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

Welcome Tav!

I said I'd reveal the answers today, so here they are:

1. athame
a) a knife used in pagan rituals

2. belayer
c) someone who holds the rope for a mountaineer

3. tellinid
a) a burrowing mollusc

4. water blue
b) a pale shade of blue

***

Scores:

A good turnout, and Dmitri hit the jackpot this time:

Dmitri
Gnomon
Bob, Tavaron
MMF, paulh, Recumbentman

Icy

Belayer...

That was my guess (and the only one I thought I might have a guess for as all the others were quite "furrin" to my ear).

I have mixed emotions about it. It's a bit of "nounification", taking a verb, adjective, or adverb and turning it into a noun; the opposite of "verbification".

But then again, "The one 'on-belay'" is quite a mouthful when you're mountaineering or repelling.




I also thought 'Tellinid' might describe someone visiting a certain Colorado ski resort town.

Smombie sounds so good, I may casually mention it at Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow. I'd like to be ahead of the curve rather than behind it.

Smombie is indeed a good word!

Nounification is universal. Any Scrabble player knows that if you can abc, then you can be an abcer.

Announcer, beater, catcher, doer, eater, farter, goer, helper, introducer, jumper, killer, murderer, nabber, opener, purchaser, questioner, runner, stayer, teacher, uploader, varnisher, wisher, x-rayer, yeller, zipper, to name only 26.

'What a Boone, what a doer,
What a dream-come-a-truer was he...'

Hollywood hacks certainly know how to do this.

So, if I lase something, does that make me a laser?

Around 1900, the word 'typewriter' meant 'someone, usually a young woman, who uses a typewriting machine.'

'She was a free-lance typewriter and canvassed for odd jobs of copying.' - O Henry

So why couldn't you be a laser?

Three more archaic words:

fing (v) to poke someone in the eye
hamm (v) to drive a nail into a piece of wood
groce (v) to sell foodstuffs

Are those real?

They are now. Just mentioning them makes them real . How do you think the people at the Oxford English dictionary decided whether words existed? They looked them up in print.

You can also turn a verb into a noun. If you prospect, you are a prospector. If you massage, you're a masseur or masseuse. If you execute something, you can be an executive, an executor, or an executrix.

Executrix only applies to magicians.

Graham Chapman (as colonel): "This is just getting silly!"

What about burglaize? I've heard that recently. Do people not know about burgle?

That should be burglarize

I feel the same way about the words "moisturize" and "moisturizer"...




"Moisten" is a perfectly cromulent word.

I'm happy with 'moisturize', so long as it has the specific definition 'apply proprietary pharmaceutical snake-oil to the skin'

Actually I only named 25. The killer proceeded to murderer without going to L.

That old joke that comes up every Christmas.