h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Have you noticed how some English adjectives are generally used to describe only one noun? Transcendental (meditation), runcible (spoon), umbilical (cord)...

What's the point of them? And can you think of any more?

Icy

I've got a runcible cat and a transcendental mantlepiece, what are you talking about?

Baleful (glare).

I think "umbilical" is beginning to be used as a noun, dropping the "cord" bit altogether, which makes sense.

Zube

There speaks a non-Geek - surely the word 'transcendental' is used most commonly with 'dimensionally'.

surely the word 'transcendental' is used most commonly

I first heard it in a philosophy department when someone tried explaining to me the philosophy of Kant. I confess I had no idea what it meant.

'Umbilical' is also used in dog training - an umbilical line - a lead tethering the dog to its owner. So that's two uses!

Hm, isn't that because it's being used as a metaphor (similie? Dammit, I can never remember which is which ) to describe a connection that is well known to be intimate and emotional as well as physical? Or is it literally the particular lead's name?

It strikes me as being similar to the TTEAM dressage whip being called a wand because it's use is different to that implied by 'whip'. If I'm wrong I apologise, I am making an assumption...

'Unwarranted'

- can that be anything other than 'assumption'?

Response... Reaction... Unwarranted I use a few ways

As you say, some of them (like umbilical) do morph into nouns eventually. Another is 'jugular'.

Umbilical is used to describe various things, just because you don't know what they are, that doesn't make it a single use word.

Off the top of my head I know they use an umbilical line(I think) between space walkers and the spacecraft they originate from. At least they did before the unattached spacewalks of the space shuttle era.

It has a very specific meaning (i.e. it is a connection to a foreign object that sustains life in some way) that is largely only used by medics in their technical language but that just makes it a technical word that has morphed out into the general language because of its very common useage with babies.

I defend its honour as a multi-use word.

Unwarranted intrusion...

unwarranted arrest...




(I know, trouble maker )

"Umbilical" literally means "pertaining to the navel", so I think it is a single-use adjective, and its other uses are simply metaphors.

Dont worry, me too

Umbilical line in terms of space walks makes sense. It is a life-giving physical connection, makes sense.

Sometimes I wish we had access to a dictionary at work. I have to rely on you lot for the finnicky details...

Oooh! New information!

Ah, I had thought of oneno later than last year, but it's a French one:

'tombal'. That is to say, 'tombale' in its feminine form: 'une pierre tombale' is a tombstone.

My first lecture in third sociology.

Lecturer walks in 'Transcendental Phenomenological Reductionism' were the first words out of his mouth. He lost me from there

So, what IS that when it's translated into english? I sort of get the gist I think.

Never really found out, Robyn, sumat to do with Husserl. Didn't need it anyway, because it (the sociology) became more conventional afterwards and it was one the optional questions on the exam.

I never could take that lecturer seriously anyway - he had the biggest ski slope of a nose I've ever seen.

Can anything be unmitigated other than a disaster?