It's so quiet ... forgive me Maru, but i'm stepping in for a moment:
Word for the day:
evirate
[fr. L. evirare, to deprive of virility] to emasculate; to render unmanly
"Many Philosophers and Divines have evirated themselves, and put out their eyes voluntarily the better to contemplate." - Robert Burton, Anat. of Melancholy
Yay, new word! I didn't want to be the only one posting new words. You know how a word starts to sound weird when you say it over and over? There should be a word for that. Is there a word for that? Does the word "word" sound weird now?
From that font of all wisdom, Wikipedia: From a linguistic perspective, the phenomenon that a word after frequent repetition seems to lose its meaning is connected with the very nature of words. A word as a unit of language has three characteristics:
It has form, i.e. it is shaped out of sounds or, in the case of written language, out of letters (characters). It has function, which (among other things) means that it operates in a meaningful sentence. It has meaning, which implies that it refers to a certain unit of thought (a concept or an idea) within a context.
However, when a word is repeated over and over again, it is in fact only the form which is repeated. There is no sentence, so the function of the word is eliminated. Its meaning, too, is effectively eliminated, because there is no context. A few repetitions will leave the language user's memory and expectation intact: they remember the meaning and expect a meaningful reference. Continued repetition, however, will more and more foreground the word form to the exclusion of function and meaning, until the word literally "makes no sense." It is not the word that is being repeated, but only one of its aspects: the word form.
I just remember seeing that word once when I was looking for what the opposite of déjà vu is called but given that my academic studies include both micro- and macrolinguistics, maybe I should know things like this.
1. Today I had a class on popular culture and realized that I am very nescient on what is popular. At one point the professor asked who owns a smart phone and who owns a regular cell phone; back in school the question was who owns a cell phone and who doesn't, and when my brother was in school it was "what do you need that cell phone for?".
2. I also consider myself nescient in the sense of agnostic.
Not nescient in the agnostic sense. And I have a lot of knowledge in certain areas but not others, like math. Don't ever ask me about math. But if you need help with your medical bills, I'm your gal. We're all like that right? We have our special areas of expertise.
1. a branch of a river flowing away from the main stream but leading to no other body of water; a blind or dead-end channel. 2. a creek bed holding water only in the rainy season; a dried-up watercourse. 3. a stagnant backwater or slough formed by receding floodwater.
Once a jolly swagman camped by a billabong Under the shade of a coolibah tree, And he sang as he watched and waited till his billy boiled "You'll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me."
swagman = hobo swag/Matilda = hobo's bag billabong = dead river billy = tin can coolibah tree = eucalyptus tree waltzing = wandering, traveling bonus, jumbuck = sheep
I love that you had to translate the aussie song. It's like a second dialect here - i understood the lot.
And as for the postvocalic 'r' - i had to keep remembering to include 'r's when i was over there. We hardly use them in NZ. My advice for speaking like a kiwi is, eliminate almost every 'r' and pronounce most vowels as a 'u'.
For instance,(a favourite example) "Park the dark car in the car park" becomes "Puhk thuh duhk cuh in thuh cuh puhk"
Numbness of an extremity due to pressure on the sensory nerve.
Obdormition (from Latin obdormire "to fall asleep") is a medical term describing numbness in a limb, often caused by constant pressure on nerves or lack of movement. This is also referred to as a limb "going to sleep," usually followed by paresthesia, colloquially called "pins and needles".
I've been working in medicine for over 23 years, auditing medical records. I have never seen this word. Parasthesia, pins and needles, numbness and tingling-all these I see on a day to day basis but never obdormition. I'm going to test my doctors now.
(used with a singular or plural verb) Southern U.S. ill temper; colic; grumpiness. Origin: 1590–1600; earlier mulligrums, apparently alteration of megrims (cf. migraine)
Sounds like a smurf swearing. Also reminds me of shucks for some reason.
