in England before the 19th Century when actual marriages were beyond the means of poor people. The 'marriage' would be by simple acceptance that they were husband and wife. A public repudiation was the unofficial version of a divorce for those who were not legally married in the first place.

Selling a wife, an incident in Thomas Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge, was another form of repudiation, but was much rarer than folklore suggests.

In Victorian times such unofficial marriages were disapproved of, and local gentry or the poor persons' employers/landlords would sponsor a simple church ceremony, often of several couples at once.

In some Muslim countries, public repudiation can still take place by the man stating, three times, before an Imam or preacher that he wishes to divorce his wife. It isn't as simple as the anti-Muslim propaganda states. The man may have to explain why he wants to repudiate his wife and what provision he has made for her future subsistence (sound familiar?).

 

[oggbashan]

Docent

docent Either a university rank dozent below professor in some European Universities (in some countries this is now an obsolete title) or museum docent a guide, sometimes costumed, who can tell visitors about the museum or historic attraction they are visiting.

Neither use is known in British English. The ranks below associate professor in UK universities are Lecturers or Senior Lecturers. The museum guides are called guides, or if in costume re-enactors or just actors.

The US museum docents and the British museum guides are usually well-informed and worth talking to about what can be seen, because they have knowledge that isn't in the guide books. In the UK, many are volunteers, who have volunteered because they love the place they help at.

For example, in Warwick Castle while waiting for my wife who was discussing weaving with one costumed guide, I had a long conversation with a man dressed as a 14th Century archer. He was well informed not just about 14th Century archery, but about modern archery, and had made his bow, his arrows and parts of his costume himself. His wife, the lady dressed as a weaver, had made the rest of his clothing. She too was a modern archer but as 14th Century women archers were rare but not unknown she dressed as a weaver.

Once a day both of them would demonstrate archery in the castle's moat. With a modern replica of a 14th Century bow, she would sometimes outshoot her husband. She couldn't have done it with a real bow of the period because the draw weight would have been too high. (Neither could he. The replica bows drew at 30-35 lbs. The originals drew at 80-120 lbs.)

I appreciate intelligent and informed museum guides but they are never docents in British English.

 

[CarlusMagnus]

docentNeither use is known in British English. The ranks below associate professor in UK universities are Lecturers or Senior Lecturers. The museum guides are called guides, or if in costume re-enactors or just actors.

In the US, there is the rank of assistant professor, immediately below that of associate professor. All three ranks, assistant professor, associate professor, and professor, are entitled to be addressed as "Professor".

Below the rank of assistant professor, one finds either instructors or lecturers, depending upon the institution.

And we also have some zoo docents.

 

[oggbashan]

...

And we also have some zoo docents.

Do they dress up as the animals to perform their role?

Are Disneyland characters docents? They are usually very professional in their roles.

 

[AllardChardon]

Og, I always enjoy the additional information you share with us, thanks for contributing.

I aspire to being a volunteer docent at some point in my lifetime. During my stay in Tennessee, I went on the tour of the Belle Meade Plantation. The female docent was in full costume and sweating bullets in July, I can tell you!

Zoo docents wear regular dress as I recall, but I avoid zoos due to the captivity of it all.

Disneyland animal characters rarely speak out of character or at all. You can see the real person inside the costume and the gender is not always correct, so they remain silent and just nod and wave. Snow White, Cinderella and similar human characters are encouraged to verbally interact with people. I have spent considerable time at Disneyland over the years. I grew up about an hour away from there and we went several times a year starting with the first year back in the 50s. It has been awhile since I have been there, now that my kids are grown, although, I do love the thought of going to Disneyland, again. The Happiest Place on Earth!

reptant - adj CREEPING, REPENT

 

[trysail]

...For example, in Warwick Castle while waiting for my wife who was discussing weaving with one costumed guide, I had a long conversation with a man dressed as a 14th Century archer. He was well informed not just about 14th Century archery, but about modern archery, and had made his bow, his arrows and parts of his costume himself. His wife, the lady dressed as a weaver, had made the rest of his clothing. She too was a modern archer but as 14th Century women archers were rare but not unknown she dressed as a weaver.

Once a day both of them would demonstrate archery in the castle's moat. With a modern replica of a 14th Century bow, she would sometimes outshoot her husband. She couldn't have done it with a real bow of the period because the draw weight would have been too high. (Neither could he. The replica bows drew at 30-35 lbs. The originals drew at 80-120 lbs.)...

Og, I distinctly recall the fellow at Warwick Castle impressing me with the fact that if he used a historically accurate English longbow of yew it would likely dislocate his shoulder or break his arm.

 

[oggbashan]

Og, I distinctly recall the fellow at Warwick Castle impressing me with the fact that if he used a historically accurate English longbow of yew it would likely dislocate his shoulder or break his arm.

Tell me about it.

When I was young and working in a Royal Naval Dockyard, I and a friend decided to make a couple of longbows because we had wood from a felled yew tree.

We researched in the town's library (on-line hadn't been invented and this was long before the World Wide Web) and then wrote to the London City Livery company for Bowyers. If the Mary Rose had been raised, we would have known better.

The bows we produced were the best we could do using the extensive resources of the Dockyard. The arrows were cloth-yard shafts with forged points and goose feathers.

We tested the draw-weights. The bows averaged at 180 lbs. I could draw that weight. He couldn't.

However I couldn't hold the drawn bow still enough to shoot with accuracy. We did a few trials.

At thirty yards the greased point of the arrow would pass straight through three inches of pine (wrecking the goose-feathers). It would go through a quarter-inch of mild steel (ditto).

We couldn't try thicker steel or more wood because our activities came to the notice of the Dockyard authorities and we were instructed to cease firing arrows in a working Dockyard, particularly because our arrows were lethal.

We resumed our activities on Dartmoor. After some extensive weight training he managed to pull the weakest 120 lb bow and I was able to get some semblance of accuracy with the 180 lb bows. Conventional archery targets were useless because the arrows went through them as if they were thin paper. My accuracy was still woeful but I could send an arrow deep into a grassy bank at 150 yards.

My arm and shoulder hurt after only an hour. The archers at Agincourt and Crecy who shot for a whole day must have trained for years and have been very muscular. Modern archaelogical research has shown that archers' skeletons showed evidence of the strain impacting on the shoulders and arms. A middle-aged archer would have been very unusual.

Later we made a geared windlass-cocked crossbow with a draw-weight of 300lb plus. We used steel bolts. Those bolts would go through everything we fired at. Reloading and retensioning the crossbow was measured in minutes rather than seconds.

In retrospect the Dockyard authorities were very tolerant and even accepted our written account of our experiments for their files.

The Mary Rose bows? 50 to 60 lbs.

 

[CarlusMagnus]

Ort

Has anyone mentioned ort yet? It's one of my favorites.

ort: a morsel left at a meal.

Is there an easy way to find out what words have been discussed on this rather long thread without having to read through all those posts?

 

[oggbashan]

...

Is there an easy way to find out what words have been discussed on this rather long thread without having to read through all those posts?

Use the search facility - Search this thread, with the word you are looking for.

 

[CarlusMagnus]

Use the search facility - Search this thread, with the word you are looking for.

Nice idea. Except that there doesn't seem to be a way to limit the search to a single thread, and searching the whole forum on ort gives

Sorry - no matches. Please try some different terms.

The following words are either very common, too long, or too short and were not included in your search : ort

 

[JediRockstar]

I don't know if it's been mentioned because I have neither the time nor the patience to browse through 78 pages of discussion thread, but my personal favourite for seldom-used adjectives is

Callipygian:

having well shaped buttocks.

 

[Opedia]

impervious - incapable of being influenced, persuaded, or affected

 

[patrick1]

I don't know if it's been mentioned because I have neither the time nor the patience to browse through 78 pages of discussion thread, but my personal favourite for seldom-used adjectives is

Callipygian:

having well shaped buttocks.

Surprisingly enough, callipygian has been roundly mentioned several times. The search engine is limited, butt, I mean, but hey, this is a nice free site. If you try Advanced search and play a little you'll find other references reasonably easily.

P

 

[AllardChardon]

Welcome, JediRockstar and Opedia.

I must admit, I was a rather good archer when taking the subject in Physical Education during high school. I had an advantage, though. My brother had a bow and arrow set as a kid that he let me use, sometimes. Of course, these child bows were easy to draw, right along with the ones at my school. It was only after high school that I learned the truth of real bows and my inability to draw one. Also, cross bows have always fascinated me immensely. I wish I could have been your friend back in the day, Og, that sounds like great fun to me!

reprobate - vt 1. to condemn as unworthy or evil 2. to foreordain to damnation 3. to refuse to accept: REJECT

 

[Handley_Page]

Abnourmous: - Misshapen (18th Century)

 

[oggbashan]

...

I must admit, I was a rather good archer when taking the subject in Physical Education during high school...

Some years ago I attended a medieval day at Dover Castle, Kent. Among other re-enactments were archers firing at straw targets set up in front of a wall of the castle.

In a quiet moment, after hordes of children had shot with toy bows, and adults had used modern composite bows that looked like long bows, I asked if I could try the real thing.

They thought they would show me that it wasn't as easy as it looked. They handed me their heaviest draw-weight longbow. Even forty years on I could still draw it and shoot hard enough to pass through the target.

Their heaviest draw-weight? 100 lbs. Far less than the 180lbs I had used. They rarely used that bow because repeated use would cause muscle strain. Their normal 'longbows' were 45 lb and they could use that for a whole afternoon.