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| | | Subject: English as she is spoke
Posted Sep 20, 2006 by Wand'rin star
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12482
  | | The only one not currently on the bookshelf behind me is the Pam Peters. What word can one use for a language geek, I wonder? C*nning linguist? 
I too loved Quirk, both on paper and in the flesh. He came to give a seminar type thing in Leeds in 1962. We undergraduates were always invited to the post-grad things and the sherry etc afterwards (there were only 10 0f us doing the linguistics degree. Sometimes the prof [Peter Strevens] did a possible synopsis beforehand: those were the days before anyone much had published )Randolph Quirk paced up and down for two hours without notes, wagging his Sam Costa type moustache. He then answered an hour's worth of questions. To this day he is my ideal of a public speaker. And none of those lecturers treated 18year old women as morons. In fact I was 37 before I encountered a sexist academic. The shock was terrible.
btw
I'm not letting you off 'pilcher' as I'm not sure I believe the OED.
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| | | Subject: English as she is spoke
Posted Sep 22, 2006 by Edward the Bonobo - Gone.
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12492
| | I pronounce it 'stay-aht-OH-pidge-AY-us'.
Ah. My missing e explains why dictionary.com couldn't find it. My confusion is probably because the condition of having enlarged buttocks is known medically as 'steatopygia' - I thought it was 'steatopygeaia'. I guess it should be 'stay-aht-oh-PIG-us'
How do I know the word? Probably from a mention in an ancient encyclopedia of 'The Hottentots of the Kalahari' - the people now known collectively as San or Khoisan. Khoisan women characteristically have large bums. In the 19thC an unfortunate Khoisan woman was brought to Europe and displayed nude as a curiosity for the paying public.
http://www.answers.com/topic/saartjie-baartman
Also, 'Neolithic Venuses' - the carved figures regarded by archeologists as 'ritual objects' - although I suspect they are Flintstone porn - are frequently described as steatopigeous.
There's also 'callypigeous' (or some variant spelling thereof). Again, I can't find it online - and googling is leading me into dangerous territory.
Learn something new everyday, huh?
"Children, can we make a sentence with the word 'steatopigous'?"
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| | | Subject: English as she is spoke
Posted Sep 22, 2006 by ~ jwf ~
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12494
| | >> I'm not letting you off 'pilcher' as I'm not sure I believe the OED. <<
Not familiar with the pilcher, me. Never even heard of the pilchards it was suggested might be the source. But the entry quoted below suggests it definitely was one of the (more than) 28,000 words to be found in Shakespeare's vocabulary.
>>>>
"Fools are as like husbands as pilchards are to herrings." (Shak)
<zoology> A small European food fish (Clupea pilchardus) resembling the herring, but thicker and rounder. It is sometimes taken in great numbers on the coast of England.
Origin: Cf. It. Pilseir, W. Pilcod minnows.
Source: Websters Dictionary
>>>>>
~jwf~
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| | | Subject: English as she is spoke
Posted Sep 22, 2006 by ~ jwf ~
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12495
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>> Are cuties and hotties necessarily small? <<
Does diminuitive necessarily mean small?
I think, not always.
It also often refers to 'lesser' or 'secondary' items and beings where-ever the pecking order or rank of a system is determined by intangible quantities and qualities other than the standard three cubic dimensions.
In music  for example, a diminuitive note will still be a whole note of the same measure and duration as other notes. Only its volume is diminuated, when the composer indicates this is sufficient unto the diminuendo.
I also would say that 'bootee' is unique to the knitting scene and definitely the odd man out in the usual spelling of the 'diminuitive' or 'familiar' forms that end with an ee-sounding.
These are usually spelled with 'ie' or 'ey' or just 'y'.
eg: Hottie (hotties), cutey (cuties)...
And I would further suggest that Latin/Italian 'i' endings may well have been the inspiration for the ee-sounding endings. We still see this in examples like martini, Barbi, Condi (Rice), Bambi, Randi, Raffi, Uzi, Bacardi, Nazi...
The Mini (auto) defies all logic, as does the mini (skirt).
~jwf~
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| | | Subject: English as she is spoke be pirates, arr.
Posted Sep 23, 2006 by Recumbentman
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12496
| | A bit late for International Talk Like a Pirate Day (Sept 19) but a link from Gnomon gave me this bit of 17th century seaman's lore:
"If the ship go before the wind, or as they term it, betwixt two sheets . . ."
Surely this is a likely origin for the disputed phrase "three sheets to the wind" meaning "drunk"?
On a sailing craft a sheet is a rope that holds a corner of a sail. The best speed is got from the wind when sailing at right angles to it: on the quarter. Unfortunately that's not always the way you want to go. If you want to go into the wind, you can to a certain extent, by being close-hauled (one sheet very tight). If you want to go with the wind, you "run before the wind" - very easy but (perhaps surprisingly) not so fast as going across it on the quarter.
"Betwixt two sheets" describes the attitude of a square sail with the sheets (one at each bottom corner) both equally tight.
"Three sheets" would seem on the face of it more sheets than a sail should have; but I await correction from someone who knows more about sailing ships than I do.
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| | | Subject: Layette.
Posted Sep 25, 2006 by Wand'rin star
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12500
| | A layette is a complete set of clothes, blankets etc for a baby (C19 French)Like a bottom drawer for a wean. Why from French and what did they call it before the nineteenth century?)
Bib - no derivation given, but it seems to be C16
Bonnet- type of hat fastened under the chin with ribbons esp for babies. That's the first meaning given by the big dictionaries. "Easter bonnets" are seemingly much later.
Bootee/bootie – soft knitted boot for a baby. The spelling is seemingly optional!!
Matinee coat/jacket (C19 Fr meaning morning- yes, we knew that, but why did babies only need jackets in the morning?)
Mitt- C18 shortening of mitten C14 Fr
Shawl – C17 Persian!! All the other terms are French. Didn't English babies get knitted for, then? OED thinks that "pilch" was derived from the French "pelisse". This seems extraordinarily unlikely as a pilch is knitted pants to go over the nappy, replaced by rubber, then plastic pants.,star>
btw/ I expected ~jwf~ to know pilchard. I thought they had herrings in Newfoundland. My instinctive feeling is that it's Cornish dialect, but I can't find a dictionary to agree with me
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