Despite the acute embarrassment of a full-blown riot raging in a so-called "unriotable" penitentiary—and the fact that correctional officers were rarely murdered during an uprising—Warden Barton James and his people relied on the usual reactive models.
--Peter Collinson, 2002, The Northeast Kingdom, p. 76
Instead of putting out "All people are of equal worth regardless of merit" as some kind of mysterious truth-claim which appears in fact to be at best groundless and at worst false, would it not have been clearer and less evasive for the human-rights advocate simply to remark that he starts with a commitment on which he will not bend, namely a commitment to the treatment of all people as beings who are to have quite unforfeitably an equality of concern and respect?
--Kai Nielsen, 1984, Equality and Liberty: A Defense of Radical Egalitarianism, p. 23
She had one stack and, in spite of Stevenson's objections, one bow port, or trapdoor, where an unpointable, untrainable, and practically unloadable thirty-two pound gun was located—a "plaything," as her captain later called it.
--William N. Still, 1988, Iron Afloat: The Story of the Confederate Armorclads, p. 47
Scharff (1936) eliminated A. maculatus, which had been causing severe malaria, from 185 unoilable irrigation pools scattered over about 2 1\2 square miles . . .
But he said instead with a gruff uncordialness, "More's the pity," and, crossing his legs, slouched, sullen and black of mood, farther into the comer of his seat.
It is very difficult for the literary man to distinguish between a genuine crook term (like "back-door parole," prison slang for dying in prison) and an invented one (like "Chicago overcoat" for coffin).
--Selected Letters of Raymond Chandler, p. 218 (18 May 1950
One does not require much imaginative effort to visualize the predicament of an elderly man, originating from the lack of fulfilment in love, though to the sufferer himself, it might seem to be uniquely agonizing and shamefully unconfidable, but still a grand passion.
A bounty may go directly to certain interests, but this does not mean that those who engage in bountiable enterprises are made, to this extent, more prosperous than they otherwise would be.
--Joseph S. Davis, 1939. On Agricultural Policy, 1926-1938, p. 106
Letty fretted secretly a good deal about the difference between them and this new-found mother; her own bad grammar, Ben's tobacco, his everlasting noisy hillos and laughs, his bare red legs, gave her many an anxious hour.
Cats stalk lizards among the clay pots around the fountain, doves settle into the flowering vines and coo their prayers, thankful for the existence of lizards.
You read more newspapers than Mr. Hearst himself, though it aggravates you to no end. Shiffling through all that claptrap hunting a day's one glory. The rise of the little man somewhere, or the fall of a tryant.
Think of how you would paint this cat: with her insides exposed, the delicate rib cage curved like a ring's setting around a bloody gem of carnivorous love.
Just before the border were pecan orchards, dark blocks of trees with their boughs half bright and half shadowed, lit by the electric lights of the shelleries.
Thanks, john. Another one I just noticed: Apparently when more than one Wordnik contributes a variant, the variants get separate instead of combined headings. See cattywampus for an example. Also, can the drop-down box for related words be set to be blank as a default?
John, sorting was changed, but not fixed. Currently it seems to alphabetize words up to the list page that one is on, but not those on following pages. If you click through the pages on a big list, you can see the words accruing into alphabetical order.
Oops, I just outed myself as having an alias. I was testing how tags work and started composing the message as mollusque, but it got sent as grasshopper. (BTW, I'm not the only one who used grasshopper, it was traded at least once.)
I do' know the times when I 've set out to wash Monday mornin's, an' tied out the line betwixt the old pucker-pear tree and the corner o' the barn, an' thought, 'Here I be with the same kind o' week's work right over again.' I 'd wonder kind o' f'erce if I could n't git out of it noways; an' now here I be out of it, and an uprooteder creatur' never stood on the airth.
Urge the beast, can't ye, Jeff'son? I ain't used to bein' out in such bleak weather. Seems if I couldn't git my breath. I'm all pinched up and wigglin' with shivers now. 'T ain't no use lettin' the hoss go step-a-tystep, this fashion.
And when poor Jerry, for lack of other interest, fancied that his health was giving way mysteriously, and brought home a bottle of strong liquor to be used in case of sickness, and placed it conveniently in the shed, Mrs. Lane locked it up in the small chimney cupboard where she kept her camphor bottle and the opodeldoc and the other family medicines.
To be sure, it was the fashion to appear older in her day,—they could remember the sober effect of really youthful married persons in cap and frisette; but, whether they owed it to the changed times or to their own qualities, they felt no older themselves than ever they had.
I suppose you 're too young to remember John Ashby's grandmother? A good woman she was, and she had a dreadful time with her family. They never could keep the peace, and there was always as many as two of them who did n't speak with each other. It seems to come down from generation to generation like a—curse!" And Miss Debby spoke the last word as if she had meant it partly for her thread, which had again knotted and caught, and she snatched the offered scissors without a word, but said peaceably, after a minute or two, that the thread was n't what it used to be. The next needleful proved more successful, and the listener asked if the Ashbys were getting on comfortably at present.
The wind blew over pleasantly and it was a curiously protected and hidden place, sheltered and quiet, with its one small crop of cider apples dropping ungathered to the ground, and unharvested there, except by hurrying black ants and sticky, witless little snails.
They saw the woman that had the guitar, an' there was a company a−listenin', regular highbinders all of 'em; an' there was a long table all spread out with big candlesticks like little trees o' light, and a sight o' glass an' silver ware; an' part o' the men was young officers in uniform . . .
"Lord, hear the great breakers!" exclaimed Mrs. Todd. "How they pound!—there, there! I always run of an idea that the sea knows anger these nights and gets full o' fight. I can hear the rote o' them old black ledges way down the thoroughfare.
Esther was untouched by the fret and fury of life; she had lived in sunshine and rain among her silly sheep, and been refined instead of coarsened, while her touching patience with a ramping old mother, stung by the sense of defeat and mourning her lost activities, had given back a lovely self-possession, and habit of sweet temper.
The dark pools and the sunny shallows beckon one on; the wedge of sky between the trees on either bank, the speaking, companioning noise of the water, the amazing importance of what one is doing, and the constant sense of life and beauty make a strange transformation of the quick hours.
The truth was that my heart had gone trouting with William, but it would have been too selfish to say a word even to one's self about spoiling his day. If there is one way above another of getting so close to nature that one simply is a piece of nature, following a primeval instinct with perfect self-forgetfulness and forgetting everything except the dreamy consciousness of pleasant freedom, it is to take the course of a shady trout brook.
I watched her for a minute or two; she was the old Miranda, owned by some of the Caplins, and I knew her by an odd shaped patch of newish duck that was set into the peak of her dingy mainsail.
--Sarah Orne Jewett, 1896, The Country of the Pointed Firs
Last winter she got the jay-birds to bangeing here, and I believe she'd 'a' scanted herself of her own meals to have plenty to throw out amongst 'em, if I had n't kep' watch.
Mrs. Todd had taken the onion out of her basket and laid it down upon the kitchen table. "There's Johnny Bowden come with us, you know," she reminded her mother." He 'll be hungry enough to eat his size."
--Sarah Orne Jewett, 1896, The Country of the Pointed Firs
He might have belonged with a simple which grew in a certain slug-haunted corner of the garden, whose use she could never be betrayed into telling me, though I saw her cutting the tops by moonlight once, as if it were a charm, and not a medicine, like the great fading bloodroot leaves.
--Sarah Orne Jewett, 1896, The Country of the Pointed Firs
The conversation became at once professional after the briefest preliminaries, and he would stand twirling a sweet-scented sprig in his fingers, and make suggestive jokes, perhaps about her faith in a too persistent course of thoroughwort elixir, in which my landlady professed such firm belief as sometimes to endanger the life and usefulness of worthy neighbors.
--Sarah Orne Jewett, 1896, The Country of the Pointed Firs
It was thinly dressed in fluttering paper covers, and was so thick and so lightly bound that it had a tendency to divide its material substance into parts, like the seventhlies and eighthlies of an old-fashioned sermon.
She was a well made, pretty lookin' girl, but I tell ye 'twas like setting a laylock bush to grow beside an ellum tree, and expecting of 'em to keep together.
As he looked, he could see through a white low-hung mist, the ridge pole of the cabin roof and the crowstick chimney's ragged edge, the vines growing over the well-house, and bryony taking all the fence corners.
--Maristan Chapman, 1928, The Happy Mountain, p. 150
She might dressmake or do millinery work; she always had a pretty taste, and 't would be better than roving. I 'spose 'twould hurt her pride," --but Mrs. Thacher flushed at this, and Mrs. Martin came to the rescue.
She was 'shamed to look so shif'less that day, but she had some good clothes in a chist in the bedroom, and a boughten bonnet with a good cypress veil . . .
We saw them join the straggling train of carriages which had begun to go through the village from all along shore, soon after daylight, and they started on their journey shouting and carousing, with their pockets crammed with early apples and other provisions.
Tommy Dockum was more interested than any one else, and mentioned the subject so frequently one day when he went blackberrying with us, that we grew enthusiastic, and told each other what fun it would be to go, for everybody would be there, and it would be the greatest loss to us if we were absent. I thought I had lost my childish fondness for circuses, but it came back redoubled . . .
Kate and I cracked our clams on the gunwale of the boat, and cut them into nice little bits for bait with a piece of the shell, and by the time the captain had thrown out the killick we were ready to begin, and found the fishing much more exciting than it had been at the wharf.
And then he laughed apologetically, rubbing his hands together, and looking out to sea again as if he wished to appear unconcerned; yet we saw that he wondered if we thought it ridiculous for a man of his age to have treasured up so much trumpery in that cobwebby place
We found that it was etiquette to call them each captain, but I think some of the Deephaven men took the title by brevet upon arriving at a proper age.
There was a most heathenish fear of doing certain things on Friday, and there were countless signs in which we still have confidence. When the moon is very bright and other people grow sentimental, we only remember that it is a fine night to catch hake.
Kate and I took much pleasure in choosing our tea-poys; hers had a mandarin parading on the top, and mine a flight of birds and a pagoda; and we often used them afterward, for Miss Honora asked us to come to tea whenever we liked.
There was a beautiful view from the doorstep and we stopped a minute there. "Real sightly, ain't it?" said Mrs. Bonny. "But you ought to be here and look across the woods some morning just at sun-up. Why, the sky is all yaller and red, and them low lands topped with fog!
The banquet was nearly two hours late in coming forward, and the dryness engendered in the air by forty-three uncocktailed throats was so powerful that it deranged Mengtsz's electric system and all the lights went out.
This preacher has reduced dubiousness to a fine art. Doubtless he has escaped out of exaggeration, but he has not landed anywhere. Neither has he landed his people anywhere. In the next place he abates his diction to correspond to the neutralism of his thought. It is proper and pale, and inoffensive and unpotential, and void of positive verity.
--Nathaniel J. Burton, 1888, "Veracity in Ministers", Yale Lectures on Preaching, p. 346
30th edition, edited by Douglas M. Anderson, Patricia D. Novak, Jefferson Keith and Michelle A. Elliott, 2003. A comprehensive work of more than 2000 pages, it has lots of lists in addition to definitions: blocks, bodies, bones, canals, nuclei, syndromes, fossa, fractures, muscles, etc.
By J. E. Lighter, 1994-1997. Full title: Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang. The first two volumes are excellent, but the work seemed dead in the water when Random House abandoned it. Fortunately, Oxford University Press has decided to continue the work. HDAS also contains dincher (see my comment under Dictionary of American Regional English).
Edited by Frederic G. Cassidy and Joan Houston Hall, 1985 (vol. 1) - 2011 (vol. 5). Intensely complete, with many items recorded in no other well-known reference. For example, last night I was reading Barbara Kingsolver's The Lacuna, and came across dincher. It's not in OED2, MW2, MW3, RHD2, CDC1, Urban Dictionary or Wordnik (till now). DARE has it (under dinch): a cigarette butt. See the DARE website for more info.
Last word: check back in 2011, the work hasn't been completed yet.
By Gareth Branwyn, 1997. Subtitle: a pocket dictionary for the jitterati. A short book based mostly items from Wired's "Jargon Watch" feature, many of which probably started as madeupical (geekosphere, goofcore). All entries are capitalized, even though it doesn't capitalize its own title on the cover).
By Don Ethan Miller, 1981. Subtitle: An Essential Guide to the Inside Languages of Today. Grouped by topics, with 24 sections, including medicine, law, ballet, sailing, fashion, drugs, and wine.
By Anita Pearl, 1980. Full title: The Jonathan David Dictionary of Popular Slang. Most of the terms recorded in this work would already be known to a native speaker, and the organization is strictly alphabetical (no groupings or lists), so it's not clear who the target audience is.
"Valid variation"? Not in Latin or medical English. Words ending in -itis are feminine, so the adjective should be in feminine form. Compare *itis *osa and *itis *osum* on Onelook. Words ending in -derma are neuter, hence the -um ending with "xeroderma pigmentosum".
By Harold Wentworth and Stuart Berg Flexner, 1975, Second Supplemented Edition. The appendices contain some massive lists: words sorted by suffix groups (-aroo, -eroo, -roo, -oo), shortenings, reduplications (first, second and third order). These guys would have loved Wordie/Wordnik.
By Eric Partridge, 1970. Subtitle: Colloquialisms and Catch-phrases, Solecisms and Catachreses, Nicknames, Vulgarisms and such Americanisms as have been naturalized. 7th edition, two volumes in one (dictionary and supplement).
By J. S. Farmer and W. E. Henley. Subtitle: Three hundred years of colloquial, unorthodox and vulgar English". 1987 reprint of 1890 work titled Slang and its Analogues, 2 volumes. Provides citations illustrating the use of the words, and synonyms in various European languages.
And now the singular has been found, coined seven years before Borgmann constructed it:
The name illustrates an important feature of this disease, "subendolymphatic hyperplastic proliferation." . . . It was Dr. Frank's feeling that this was a subendolymphatic proliferation of the endothelium lining these spaces . . . .
--American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology (1957) 73: 1070
I've been curating my panvocalic lists, mostly to convert listings that need capitalization, and it's given me a new appreciation for the Examples, the images from Flickr and even the Twitter feed. Sometimes they provide the only results for a word: Calepodius, Mahmoudieh, Codiaeum, Bufonidae, Austin Powers.
Since developing better ways of dealing with capitalization is on the upgrade list, here's a couple more observations.
On Wordie I didn't tag the items in (for example) Panvocalic Proper with vowel sequences because it would have mixed upper and lower case words together on the tag list without distinguishing them. On Wordnik this isn't a problem since capitalization is preserved, so I can have a mixed list e.g., aeiou. So I hope whatever is being developed to handle capitalization keeps the visual distinction but maps the associated items together. At the moment it seems that the Twitter and images mappings are not case-sensitive, but the definition and example mappings are.
In most cases, converting to upper case increased the number of words that got a definition feed from the linked dictionaries, however, in some cases with the Century Dictionary, capitalization broke the link.
I imagine the hardest part with be merging the comments, since comments from capitalized words will intercalate with those from uncapitalized ones, if chronological order is maintained. Maybe in cases where both forms of the word have comments, the ones coming from the capitalized form could have a note to that effect added.
I have about 70 dictionaries, mostly English, but also Latin, French, German, Yiddish, Hebrew, Tagalog, and Hawaiian. My entomological shelf is maintained by Google Books.
I'm unable to update the description of my list Panvocalic Euryvocalic. I get the message saying it has been successfully updated, but nothing changes and the edits are not saved.
In reviewing the earlier travel books one comes across Eli Bowen, a postal official and writer who emphasized the railroads in a real Hungerfordian manner.
--Frank P. Donovan, 1940, The Railroad in Literature, p. 105
Hi PossibleUnderscore, as stated in the list description, all of the listed panvocalics have been used at least once in print, by an author who was not seeking to create a vowel or letter pattern.
So, yes, I consider all of the items listed to be legitimate words. For obscure words (rare and non-obvious meanings) I generally tag them with a dictionary in which they appear, or provide a quotation.
"Counterpain" gets more than 600 hits in Google Books. Some of them are misspellings of counterpane, but many are used in the sense of analgesic. Cotigulate I tagged with OED2, since it's listed there (meaning "to tile a house"). Schizoneuran is used in the entomological literature.
The related words feature has some interesting behavior, which I discovered when I accidentally listed "foot" as an antonym of autopodium. There was no apparent way to delete the entry, but when I then added "foot" as synonym, it replaced the entry for antonym. More testing shows that a word can be listed as only one of the options (antonym, synonym, cross-reference, related word, rhyme, variant). "Related word" is the most general; if the same word is then listed as a synonym, "synonym" replaces "related word", but more general categories don't supplant more specific ones.
That's a clever bit of programming, but it prevents some possibilities, such as listing "ramble" as a rhyme and a synonym of "amble", or "sanction" as both synonym and antonym of "encouragement".
Some other possibilities could be added to the drop-down list: "more general", "more specific", "bigger", "smaller", "more positive", "more negative". This would allow automatic generation and display of word chains such as:
Defined as "having the ability to switch between two lexicons in competitive Scrabble" (e.g., OSPD and SOWPODS) in Letterati by Paul McCarthy (2008, p. 287).
I hadn't come across autopod Jubjub, but judging from results in Google books, it's used almost as frequently as autopodium. Pro: does autopod qualify as colloquial? Gangerh: snort!
But there was enough for the shattered man, once a blood, and twice a dandy, but now a querulous, chalkstony valetudinarian — enough for his beautiful, blackbrowed, black-eyed, Frenchified daughter, who came with no good grace from her Boulogne circle of scampish pleasantness to rusticate in au English country-house.
Then the hill that hid the furnaces was rounded; the flammivorous smelters blooded the silver night for the last time; the moonlight ebbed and flowed upon the lime-cliffs.
Sionnach, your source is inaccurate. The space between the eyebrows is the glabella. The glabella is just below the ophryon (not "ophyron") (and just above the nasion). Diagram here.
One day she appeared at the schoolhouse itself, partly out of amused curiosity about my industries; but she explained that there was no tansy in the neighborhood with such snap to it as some that grew about the schoolhouse lot. Being scuffed down all the spring made it grow so much the better, like some folks that had it hard in their youth, and were bound to make the most of themselves before they died.
--Sarah Orne Jewett, 1896, The Country of the Pointed Firs
There is another story I'd like to have ye hear, if it's so that you ain't beat out hearing me talk. When I get going I slip along as easy as a schooner wing-and-wing afore the wind.
Worse still, spirits of the noblest strain, like Edith and Bonduca, suddenly break out into the same fishwifery, and rail with an excess of epithet that is as repulsive as it is picturesque.
--Gamaliel Bradford, Jr., 1908, "Beaumont and Fletcher", The Atlantic Monthly 101: 131
I just noticed in leaving a comment on the blog that absolute rather than relative links must be used there. At least, that's the case in linking to a tag, since the blog has tags of its own. Is it possible to edit comments on the blog?
I hadn't anticipated words like "pup", "calf" and "chick" when I started the list. My original thought was words (or phrases in the case of monkey puzzle) that arose independently. "Bug", "primate", etc. don't qualify because they apply to all members of their group and so don't have different origins or meanings.
"Pup" and "calf" aren't independent words when applied to dog and seal or cow and whale, but the organisms aren't closely related. The young of carnivores might be called "kits" or "cubs" and of ungulates "fawns", "foals", or "shoats". So I'd say they do bring two different kinds of animals to mind.
"Chick" doesn't fit; there are lots of animals terms that can be applied to people (hog, hawk, rabbit). Doesn't someone have a list like that?
So do I. I'm just thinking it would be fun to read with one list for one syllable words and another for two. If marky doesn't take up the idea, maybe I'll pursue it.
Edit: marky's post came in while I was writing mine. Marky, I think we can push one syllable over 100 words.
For me, only a few more things need to be tweaked and Wordnik will have equaled Wordie for (fun)ctionality.
1) Move tags to the comments page, and show them larger, directly under the word. As the leading tagger on Wordie/Wordnik, I find I have little incentive to tag when the tags are relegated to a sidebar on a page that otherwise can't be modified by users. Tags aren't fun anymore.
2) Restore more of the listings of top ten for the week (e.g., top ten commenters). And restore the links to the all-time lists. Some of us like looking at the wordometer. Newbies can crack the top 100 in a week; it takes (took) fewer than 1000 words listed.
3) Restore the iconic links to various dictionaries on the comments page. I often used them, particularly the OneLook link.
4) Under profiles, restore the list of comments by user. I often used that to find the threads I wanted to catch up on, and I'd use it now to find any remaining borked bits from the transition and fix them.
After that, imagine when the "Take this word" options include "define it", "etymologize it", "exemplify it".
Tags with apostrophes seem not to be working. Both zz and zzz are tagged z's, but clicking on the tag gives the message "No words have been tagged z's yet. Why not go tag some?"
Borgmann's coinage is no longer purely madeupical (but the singular form still hasn't been spotted outside the laboratory):
"The increased prevalence of salpingitis due to N. gonorrhoeae at the time of menses has fostered the contention that the loss of mucosal integrity and the rich supply of subendolymphatics are important variables in transforming occult glandular infection into clinically recognized disease."
--Gilles R. G. Monif and David A. Baker, 2008, Infectious Diseases in Obstetrics and Gynecology, p. 451
Well, it is possible to reach the 16-letter plateau with SUBENDOLYMPHATIC, a contrived word best interpreted as meaning "partly within a lymphatic vessel.
--Dmitri A. Borgmann, 1965, Language on Vacation: an Olio of Orthographical Oddities, p. 126
It seems that the person listed as having first listed a word is often not the person who first listed a word. For example, curbstone on bilby's I Can't Believe It's Not Listed.
Also when someone listed a Word more than once on Wordie, all the List occurrences were grouped together, but Wordnik sorts them in order of listing, which seems preferable, unless moving the word to a different list means they are no longer credited with having first listed the word.
This reminds me of arguments about what is a species. No definition of "species" works in all situations, and the same is true of "word". OED2 says about species, "The exact definition of a species, and the criteria by which species are to be distinguished (esp. in relation to genera or varieties), have been the subject of much discussion."
Some of the hallmarks of words are that they are pronounceable, used for open communication, have inferable meanings, and are related to other words (have derivations).
I don't think every combination of letters can be considered a word. "Madeupical" meets all four of the criteria above; "dhn" mets none of them. The meaning of madeupical, might be inferred by a native speaker of English even without a context, even though it is not a standard formation. The meaning of dhn cannot be determined without a context. It might be an acronym, or it might be an arbitrary string of characters that conveys meaning only as a code.
When we came down from the lighthouse and it grew late, we would beg for an hour or two longer on the water, and row away in the twilight far out from land, where, with our faces turned from the Light, it seemed as if we were alone, and the sea shoreless; and as the darkness closed round us softly, we watched the stars come out, and were always glad to see Kate's star and my star, which we had chosen when we were children.
Almost all the coasters came in sight of Deephaven, and the sea outside the light was their grand highway. Twice from the lighthouse we saw a yacht squadron like a flock of great white birds.
As Mrs. Kew had said, there was "a power of china." Kate and I were convinced that the lives of her grandmothers must have been spent in giving tea-parties. We counted ten sets of cups, beside quantities of stray ones; and some member of the family had evidently devoted her time to making a collection of pitchers.
I agree with dontcry. I always used to read Wordie by scanning for the threads in purple first, to pick up where I'd left off. Also in some operations I do on lists, knowing that I've clicked before saves a lot of time.
They flanked opposite ends of the house and were probably architectural absurdities, redeemed in a measure indeed by not being wholly disengaged nor of a height too pretentious, dating, in their gingerbread antiquity, from a romantic revival that was already a respectable past.
She had reached the period of life that he had long since reached, when, after separations, the dreadful clockface of the friend we meet announces the hour we have tried to forget.
Gravener was profound enough to remark after a moment that in the first place he couldn't be anything but a Dissenter, and when I answered that the very note of his fascination was his extraordinary speculative breadth, my friend retorted that there was no cad like your cultivated cad and that I might depend upon discovering (since I had had the levity not already to have inquired) that my shining light proceeded, a generation back, from a Methodist cheesemonger.
John, how about delegating some of the clean-up to longtime users? If you gave them superuser powers, they could search out (given appropriate tools) the remaining problems with character conversions and fix them. This would mean allowing the superusers to edit other users comments.
You could harness that fijitiocsjts energy for something beyond meta!
Yet another aspect of the split: try looking up some of the Wordie neologisms, like alphavocalic. The definitions page gives no hint that Wordnik has information about such words, i.e., that they've been listed and commented on. It should show when words have been listed (maybe showing the first ten lists). To make room for this, how about moving the tags to the comments page (since tagging is a form of commenting), and cutting out six of the picture from Flickr so the right column is continuous.
"Janusian thinking"—the capacity to conceive and utilize two or more opposite or contradictory ideas, concepts, or images simultaneously—is discussed in relation to its role in the creative process in art, literature, architecture, music, science, and mathematics. I feel that understanding the psychological factors in creativity should be of importance in the theory and everyday practice of the art of psychotherapy.
--Albert Rothenberg, 1971, "The Process of Janusian Thinking in Creativity", Archives of General Psychiatry 24(3): 195
While writing the previous comment, I realized the shortcoming of have the comment box at the top: it's smaller than before, which makes it harder to compose longer comments. How about popping up a larger window for comments, like the tags box we used to have on Wordie? Or automatically enlarging the comment box once typing hits the fifth line?
I'm starting to get used to the janusian feel of the Wordienik chimaera. The Wordnik definition pages show the ducks from above, and the Wordie zeitgeist pages show the spirited paddling underneath. I'm not sure I want more people to pay attention to the activity below. Might we be overwhelmed if too many people joined the fray?
The split is odd at times though. Clicking on a bracketed word brings you to the definition page, not the comment page, yet the words are often being bracketed to refer to another comment. And tags can be added only from the definitions pages, not the comments pages. We need an option "Take this word and . . . tag it", and a short cut for linking a word to its comment page. (Maybe double square brackets?)
Lipton uses anamonics to keep track of large numbers of words. In simplest terms, an anamonic is a phrase that helps the player remember a group of words made up of similar letters, like the seven-letter word POLENTA plus a blank.
I gazed long at the weather-worn block; and, stooping down, perceived a hole near the bottom still full of snail-shells and pebbles, which we were fond of storing there with more perishable things. . .
Hi tiara, interesting list! May I recommend putting the parenthetical remarks as comments instead of with the words? Also, try entering the words in lower case unless they need to be capitalized. You'll see that some of them are on some other color lists, which might give more fodder for your lost.
He entered the Gothic archway of the hall where Bouteillan, the old bald butler who unprofessionally now wore a mustache (dyed a rich gravy brown) met him with gested delight. . .
He could not say afterwards, when discussing with her that rather pathetic nastiness, whether he really feared that his avournine (as Blanche was to refer later, in her bastard French, to Ada) might react with an outburst of real or well-feigned resentment to stark display of desire. . .
Next day, or the day after the next, the entire family was having high tea in the garden. Ada, on the grass, kept trying to make an anadem of marguerites for the dog while Lucette looked on, munching a crumpet.
She carefully closed a communicating door as they entered into what looked like a glorified rabbitry at the end of a marble-flagged hall (a converted bathroom, as it transpired).
I did the opposite, yarb. I wrote down lots of words to start with, when I was on my Nabokov jag a few months ago. But I petered out on Ada after about 100 pages; I just didn't care for the story.
You could clip and kiss, and survey in between, the reservoir, the groves, the meadows, even the inkline of larches that marked the boundary of the nearest estate miles away, and the ugly little shapes of more or less legless cows on a distant hillside.
Rolled up in its case was an old "jikker" or skimmer, a blue magic rug with Arabian designs, faded but still enchanting, which Uncle Daniel's father had used in his boyhood and later flown when drunk.
John, your reply to madmouth on Craigslist - stuff for sale raises a question. Will we be able to capitalize existing listed words that are supposed to be capitalized, or will we have to drop one and add the other?
The opening sentence must be an earcatcher of sufficient value to retain the listener's interest. Sometimes, a catchy melody or a fanfare is the perfect for this opening "teaser."
--Barbara E. Benson, 1945, Music and Sound Systems in Industry, p. 52
At a recent meeting of the Berlin Geographical Society, reported in Ocean Highways, Herr Langenbach read a paper on the culture of the Orange in Sicily. The Agrume is first met with in latitude 44°, while the sweet Orange does not grow plentifully above 41°. The lecturer stated that there are seven different species of Sicilian Oranges, which are subdivided into no less than thirty-two different kinds.
The place, as he approached it, seemed bright and breezy to him; his roamings had been neither far enough nor frequent enough to make the cockneyfied coast insipid.
--Henry James, 1893, "Sir Dominick Ferrand", The Real Thing, and other tales, p. 88
His book was a novel; it had the catchpenny cover, and while the romance of life stood neglected at his side he lost himself in that of the circulating library.
--Henry James, 1893, "The Middle Years", Scribner's Magazine 13: 610
He found him in the little wainscoted Chelsea house, which had to Peter's sense the smoky brownness of an old pipebowl, surrounded with all the emblems of his office—a litter of papers, a hedge of encyclopaedias, a photographic gallery of popular contributors—and he promised at first to consume very few of the moments for which so many claims competed.
--Henry James, 1892, "Sir Dominick Ferrand", The Cosmopolitan 13: 325
The year before, in a big newspapery house, he had found himself next her at dinner, and they had converted the intensely material hour into a feast of reason.
--Henry James, 1892, "Nona Vincent", The English Illustrated Magazine 9: 365
The only flightless zygodactyl I can think of is the kakapo. I suppose with a combination of hopping and waddling, it might break into an occasional scurry.
Excellent and disturbing point, sobriquet. All 20 of the examples Wordnik pulls in for "gound" are incorrect, based on typos of "ground". What is Wordnik doing that adds any authoritativeness? Why pull in definitions from other online dictionaries? Doesn't OneLook serve that purpose? Or the dictionary links on Wordie?
I'd much rather see Wordnik give a venue for "lexigraphic irregulars" to help devise definitions and provide compelling quotations, than be another portal that mashes up the same old stuff.
Gangerh, good observation about the vertical lists. I can pick panvocalics out of a vertical list much more rapidly than out of a horizontal list. I'd say relegate horizontal lists to cloud view.
Good work, John! Definitely an improvement over the old Wordnik. A few comments and questions.
On the Wordnik profile, I would like my favorites to be public but my browsing history to be private, as on Wordie, but that's not an option on Wordnik.
Should I update my Wordnik profile, or will my Wordie profile be migrated?
Unlike Wordie, Wordnik has a pre-existing corpus. Will Wordnik still show who first listed a word? Will it be possible to add words to the corpus without listing them? To me, listing words and building the dictionary are two separate activities. The only downside of separating them is that it would no longer be possible to have "ghost words".
I'm not sure I like the homepage. It makes a reasonable first impression, but I think it will get old quickly. I find myself thinking, it would be cleaner if "is" weren't in blue. And maybe the same for "in the known universe". How about just "Wordnik: the most comprehensive dictionary".
On the zeitgeist page, "Favorited" should be "Favourited" for panvocalicness.
How will comments be mapped from Wordie to Wordnik for words like polish where capitalization matters?
OED2 cites 1864, but Dana first used the term in 1852.
"This centralization is literally a cephalization of the forces. In the higher groups, the larger part of the whole structure is centered in the head, and contributes to head functions, that is, the functions of the senses and those of the mouth."
--James D. Dana, 1852, Crustacea. Part II. United States Exploring Expedition 13: 1397
I work in Philadelphia, but grew up in South Jersey in an area which on that map is Atlantic Midland, but is actually East Midland; the border is farther north than Vineland.
I don't merge any of the vowels in question, so I guess I'm either East Midland or General American. What's the distinction between those two?
It's a thousand pities she can't keep on goin' to school," said Mrs. Jones; "if 'twarn't for the trouble of lookin' arter her, I wouldn't mind givin' her her wittles, but such gals is so obstropalous."
--Mrs. E. Little, 1846, "Riches without Wings", The Ladies' Wreath 1: 309
Perhaps if like me he'd been able to hide his otakuness maybe shit would have been easier for him, but he couldn't. Dude wore his nerdiness like a Jedi wore his light saber or a Lensman her lens.
Junot Díaz, 2007, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, p. 21
To be called boycrazy in a country like Santo Domingo is a singular distinction; it means that you can sustain infatuations that would reduce your average northamericana to cinders.
--Junot Díaz, 2007, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, p. 88
C_b, I meant that anyone could mark anyone's comment as a definition or citation. I suppose that could be misused, but I don't see people have been intentionally marking, for example, verbs as conjunctions. Another possibility might be to allow multiple people to mark a comment as a definition, which could bubble it to the top in a subtler way that Urban Dictionary.
How about more access to the underlying database? So that one could query, say, for words appearing on lists with "bird" in the name and also on lists with "panvocalic" in the name. Or for adverbs tagged as palindromes (if any exist). Or English adjectives derived from Swedish. Or words with the repeat pattern for letters of 12345234.
I prefer the term "comments": it's the current name on Wordie, it's relatively neutral, and it's a standard database name for a field that contains discursive information.
I'd like to be able to mark comments as definitions or citations in the same way that we can mark parts of speech under tags. That means that anyone could mark a comment as a citation or definition (or both, or presumably unmark it), so that past comments could be categorized. That would allow one to view only comments that are definitions or citations if desired.
I don't want to see many options for marking comments though, because as Prolagus suggests, it could be deadening. Imagine marking jokes as such *shudders*.
Having played around on Wordnik for a few minutes now, I'd guess Wordie could be a portal into Wordnik once the databases are integrated. That could let the minimalist Wordieview be maintained.
There are some great features on Wordnik, like the ability to suggest related words. (Something that was suggested on Wordie a while ago, by yours truly.) So John, I hope you'll dredge back through the features suggestions and dust off some of them for implementation.
Does this mean we get capitalization? How is Wordnik going to handle all our games and non-English characters (like ΒΑ�?Α�?Α)?
They gave him a grand for a quitclaim just to save time and expense, and now somebody is going to make a million bucks clear, out of cutting the place up for residential property.
Raymond Chandler, 1953, The Long Goodbye, chapter 25
Towards the far shore, which wasn't very far, a black waterhen was doing lazy curves, like a skater. They didn't seem to cause as much as a shallow ripple.
Raymond Chandler, 1953, The Long Goodbye, chapter 24
I knew it was going to be one of those crazy days. Everybody has them. Days when nobody rolls in but the loose wheels, the dingoes who park their brains with their gum, the squirrels who can't find their nuts, the mechanics who always have a gear left over.
Raymond Chandler, 1953, The Long Goodbye, chapter 21
A guy in a shantung jacket and an open neck shirt came up behind her and grinned at me over the top of her head. He had short red hair and a face like a collapsed lung.
Raymond Chandler, 1953, The Long Goodbye, chapter 24
On a bar stool a woman in a black tailormade, which couldn't at that time of year have been made of anything but some synthetic fabric like orlon, was sitting alone with a pale greenish-colored drink in front of her and smoking a cigarette in a long jade holder.
Raymond Chandler, 1953, The Long Goodbye, chapter 22
It seemed to me for an instant that there was no sound in the bar, that the sharpies stopped sharping and the drunk on the stool stopped burbling away, and it was like just after the conductor taps on his music stand and raises his arms and holds them poised.
Raymond Chandler, 1953, The Long Goodbye, chapter 13
And right now I didn't need the work badly enough to let some fathead from back east use me as a horse-holder, some executive character in a paneled office with a row of pushbuttons and an intercom and a secretary in a Hattie Carnegie Career Girl's Special and a pair of those big beautiful promising eyes.
Raymond Chandler, 1953, The Long Goodbye, chapter 13
Then I went to a Turkish bath place. I stayed a couple of hours, had a steam bath, a plunge, a needle shower, a rubdown and made a couple of phone calls from there.
Raymond Chandler, 1953, The Long Goodbye, chapter 5
But I had no mental picture at all of Terry Lennox loafing around one of the swimming pools in Bermuda shorts and phoning the butler by R/T to ice the champagne and get the grouse atoasting.
Raymond Chandler, 1953, The Long Goodbye, chapter 3
I had a mental picture of the kind of eighteen-room shack that would go with a few of the Potter millions, not to mention decorations by Duhaux in the latest subphallic symbolism.
Raymond Chandler, 1953, The Long Goodbye, chapter 3
. . . almost his last dollar had gone into paying the check at The Dancers for a bit of high class fluff that couldn't stick around long enough to make sure he didn't get tossed in the sneezer by some prowl car boys, or rolled by a tough hackie and dumped out in a vacant lot.
Raymond Chandler, 1953, The Long Goodbye, chapter 1
On a coffee table in front of a hard green davenport there was a half empty Scotch bottle and melted ice in a bowl and three empty fizzwater bottles and two glasses and a glass ash tray loaded with stubs with and without lipstick.
--Raymond Chandler, 1953, The Long Goodbye, chapter 1
I rang a bell and a large soft man oozed out from behind a wall and smiled at me with moist soft lips and bluish-white teeth and unnaturally bright eyes.
--Raymond Chandler, 1949, The Little Sister, chapter 34
It had the sort of lobby that asks for plush and india-rubber plants, but gets glass brick, cornice lighting, three-cornered glass tables, and a general air of having been redecorated by a parolee from a nut hatch.
--Raymond Chandler, 1949, The Little Sister, chapter 34
He held the door wide and I went in past him, into a dim pleasant room with an apricot Chinese rug that looked expensive, deepsided chairs, a number of white drum lamps, a big Capehart in the corner, a long and very wide davenport in pale tan mohair shot with dark brown, and a fireplace with a copper screen and an overmantel in white wood.
--Raymond Chandler, 1943, The Lady in the Lake, chapter 3
This assumes that the discovery curve is sigmoidal, with the x-axis being time and the y-axis being number of genera known. It also assumes that our concept of what constitutes a genus won't change, that the peak should be defined in terms of genera instead of species, and that birds aren't dinosaurs.
Thanks, Milosrdenstvi. I could just take them from Wikipedia, but it's more fun to spot them as they're used on Wordie. Apparently there's more than one way to write the Georgian alphabet. What did you learn about that?
Two world records this week: 100 meters in 9.58 seconds and 200 meters in 19.19 seconds, in both cases breaking his previous record by 0.11 seconds. Astounding!
They have only two varieties of pizza here — regular and extra cheese. None of this new age southern California olives-and-sun-dried-tomato wannabe pizza twaddle.
--Elizabeth Gilbert, 2006, Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything across Italy, India and Indonesia, p. 80
Traveling-to-a-place energy and living-in-a-place energy are two fundamentally different energies, and something about meeting this Australian girl on her way to Slovenia just gave me such a jones to hit the road.
--Elizabeth Gilbert, 2006, Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything across Italy, India and Indonesia, p. 78
And so there was a marriage after all, a wedding at the end with orchestra and fireworks and a reception at the Taj and the Gateway blocked off again for a dance sequence by the sweepers and sweeperesses of Bombay.
This species of interference . . . . may be called Metallagē, or more simply "Cross Compensation," a name I gave it towards a quarter of a century ago . . . . the earlier of two letters is displaced by a later one; but then, instead of repeating the latter in its proper place, the hand instantly and automatically executes the mental instruction first given it by dashing in the earlier and displaced letter where the later one should be written; the result, therefore, has the aspect of a simple interchange; e.g. . . . Padoga for pagoda . . . .
--T. Le Marchant Douse, 1900, "On some minor psychological interferences: a study of misspellings and related mistakes." Mind: A Quarterly Review of Psychology and Philosophy 9: 88
Also a misspelling or mispronunciation in which two letters in a word are switched in position. Misspelled metallege by no less an authority than Dmitri Borgmann.
But contrary to the linked article, they are not the only vertebrates that can reproduce without a mate. Parthenogenesis has been demonstrated in some sharks.
Accessibility expert and standardista Joe Clark, whose name will pop up more than once in this book, has created a Failed Redesigns campaign . . . designed to spread standards awareness while shaming those who produce new or redesigned sites that act as if "the 21st century is frozen in the amber of 1999."
--Jeffrey Zeldman, 2007, Designing with Web Standards, p. 53
Shevek, I'm not sure what you find disrepectful--the original posting or one or more of the comments that followed. Since the original list has apparently now been deleted, it's hard to tell what the context was. I posted the next line in transliteration, partly because it came immediately to mind, but also so that someone who wanted to find out what it was could do so by searching for some of the words.
A Google search for the tetragrammaton in Hebrew finds more than half a million instances. It's appearance on Wordie is not inherently disrepectful. A devout Jew would not write the tetragrammaton because of the risk that someone would throw out the paper it was written on rather than dispose of it through the appropriate ritual. The appearance on Wordie does not make someone likely to inadvertently pronounce it. Any who reads Hebrew automatically says "Adonai" or some other substitute.
I wondered about that when I added the quotation. Sharper as a noun of similar meaning goes back to 1797 (OED2). Cardsharper became common in the 1850s perhaps because of the British racehorse of that name. Another possibility (inferred from the notes in the Library of America edition) is that Nabokov was echoing the ending of shuler and Schüler:
"I have often wondered why the Russian for it cardsharper . . . is the same as the German for 'schoolboy,' minus the umlaut . . ."
One dire detail: in rapid Russian speech longish name-and-patronymic combinations undergo familiar slurrings: thus "Pavel Pavlovich," Paul, son of Paul, when casually interpellated is made to sound like "Pahlpahlych" and the hardly utterable, tapeworm-long "Vladimir Vladimirovich" becomes colloquialy similar to "Vadim Vadimych."
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 249
. . . my mouth stayed mute and benumbed until I realized I could feel my tongue—feel it in the phantom form of the kind of air bladder that might help a fish with his respiration problems, but was useless to me.
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 245
Yet, somehow, during my glide down those illusory canals and cloudways, and right over another continent, I did glimpse off and on, through subpalpebral mirages, the shadow of a hand or the glint of an instrument.
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 245
Imagine me, an old gentleman, a distinguished author, gliding rapidly on my back, in the wake of my outstretched dead feet, first through that gap in the granite, then over a pinewood, then along misty water meadows, and then simply between marges of mist, on and on, imagine that sight!
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 240
And yet I feel that during three weeks of general paresis (if that is what it was) I have gained some experience; that when my night really comes I shall not be totally unprepared.
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 239
Should I abandon my art, choose another line of achievement, take up chess seriously, or become, say, a lepidopterist, or spend a dozen years as an obscure scholar making a Russian translation of Paradise Lost that would cause hacks to shy and asses to kick?
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 97
It was now the publisher who bore the brunt of having my hand transformed directly into printed characters; and I know he disliked the procedure as a well-bred entomologist may find revolting an irregular insect's skipping some generally accepted stage of metamorphosis.
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 235
One of the streets projecting west beyond the traffic island traversed the Corso Orsini and immediately afterwards, as if having achieved an exhausting feat, degenerated into a soft dusty old road with traces of gramineous growth on both sides, but none of pavement.
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 233
. . . a stylized memoir dealing with the arbored boyhood and ardent youth of a great thinker who by the end of the book tackles the itchiest of all noumenal mysteries.
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 231
A furrow sloped down from each nosewing, and a jowl pouch on each side of my chin formed in three-quarter-face the banal flexure common to old men of all races, classes, and professions.
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 228
My forehead, with its three horizontal wrinkles that had not really overasserted themselves in the last three decades, remained round, ample and smooth, waiting for the summer tan that would scumble, I knew, the liver spots on my temples.
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 227
Reality would be only adulterated if I now started to narrate what you know, what I know, what nobody else knows, what shall never, never be ferreted out by a matter-of-fact, father-of-muck, mucking biograffitist.
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 226
I say "you" retroconsciously, although in the logic of life you were not "you" yet, for we were not actually acquainted and you were to become really "you" only when you said, catching a slip of yellow paper that was availing itself of a bluster to glide away with false insouciance: "No, you don't."
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 225
From the shelves, I swept into the wastebasket, or onto the floor in its vicinity, heaps of circulars, separata, a displaced ecologist's paper on the ravages committed by a bird of some sort . . .
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 225
I felt lacquered from head to foot, like that naked ephebe, the bright clou of a pagan procession, who died of dermal asphyxia in his coat of golden varnish.
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 206
It was a very warm day in June and the farcical air-conditioning system failed to outvie the whiffs of sweat and the sprayings of Krasnaya Moskva, an insidious perfume which imbued even the hard candy (named Ledenets vzlyotnyy, "take-off caramel," on the wrapper) generously distributed to us before the start of the flight.
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 206
. . . certain of its other features, details of substance and items of information, were, let us say, "modified" by a new method, an alchemysterious treatment, a technique of genius, "still not understood elsewhere," as the chaps in the lab tactfully expressed people's utter unawareness of a discovery that might have saved countless fugitives and secret agents.
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 205
Because of it, the process of my academic discarnation reached its ultimate stage. The last vestiges of human interconnection were severed, for I not only vanished physically from the lecture hall but had my entire course taped so as to be funneled through the College Closed Circuit into the rooms of head-phoned students.
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 194
Fortified by a serenacin tablet, I received my daughter and lawyer with the neutral dignity for which effusive Russians in Paris used to detest me so heartily.
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 165
She forced me out of the room; I went rumbling and groaning; she gave a perfunctory pat to the creaseless cot and followed the man of snow, the man of tallow, the dying lop-sided man.
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 144
A visitor interrupted her: a brown, gray-cheeked old dackel carrying horizontally a rubber bone in its mouth. It entered from the parlor, placed the obscene red thing on the linoleum, and stood looking at me, at Dolly, at me again, with melancholy expectation on its raised dogface.
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 144
A surly janitrix (reminding me in mnemonic reverse of the Cerberean bitches in the hotels of Soviet Siberia which I was to stop at a couple of decades later) insisted on my writing down my name and address in a ledge . . .
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 143
Aimlessly I walked up and down several halls; abjectly visited the W.C.; but simply could not, short of castrating myself, get rid of her new image in its own portable sunlight—the straight pale hair, the freckles, the banal pout, the Lilithan long eyes . . .
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 138
She could borrow, perhaps, his old sedan though he might not like the notion (pointing to a nondescript youth who was waiting for her on the sidewalk). He had just bought a heavenly Hummer to go places with her.
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 138
An expression of mild melancholy lent a new, unwelcome, beauty to her Botticellian face: its hollowed outline below the zygoma was accentuated by her increasing habit of sucking in her cheeks when hesitative or pensive.
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 130
. . . he was one of the very few larger saurians in the émigré marshes who followed me in 1939 to the hospitable and altogether admirable U.S.A., where with egg-laying promptness he founded a Russian-language quarterly which he is still directing today, thirty-five years later, in his heroic dotage.
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 130
The book in my mind appeared first, under my right cheek (I sleep on my noncardial side), as a varicolored procession with a head and a tail, winding in a general western direction through an attentive town.
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 123
We do not usually think in words, since most of life is mimodrama, but we certainly do imagine words when we need them, just as we imagine everything else capable of being perceived in this, or even in a still more unlikely world.
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 123
By the middle of 1938 I felt I could sit back and quietly enjoy both the private praise bestowed upon me by Andoverton and Lodge in their letters and the public accusations of aristocratic obscurity which facetious criticules in the Sunday papers directed at the style of such passages in the English versions of my two novels as had been authored by me alone.
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 120
They confused the specimen with the species; Hop, Leap, and Jump wore in their minds the drab uniform of regimented synonymity; and not one page passed without a boner.
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 118
I replied that I was the kind of snob who assumes that bad readers are by nature aware of an author's origins but who hopes that good readers will be more interested in his books than in his stemma.
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 111
Hi c_b! Clams can indeed locomote. Scallops can clap their valves together to produce little jets of water that let them swim. Ephippodonta have the valves permanently open and crawl along on their foot. Divariscintilla yoyo hangs from the walls of stomatopod burrows and bobs up and down. Phlyctaenachlamys lysiosquillina probably does the same. Enigmonia have a hole in the bottom valve through which they stick the foot to crawl up mangrove trees.
. . . sitting at a table and filling by means of a injector the semitransparent ends of carton-tubed cigarettes of which he never consumed more than thirty per day to avoid intercadence at night.
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 111
She knew, hey-hey (Russian chuckle), that I was a noctambule, so perhaps I might like to stroll over to the Boyan Bookshop sans tarder, without retardment, vile term. I might, indeed.
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 88
To insert the same wanter in the same paper would have been foolhardy: what if it were to bring back Lyuba, flushed with renewed hope, and rewind that damned cycle all over again?
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 87
I slept fitfully, and only in the small hours glided into a deeper spell (illustrated for no reason at all with the image of my first little inamorata in the grass of an orchard) . . . .
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 46
She would retire for a minute, closing one door after another with a really unearthly gentleness, to the humble toilettes across the corridor, and would reappear, just as silently, with a repowdered nose and a repainted smile, and I would have ready for her a glass of vin ordinaire and a pink gaufrette.
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 82
A first draft, made in pencil, filled several blue cahiers of the kind used in schools, and upon reaching the saturation point of revision presented a chaos of smudges and scriggles.
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 80
Another and final deception would come with the Fair Copy in which, for a short while, calligraphy, vellum paper, and India ink beautified a dead doggerel. And to think that for almost five years I kept trying and kept getting caught—until I fired that painted, pregnant, meek, miserable little assistant!
—Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 44
Thanks, qroqqa. I original set out to create a list that would have included those, but then decided to restrict the list to terms that might be considered descriptive of the list itself. The exception is removalist, which was the inspiration for the list to begin. I'll move it to a new list. : )
As he peeped through a vestibule window and watched him emerge from his car, no clarion of repute, no scream of glamour reverbed through his nervous system, which was wholly occupied with the bare-thighed girl in the sun-shot train.
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1972, Transparent Things, p. 29
A dreadful building of gray stone and brown wood, it sported cherry-red shutters (not all of them shut) which by some mnemoptical trick he remembered as apple green.
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1972, Transparent Things, p. 3
Rolig, that's my point. Because there is no consistency in the use of serial commas, most people read things the same way with or without them. This shows that they rarely have any purpose, so might as well use them only when they do have purpose, as in the example you give, which shows that Martin groups with Mary Jo, not Bart.
A writer who used serial commas only occasionally can use them not only to avoid ambiguity but to indicate emphasis or cadence. Using them all the time to avoid rare instances of ambiguity puts consistency ahead of expressiveness.
To me, the mandatory Oxford comma (as distinct from the optional serial comma), is similar to the American convention of always putting the closing quotation mark outside a comma or a period. Instead, I follow the British convention of put the quotation mark where logic dictates.
I generally don't use the serial comma, except when ambiguity might arise. Looking over my list of Triads, I see some where I should have included the comma for cadence, but many others I consider to be so closely associated that the comma is unnecessary.
On the slopes above his path the trunks of the ashes and sycamores, a honey gold in the oblique sunlight, erected their dewy green vaults of young leaves; there was somthing mysteriously religious about them, but of a religion before religion; a druid balm, a green sweetness over all . . . and such an infinite of greens, some almost black in the further recesses of the foliage; from the most intense emerald to the palest pomona.
--John Fowles, 1969, The French Lieutenant's Woman
I'm more on the splitter side, bilby. In my experience if a splitter is wrong, it's still possible to tell what was meant. If a lumper is wrong, it's hard to tell what was meant.
For example, let's suppose you think there are three species of snails, A, B, C, in a genus, but a splitter decides there are five, A, B, C, D, E. You can map the splitter's concepts to your own: perhaps A = A, B|D = B, C|E = C. If a lumper says there is only one species A, you don't know if only A was present, or also B and C.
DNA sequencing techniques have shown that splitters are right more often than lumpers.
We may define a formulative hypothesis as follows : A structure, the essential parts of which are assumed facts or connections of facts more or less inconsistent with known facts, used in formulating other known facts. It achieves this by virtue of certain logical and formal correspondences which exist between its abstract qualities and those of the facts it is employed to explain. The verification of the assumed facts is not in question, since their inverity is one of the premises, but that of the relations between the ascertained facts which emerge, is the step to which the making of the hypothesis was only a preliminary. This sort of hypothesis, therefore, is a sort of formula, or has the properties of a formula.
--Alexander Smith, 1907, Introduction to General Inorganic Chemistry, p. 142
Just went mobile, with a G1. It works pretty well with regular Wordie because I can line it up on a column and scroll down. The thing I miss is being able to search within a page.
Hi gangerh, there's an alternative to waiting: have more than one Wordie window open at a time. Use one for reading comments, the other for adding words, or whatever else you want to be doing.
. . . he gave it as his opinion that the dog was a cross between a wolf, a Shetland pony, and hyena. It was about that time that Fluff had to be chained.
Around here (Philadelphia area), geezers are old and male. They drive under the speed limit, hitch their pants up above the navel, and are less likely than codgers to be feisty.
The tegmina are broad, nearly as broad as long, and rounded apically; the radial vein is joined to a refurcation of the median by a slight, transverse vein . . . .
--R. C. L. Perkins, 1906, Report of Work of the Experiment Station of the Hawaiian Sugar Planters' Association, Bulletin 1: 451
Greenapple's lists contain only 84 out of a supposed total of 226 words. There are similar discrepancies with a lot of the early Wordies, but I don't know why. (See my comment at the tag kat for another example.)
The supporting data are, first, the degree of "humanity" or "humanoidness" of the individual creatures as reported or alleged; second, the over-all extent to their bodies are human; third, the degree in which their footprints approach those of man; and fourth, to some extent, how they are said to behave.
--Ivan T. Sanderson , 2006, Abominable Snowmen, p. 356
The proper use of such relubricators is recommended by many manufacturers, and has resulted in improved control bearing lubrication when used in aircraft servicing.
Soon after obtaining additions to my own collection of eggs, some of which required mending, I was attracted by the wonderful adhesive force of coaguline in cementing shells together.
--Ernest Ingersoll, 1882, Birds'-nesting: A Handbook of Instruction in Gathering and Preserving the Nest and Eggs of Birds for the Purposes of Study, p. 58
A few TENS units are designed to be used at subsensation levels; that is, when a sensation is felt, the stimulator is turned down to just below sensation level.
--Margo McCaffery, 1979, Nursing Management of the Patient with Pain, p. 126
Scientific constructivism is the thesis that there's an Sx for every scientific fact x We also need the concept of a subscenario. Sy is a subscenario of Sx if the occurrence of Sx logically entails the occurrence of Sy.
--André Kukla, 2000, Social Constructivism and the Philosophy of Science, p. 53
Epsilon-globin gene switching (from on to off) and gamma-globin gene switching (from off to on and off again) correlate well with methylation (off) and unmethylation (on) of sites within and surrounding the genes . . . .
--Craig A. Cooney & E. Morton Bradbury, 1990, Chapter 34, The Eukaryotic Nucleus: Molecular Biochemistry and Macromolecular Assemblies 2: 820
A circa 1911 fountain at Jersey City's Lincoln Park, designed by French sculptor Pierre Cheron, combines the period's fascination with fountains and animal sculpture in a composition that includes bronze, waterspouting frogs and allegorical figures.
--Meredith Arms Bzdak, 1999, Public sculpture in New Jersey: Monuments to Collective Identity, p. 11
The short biography and prefatory account . . . tell us much concerning the life and character of Professor Field but, unfortunately, do not adequately reveal why he became so intensely interested in population problems at a time when these problems called for but superficial and afterthoughtish treatment by most American economists.
--Review of Essays on Population and Other Papers, in Ethics: an international journal of social, political, and legal philosophy 42: 486 (1932).
With the retreat from the smooth glass cube comes not only the reintroduction of massive projections and recessions in order to create strong light and shade, but in absolute contrast to the sleek glass material, a forming and pouring of concrete to bring out rugose tactile qualities of the outer skin. In some quarters the name given to this ferocity in concrete is neobrutalism.
--William Snaith, 1964, The Irresponsible Arts, p. 111
Too many recent non-communities have sprung fully shaped from the architects' and planners' drawing boards. Given the neo-brutalism of some of them, one is tempted to say "fully armed." The hallmarks of good design are now seen to lie with the ungrandiose and the unimposed.
John, thanks for taking up my active open lists suggestion. Even though it's not sorting the way you want, it's doing what I'd hoped: bringing old favorites to mind. Apparently you're excluding the recent list from the active list to avoid duplication, which is a neat trick. Glad to see the recent tags list too.
Lip with a short, ligular basal claw, apparently articulated with the column foot, the central portion or mesochile inflated, subcalceiform, waxy yellow, 8-12 mm. long, the apex broadly obtuse, with a short or elongate, erect, linear-lanceolate, acuminate projection 6—10 mm.
I read this book last week, sionnach, and I was rather disappointed. Ammon Shea proved to be a curmudgeon who emphasized words with negative connotations. Many of them were interesting, but only a few were delightful.
. . . the minimum in effective pressure may migrate downward in the subducted layer . . . . This leads to subaccretion with downward migration of the decollement.
--X. L. Pichon, P. Henry, and S. Lallemant, 1993, "Accretion and Erosion in Subduction Zones: The Role of Fluids", Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences 21: 307-331
An accession number is assigned to each photograph within a classification letter. In addition, subaccession numbers are assigned to photographs in the following circumstances . . .
--Library resources and technical services, 1979, p. 170
The author explains that the exercise of repealing an ordinance and repromulgating it amounts to colourable legislation and thus a fraud on the Constitution and makes an appeal to the Supreme Court to make an authoritative pronouncement on the point.
--Indian Association for Cultural Freedom, 1984, New Quest, p. 313
Thanks, myth. I haven't paid much attention to the color articles on Wikipedia yet. I'm still wading through MW3 and OED2, since my criterion for listing is that the color name must appear in a dictionary.
(By the way, there are instructions for making external hyperlinks in the fine print immediately above the comment box.)
That's an intriguing idea, myth: context-dependent comments. For each word one added to a list, there'd be an option to add a comment (then or later) specific to the listing. If this were to be implemented, one question would be if such comments should be displayed on the home page, or revealed only in list-view.
He was a traditional craftsman, full of enthusiasms, a man who worked in a timber studio in his Cotswold garden, ideally with Radio 4 and a nice chunk of English boxwood to be engraved with spitstickers and scorpers.
--Simon Garfield, 2009, The Error World: An Affair with Stamps, p. 150-151
"Stamps were made for computers . . . they look beautiful when scanned and enlarged, it's so easy to catalogue and trade them, and the nerdery of stamps and the early nerdery of computers were made for each other."
--Simon Garfield, 2009, The Error World: An Affair with Stamps, p. 121
Hi, yarb. I include hyphenated words with Panvocalic phrases. I list noninstrumental and other "non-" words without the hyphen, assuming I've found an example in print.
Qroqqa, you need to search for "+compliancy -compliance". The minus sign fixes the problem, showing 765,000 ghits; the plus sign strips out about 6000 more.
They looked down on Willis Woodford the bank-clerk, and his anxious babycentric wife, the silent Lyman Casses, the slangy traveling man, and the rest of Mrs. Gurrey's unenlightened guests.
They surveyed the small eccentric bungalows with pergolas, the houses of pebbledash and tapestry brick with sleeping-porches above sun-parlors, and one vast incredible château fronting the Lake of the Isles.
Hi bilby! The phenomenon is called autotomy, but I'm not aware of a blanket name for animals capable of it. I thought it might be autotomizer, but that turns out to be the name of the muscle that contracts to cause the self-amputation. How about autotomaton?
A similar discovery was also made about the same time by Ehrenberg, independent of that of Edwards, and was taken by him as the basis of his classification of the Polypes, dividing these animals into two principle group, Anthozoa and Bryozoa, according as the alimentary canal has one or two external openings . . .
--Arthur Farre, 1837, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, p. 389
Antedating from OED2 citation from 1847 from Bryozoa, and 1851 for Anthozoa.
In an email exchange with an editor at the Oxford English Dictionary today, I learned that while they use Google Books for research, they do not use it to seek antedatings (at least for entries that have already been edited in the current cycle). Wordies might have fun seeking such antedatings. (Warning: the dates given in Google Books are unreliable, so verify the date of publication by checking the image of the title page.)
Interesting article, but it implies that there are words that are the similar enough in modern Indo-European languages as to be intelligible across languages. No examples of such are given.
Hi loosecannon, you have to upgrade to WordiePRO to copyright or trademark words on Wordie. Several users have already taken advantage of this feature. Here's a list of the words copyrighted so far.
Hi kat! What's the story with the stealth color names? I've hit half a dozen where you were the first to list the color, but it doesn't show on one of your lists, e.g., royal purple.
Thanks, reesetee! I finally started tagging my Chromonyms by color, which provided the impetus. That tagging, of course, raises all sorts of questions. Should I tag just as, for example, "blue" and "green", or as "blue", "greenish blue", "bluish green", and "green".
Hi hernesheir. Your comments are exactly what I expect on Wordie. You're not just cutting and pasting from other online sources (which gets old fast), but extracting the essence. "Singularly peculiar Galician teat-shaped" (tetilla) and "45% fat content and a grassy-mushroomy flavor" (cooleney) don't occur elsewhere online.
I don't use the private notes feature. I use tags if I want to record something about a word without giving a full-fledged definition.
Hi etaoinsrdlu, welcome to Wordie. I like your madeupical words. They'll get more exposure if you put the definition as a comment rather than as part of the word.
Hi hernesheir, thanks for all the suggestions, but none of them are quite what I collect on this list. I look for phrases that are or might be defined in a dictionary, having special or idiomatic meaning beyond what knowing the meanings of the component words would suggest. (Outreaching is on my Panvocalics list.)
. . . but to those persons who take interest in the social habits, the architecture of the Romans in Britain, and their commercial resources, in may be worth knowing, that besides the great profusion of brick, which they may be supposed to manufacture near at hand, they used at Bignor the limestone rock (locally called malm) dug on the spot, for their walls, some of the Pulborough sandstone, very probably for quoinage, and, for their columniation, the Bath or Oxford oolite.
--Peter J. Martin, 1859, Sussex Archaeological Collections 11: 136
Comments by mollusque
Show previous 200 comments...
mollusque commented on the user mollusque
Regarding the ongoing work on links intended to stop spammers: just when I'd trained my donkey not to eat he died on me.
Edit: That was posted on the feedback profile.
February 13, 2010
mollusque commented on the word muster
We muster passed on it.
February 12, 2010
mollusque commented on the word serendipiter
Articles that Talese wrote for the Times provided most of the material for his first book, New York: A Serendipiter's Journey (Harper, 1961) . . .
--Current biography yearbook, 1973, p. 424
February 12, 2010
mollusque commented on the list lost-for-word
Could I request an Apostrophe Flying Squid Squad instead?
February 12, 2010
mollusque commented on the word undertemptors
It's in his Cardiophonia from 1824 (as "undertempters").
February 12, 2010
mollusque commented on the list lost-for-word
PossibleUnderscore, is q.v. what you're looking for?
Edit: "your" changed to "you're".
February 12, 2010
mollusque commented on the word pigeonhole principle
Assuming none of the pigeons depart before the pigeonholing is finished. Maybe their condo association allows timesharing?
February 11, 2010
mollusque commented on the word Phyllidia polkadotsa
An excellent seaslug!
February 11, 2010
mollusque commented on the list ria
Clucklaster either.
February 10, 2010
mollusque commented on the list ria
We wouldn't want you to be lackcluster, marky!
February 10, 2010
mollusque commented on the word uncoilable
Which is it: able to be uncoiled or not able to be coiled?
February 10, 2010
mollusque commented on the word unriotable
Despite the acute embarrassment of a full-blown riot raging in a so-called "unriotable" penitentiary—and the fact that correctional officers were rarely murdered during an uprising—Warden Barton James and his people relied on the usual reactive models.
--Peter Collinson, 2002, The Northeast Kingdom, p. 76
February 10, 2010
mollusque commented on the word unforfeitably
Instead of putting out "All people are of equal worth regardless of merit" as some kind of mysterious truth-claim which appears in fact to be at best groundless and at worst false, would it not have been clearer and less evasive for the human-rights advocate simply to remark that he starts with a commitment on which he will not bend, namely a commitment to the treatment of all people as beings who are to have quite unforfeitably an equality of concern and respect?
--Kai Nielsen, 1984, Equality and Liberty: A Defense of Radical Egalitarianism, p. 23
February 10, 2010
mollusque commented on the word unpointable
She had one stack and, in spite of Stevenson's objections, one bow port, or trapdoor, where an unpointable, untrainable, and practically unloadable thirty-two pound gun was located—a "plaything," as her captain later called it.
--William N. Still, 1988, Iron Afloat: The Story of the Confederate Armorclads, p. 47
February 9, 2010
mollusque commented on the word unoilable
Scharff (1936) eliminated A. maculatus, which had been causing severe malaria, from 185 unoilable irrigation pools scattered over about 2 1\2 square miles . . .
--Mark Frederick Boyd, 1949, Malariology, p. 1373
February 9, 2010
mollusque commented on the word uncordialness
But he said instead with a gruff uncordialness, "More's the pity," and, crossing his legs, slouched, sullen and black of mood, farther into the comer of his seat.
--Susan Johnson, 1991, Forbidden, p. 94
February 9, 2010
mollusque commented on the word Chicago overcoat
It is very difficult for the literary man to distinguish between a genuine crook term (like "back-door parole," prison slang for dying in prison) and an invented one (like "Chicago overcoat" for coffin).
--Selected Letters of Raymond Chandler, p. 218 (18 May 1950
February 9, 2010
mollusque commented on the word unbodiable
. . . Dante's celestial rose, or Plato's unbodiable good . . .
--Monica Ferrell, 2008, The Answer is Always Yes, p. 74
February 8, 2010
mollusque commented on the word unconfidable
One does not require much imaginative effort to visualize the predicament of an elderly man, originating from the lack of fulfilment in love, though to the sufferer himself, it might seem to be uniquely agonizing and shamefully unconfidable, but still a grand passion.
--Thought 14: 194 (1962)
February 8, 2010
mollusque commented on the word bountiable
A bounty may go directly to certain interests, but this does not mean that those who engage in bountiable enterprises are made, to this extent, more prosperous than they otherwise would be.
--Joseph S. Davis, 1939. On Agricultural Policy, 1926-1938, p. 106
February 8, 2010
mollusque commented on the list panvocalics
That could be a terrifying suffix, Pro. I'll have to explore it more.
February 8, 2010
mollusque commented on the list ruzuzus-ideal-list
Have you discovered any other ideal lists, ruzuzu?
February 7, 2010
mollusque commented on the list scrabble-names
Fun list!
February 7, 2010
mollusque commented on the list scrabble--2-to-make-3
Looks like it's too late to let you know. ; )
February 7, 2010
mollusque commented on the word nummy
Then how did you get to this page? Is seeing it okay?
February 7, 2010
mollusque commented on the user zeke
Thanks for the alphaliterals Zeke. I added all but a couple to the list. Hope you'll start a few lists of your own.
February 6, 2010
mollusque commented on the word hillos
Letty fretted secretly a good deal about the difference between them and this new-found mother; her own bad grammar, Ben's tobacco, his everlasting noisy hillos and laughs, his bare red legs, gave her many an anxious hour.
--Rebecca Harding Davis, 1870, "Ben", Putnam's Magazine, new series, 5: 174
February 6, 2010
mollusque commented on the word chikor
Bird wird, reesetee!
February 6, 2010
mollusque commented on the list panvocalics
Thanks, Pro! Links fixed.
February 5, 2010
mollusque commented on the word gestanko
The hotel in D.C. had a lousy bar, the place was gestanko in general.
--Barbara Kingsolver, 2009, The Lacuna, p. 450
February 5, 2010
mollusque commented on the word lizards
Cats stalk lizards among the clay pots around the fountain, doves settle into the flowering vines and coo their prayers, thankful for the existence of lizards.
--Barbara Kingsolver, 2009, The Lacuna, p. 393
February 5, 2010
mollusque commented on the word Poatlicue
The author's "Studs Lonigan" is an Indian youth named Poatlicue, watched by the jealous king as he hones his skill in battle.
--Barbara Kingsolver, 2009, The Lacuna, p. 345
February 5, 2010
mollusque commented on the word shiffling
You read more newspapers than Mr. Hearst himself, though it aggravates you to no end. Shiffling through all that claptrap hunting a day's one glory. The rise of the little man somewhere, or the fall of a tryant.
--Barbara Kingsolver, 2009, The Lacuna, p. 338
February 5, 2010
mollusque commented on the word carnivorous
Think of how you would paint this cat: with her insides exposed, the delicate rib cage curved like a ring's setting around a bloody gem of carnivorous love.
--Barbara Kingsolver, 2009, The Lacuna, p. 275
February 5, 2010
mollusque commented on the word shellery
Just before the border were pecan orchards, dark blocks of trees with their boughs half bright and half shadowed, lit by the electric lights of the shelleries.
--Barbara Kingsolver, 2009, The Lacuna, p. 84-85
February 5, 2010
mollusque commented on the list constellationes-novi
Bilby, you beat me to Namarrgon! : )
February 5, 2010
mollusque commented on the user feedback
Thanks, john. Another one I just noticed: Apparently when more than one Wordnik contributes a variant, the variants get separate instead of combined headings. See cattywampus for an example. Also, can the drop-down box for related words be set to be blank as a default?
February 3, 2010
mollusque commented on the user feedback
Why is that almost every random word I tried tonight (about 40) had 5 examples?
February 3, 2010
mollusque commented on the user sionnach
Would an aspirator help c_b?
February 3, 2010
mollusque commented on the word Namarrgan
The linguists might not agree, but Namarrgon is where the action is online.
February 2, 2010
mollusque commented on the user hernesheir
That makes you about the same vintage as me.
February 2, 2010
mollusque commented on the word Namarrgan
Bilby, I think it's misspelled there. Try Namarrgon.
February 2, 2010
mollusque commented on the word astraphobia
Make it five: tonitrophobia.
February 2, 2010
mollusque commented on the list get--got--gotten
In Hebrew, get means a divorce.
February 2, 2010
mollusque commented on the user feedback
John, sorting was changed, but not fixed. Currently it seems to alphabetize words up to the list page that one is on, but not those on following pages. If you click through the pages on a big list, you can see the words accruing into alphabetical order.
February 2, 2010
mollusque commented on the user feedback
Oops, I just outed myself as having an alias. I was testing how tags work and started composing the message as mollusque, but it got sent as grasshopper. (BTW, I'm not the only one who used grasshopper, it was traded at least once.)
February 1, 2010
mollusque commented on the word greensweeper
The two-color catalog contains product pictures and specifications for equipment ranging from a greensweeper to turf aerator with core processor.
--The Golf Superintendent, 1975, p. 60
February 1, 2010
mollusque commented on the word got the gimmes
got 'em bad
January 30, 2010
mollusque commented on the word Kaw
Talking crow in The Chronicles of Prydain
January 30, 2010
mollusque commented on the word Llyan
A giant cat in The Castle of Llyr, the third book of The Chronicles of Prydain.
January 30, 2010
mollusque commented on the word Bill the Cat
Ack!
January 30, 2010
mollusque commented on the word meiofauna
See meiofauny (Polish).
January 30, 2010
mollusque commented on the user thtownse
Glad you liked meatloaf.
January 30, 2010
mollusque commented on the word crambo
A word game that wasn't listed! (Well, sionnach has dumb crambo). Has anyone played it?
January 29, 2010
mollusque commented on the word circumambulate
How do you feel about discombobulate?
January 29, 2010
mollusque commented on the word ginger
It's not usually pejorative, but it can be used pejoratively, just as blonde can (example.)
January 29, 2010
mollusque commented on the word magnetotellurics
Hmm, if we could just snip out the extra "e": magnotelluric. Which does appear online, but seems to be a misspelling.
January 29, 2010
mollusque commented on the word pongsome
I agree frindley. I've heard the odor of rotting seashells referred to as a pong, and it's definitely pongsome.
January 29, 2010
mollusque commented on the word wait staff infection
It doesn't need a new category, that's what False teeth fairies is for. Maybe gangerh should put a link to it in the list description.
January 29, 2010
mollusque commented on the word carbofuchsine
The covers were then put through the regular cover-slip preparation, carbofuchsine being used for the bacilli with methylene blue as a contrast stain.
--C. C. Beach, 1899, "Insects as Etiological Factors in Disease", Proceedings of the Connecticut Medical Society, p. 104
January 29, 2010
mollusque commented on the user hernesheir
Oooh!--with a squid association too!
January 29, 2010
mollusque commented on the word uprooteder
I do' know the times when I 've set out to wash Monday mornin's, an' tied out the line betwixt the old pucker-pear tree and the corner o' the barn, an' thought, 'Here I be with the same kind o' week's work right over again.' I 'd wonder kind o' f'erce if I could n't git out of it noways; an' now here I be out of it, and an uprooteder creatur' never stood on the airth.
--Sarah Orne Jewett, 1890, Going to Shrewsbury
January 28, 2010
mollusque commented on the word step-a-ty-step
Urge the beast, can't ye, Jeff'son? I ain't used to bein' out in such bleak weather. Seems if I couldn't git my breath. I'm all pinched up and wigglin' with shivers now. 'T ain't no use lettin' the hoss go step-a-tystep, this fashion.
--Sarah Orne Jewett, 1890, A Winter Courtship
January 28, 2010
mollusque commented on the word opodeldoc
And when poor Jerry, for lack of other interest, fancied that his health was giving way mysteriously, and brought home a bottle of strong liquor to be used in case of sickness, and placed it conveniently in the shed, Mrs. Lane locked it up in the small chimney cupboard where she kept her camphor bottle and the opodeldoc and the other family medicines.
--Sarah Orne Jewett, 1886, Marsh Rosemary
January 28, 2010
mollusque commented on the word frisette
To be sure, it was the fashion to appear older in her day,—they could remember the sober effect of really youthful married persons in cap and frisette; but, whether they owed it to the changed times or to their own qualities, they felt no older themselves than ever they had.
--Sarah Orne Jewett, 1886, The Dulham Ladies
January 28, 2010
mollusque commented on the word needleful
I suppose you 're too young to remember John Ashby's grandmother? A good woman she was, and she had a dreadful time with her family. They never could keep the peace, and there was always as many as two of them who did n't speak with each other. It seems to come down from generation to generation like a—curse!" And Miss Debby spoke the last word as if she had meant it partly for her thread, which had again knotted and caught, and she snatched the offered scissors without a word, but said peaceably, after a minute or two, that the thread was n't what it used to be. The next needleful proved more successful, and the listener asked if the Ashbys were getting on comfortably at present.
--Sarah Orne Jewett, 1884, Miss Debby's Neighbors
January 28, 2010
mollusque commented on the word snail
The wind blew over pleasantly and it was a curiously protected and hidden place, sheltered and quiet, with its one small crop of cider apples dropping ungathered to the ground, and unharvested there, except by hurrying black ants and sticky, witless little snails.
--Sarah Orne Jewett, 1881, An October Ride
January 28, 2010
mollusque commented on the word highbinder
They saw the woman that had the guitar, an' there was a company a−listenin', regular highbinders all of 'em; an' there was a long table all spread out with big candlesticks like little trees o' light, and a sight o' glass an' silver ware; an' part o' the men was young officers in uniform . . .
--Sarah Orne Jewett, 1900, The Foreigner
January 28, 2010
mollusque commented on the word rote
"Lord, hear the great breakers!" exclaimed Mrs. Todd. "How they pound!—there, there! I always run of an idea that the sea knows anger these nights and gets full o' fight. I can hear the rote o' them old black ledges way down the thoroughfare.
--Sarah Orne Jewett, 1900, The Foreigner
January 28, 2010
mollusque commented on the word ramping
Esther was untouched by the fret and fury of life; she had lived in sunshine and rain among her silly sheep, and been refined instead of coarsened, while her touching patience with a ramping old mother, stung by the sense of defeat and mourning her lost activities, had given back a lovely self-possession, and habit of sweet temper.
--Sarah Orne Jewett, 1899, A Dunnet Shepherdess
January 28, 2010
mollusque commented on the word barbel
I saw two unpromising, quick barbel chase each other upstream from bank to bank, as we solemnly arranged our hooks and sinkers.
--Sarah Orne Jewett, 1899, A Dunnet Shepherdess
January 28, 2010
mollusque commented on the word companioning
The dark pools and the sunny shallows beckon one on; the wedge of sky between the trees on either bank, the speaking, companioning noise of the water, the amazing importance of what one is doing, and the constant sense of life and beauty make a strange transformation of the quick hours.
--Sarah Orne Jewett, 1899, A Dunnet Shepherdess
January 28, 2010
mollusque commented on the word trouting
The truth was that my heart had gone trouting with William, but it would have been too selfish to say a word even to one's self about spoiling his day. If there is one way above another of getting so close to nature that one simply is a piece of nature, following a primeval instinct with perfect self-forgetfulness and forgetting everything except the dreamy consciousness of pleasant freedom, it is to take the course of a shady trout brook.
--Sarah Orne Jewett, 1899, A Dunnet Shepherdess
January 28, 2010
mollusque commented on the word duck
I watched her for a minute or two; she was the old Miranda, owned by some of the Caplins, and I knew her by an odd shaped patch of newish duck that was set into the peak of her dingy mainsail.
--Sarah Orne Jewett, 1896, The Country of the Pointed Firs
January 28, 2010
mollusque commented on the word pleasanting
I expected she'd come pleasantin' round just to show off an' say afterwards she was acquainted.
--Sarah Orne Jewett, 1896, The Country of the Pointed Firs
January 28, 2010
mollusque commented on the word friend
Yes 'm, old friends is always best, 'less you can catch a new one that 's fit to make an old one out of . . .
--Sarah Orne Jewett, 1896, The Country of the Pointed Firs
January 28, 2010
mollusque commented on the word bangeing
Last winter she got the jay-birds to bangeing here, and I believe she'd 'a' scanted herself of her own meals to have plenty to throw out amongst 'em, if I had n't kep' watch.
--Sarah Orne Jewett, 1886, A White Heron
January 28, 2010
mollusque commented on the word size
Mrs. Todd had taken the onion out of her basket and laid it down upon the kitchen table. "There's Johnny Bowden come with us, you know," she reminded her mother." He 'll be hungry enough to eat his size."
--Sarah Orne Jewett, 1896, The Country of the Pointed Firs
January 28, 2010
mollusque commented on the word simple
He might have belonged with a simple which grew in a certain slug-haunted corner of the garden, whose use she could never be betrayed into telling me, though I saw her cutting the tops by moonlight once, as if it were a charm, and not a medicine, like the great fading bloodroot leaves.
--Sarah Orne Jewett, 1896, The Country of the Pointed Firs
January 28, 2010
mollusque commented on the word thoroughwort
The conversation became at once professional after the briefest preliminaries, and he would stand twirling a sweet-scented sprig in his fingers, and make suggestive jokes, perhaps about her faith in a too persistent course of thoroughwort elixir, in which my landlady professed such firm belief as sometimes to endanger the life and usefulness of worthy neighbors.
--Sarah Orne Jewett, 1896, The Country of the Pointed Firs
January 28, 2010
mollusque commented on the word malpractice
You can hardly have the heart to scold any more about the malpractice of patients when we believe in you so humbly and so ignorantly.
--Sarah Orne Jewett, 1884, A Country Doctor
January 28, 2010
mollusque commented on the word charismatically
And adverbs tend not to be listed as often as the corresponding adjectives.
January 28, 2010
mollusque commented on the word eighthly
Citation at seventhly.
January 28, 2010
mollusque commented on the word seventhly
It was thinly dressed in fluttering paper covers, and was so thick and so lightly bound that it had a tendency to divide its material substance into parts, like the seventhlies and eighthlies of an old-fashioned sermon.
--Sarah Orne Jewett, 1884, A Country Doctor
January 28, 2010
mollusque commented on the word laylock
She was a well made, pretty lookin' girl, but I tell ye 'twas like setting a laylock bush to grow beside an ellum tree, and expecting of 'em to keep together.
--Sarah Orne Jewett, 1884, A Country Doctor
January 28, 2010
mollusque commented on the word crowstick
As he looked, he could see through a white low-hung mist, the ridge pole of the cabin roof and the crowstick chimney's ragged edge, the vines growing over the well-house, and bryony taking all the fence corners.
--Maristan Chapman, 1928, The Happy Mountain, p. 150
January 28, 2010
mollusque commented on the word crowstick
Citation at backlog.
January 28, 2010
mollusque commented on the word forestick
Citation at backlog.
January 28, 2010
mollusque commented on the word backlog
They brought in the materials for an old-fashioned fire, backlog, forestick, and crowsticks, and presently seated themselves before a crackling blaze.
--Sarah Orne Jewett, 1884, A Country Doctor
January 28, 2010
mollusque commented on the word chimbly
I ain't goin' to live in the chimbly-corner of another man's house. I ain't but a little past sixty-seven. I 've got to stand in my lot an' place.
--Sarah Orne Jewett, 1884, A Country Doctor
January 28, 2010
mollusque commented on the word dressmake
She might dressmake or do millinery work; she always had a pretty taste, and 't would be better than roving. I 'spose 'twould hurt her pride," --but Mrs. Thacher flushed at this, and Mrs. Martin came to the rescue.
--Sarah Orne Jewett, 1884, A Country Doctor
January 28, 2010
mollusque commented on the word boughten
She was 'shamed to look so shif'less that day, but she had some good clothes in a chist in the bedroom, and a boughten bonnet with a good cypress veil . . .
--Sarah Orne Jewett, 1877, Deephaven
January 28, 2010
mollusque commented on the word early apple
Unintentional, Pro, as was the digital sense of blackberrying, the previous word that I added!
January 28, 2010
mollusque commented on the word own cousin
And I can tell you another thing that happened among my own folks. There was an own cousin of mine married to a man by the name of John Hathorn.
--Sarah Orne Jewett, 1877, Deephaven
January 28, 2010
mollusque commented on the word early apple
We saw them join the straggling train of carriages which had begun to go through the village from all along shore, soon after daylight, and they started on their journey shouting and carousing, with their pockets crammed with early apples and other provisions.
--Sarah Orne Jewett, 1877, Deephaven
January 28, 2010
mollusque commented on the word blackberrying
Tommy Dockum was more interested than any one else, and mentioned the subject so frequently one day when he went blackberrying with us, that we grew enthusiastic, and told each other what fun it would be to go, for everybody would be there, and it would be the greatest loss to us if we were absent. I thought I had lost my childish fondness for circuses, but it came back redoubled . . .
--Sarah Orne Jewett, 1877, Deephaven
January 28, 2010
mollusque commented on the word arriviste
To dance by the light of the moon?
January 28, 2010
mollusque commented on the word killick
Kate and I cracked our clams on the gunwale of the boat, and cut them into nice little bits for bait with a piece of the shell, and by the time the captain had thrown out the killick we were ready to begin, and found the fishing much more exciting than it had been at the wharf.
--Sarah Orne Jewett, 1877, Deephaven
January 28, 2010
mollusque commented on the word cobwebby
And then he laughed apologetically, rubbing his hands together, and looking out to sea again as if he wished to appear unconcerned; yet we saw that he wondered if we thought it ridiculous for a man of his age to have treasured up so much trumpery in that cobwebby place
--Sarah Orne Jewett, 1877, Deephaven
January 28, 2010
mollusque commented on the word chippered
He looked more and more like a well-to-do old English sparrow, and chippered faster and faster.
--Sarah Orne Jewett, 1877, Deephaven
January 28, 2010
mollusque commented on the word brevet
We found that it was etiquette to call them each captain, but I think some of the Deephaven men took the title by brevet upon arriving at a proper age.
--Sarah Orne Jewett, 1877, Deephaven
January 28, 2010
mollusque commented on the word hake
There was a most heathenish fear of doing certain things on Friday, and there were countless signs in which we still have confidence. When the moon is very bright and other people grow sentimental, we only remember that it is a fine night to catch hake.
--Sarah Orne Jewett, 1877, Deephaven
January 28, 2010
mollusque commented on the word tea-poy
Kate and I took much pleasure in choosing our tea-poys; hers had a mandarin parading on the top, and mine a flight of birds and a pagoda; and we often used them afterward, for Miss Honora asked us to come to tea whenever we liked.
--Sarah Orne Jewett, 1877, Deephaven
January 28, 2010
mollusque commented on the word sightly
There was a beautiful view from the doorstep and we stopped a minute there. "Real sightly, ain't it?" said Mrs. Bonny. "But you ought to be here and look across the woods some morning just at sun-up. Why, the sky is all yaller and red, and them low lands topped with fog!
--Sarah Orne Jewett, 1877, Deephaven
January 28, 2010
mollusque commented on the word go go go
We could go together to get her together. (First commented on cleavagram.)
January 28, 2010
mollusque commented on the word uncocktailed
The banquet was nearly two hours late in coming forward, and the dryness engendered in the air by forty-three uncocktailed throats was so powerful that it deranged Mengtsz's electric system and all the lights went out.
--Stella Benson, 1925, The Little World, p. 242
January 25, 2010
mollusque commented on the word kid
Can't stand pat with that one.
January 25, 2010
mollusque commented on the list licenses-and-permits
In Florida you need a permit to fish for permit.
January 23, 2010
mollusque commented on the word Opuntiales
I like the Century Dictionary definition--"Same as Cactales: a name introduced without good reason, but now much used."
January 23, 2010
mollusque commented on the word tubiflorate
The age is classed, on the presence of tubiflorate composite pollen, as middle Miocene at oldest.
--James P. Mandaville, 1990, Flora of Eastern Saudi Arabia, p. 21
January 23, 2010
mollusque commented on the word unpotential
This preacher has reduced dubiousness to a fine art. Doubtless he has escaped out of exaggeration, but he has not landed anywhere. Neither has he landed his people anywhere. In the next place he abates his diction to correspond to the neutralism of his thought. It is proper and pale, and inoffensive and unpotential, and void of positive verity.
--Nathaniel J. Burton, 1888, "Veracity in Ministers", Yale Lectures on Preaching, p. 346
January 23, 2010
mollusque commented on the word Dorland's Illustrated Medical Dictionary
30th edition, edited by Douglas M. Anderson, Patricia D. Novak, Jefferson Keith and Michelle A. Elliott, 2003. A comprehensive work of more than 2000 pages, it has lots of lists in addition to definitions: blocks, bodies, bones, canals, nuclei, syndromes, fossa, fractures, muscles, etc.
Last word: Zyvox.
January 21, 2010
mollusque commented on the word Historical Dictionary of American Slang
By J. E. Lighter, 1994-1997. Full title: Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang. The first two volumes are excellent, but the work seemed dead in the water when Random House abandoned it. Fortunately, Oxford University Press has decided to continue the work. HDAS also contains dincher (see my comment under Dictionary of American Regional English).
January 21, 2010
mollusque commented on the word dincher
It took a long time to walk back, but Mother wasn't angry. She'd found a couple of dinchers in the pocket of her yellow dress.
--Barbara Kingsolver, 2009, The Lacuna, p. 57
January 21, 2010
mollusque commented on the word Dictionary of American Regional English
Edited by Frederic G. Cassidy and Joan Houston Hall, 1985 (vol. 1) - 2011 (vol. 5). Intensely complete, with many items recorded in no other well-known reference. For example, last night I was reading Barbara Kingsolver's The Lacuna, and came across dincher. It's not in OED2, MW2, MW3, RHD2, CDC1, Urban Dictionary or Wordnik (till now). DARE has it (under dinch): a cigarette butt. See the DARE website for more info.
Last word: check back in 2011, the work hasn't been completed yet.
January 21, 2010
mollusque commented on the word Jargon Watch
By Gareth Branwyn, 1997. Subtitle: a pocket dictionary for the jitterati. A short book based mostly items from Wired's "Jargon Watch" feature, many of which probably started as madeupical (geekosphere, goofcore). All entries are capitalized, even though it doesn't capitalize its own title on the cover).
Last word: Zen Mail.
January 21, 2010
mollusque commented on the word The Book of Jargon
By Don Ethan Miller, 1981. Subtitle: An Essential Guide to the Inside Languages of Today. Grouped by topics, with 24 sections, including medicine, law, ballet, sailing, fashion, drugs, and wine.
Last word: zygoma.
January 21, 2010
mollusque commented on the word Dictionary of Popular Slang
By Anita Pearl, 1980. Full title: The Jonathan David Dictionary of Popular Slang. Most of the terms recorded in this work would already be known to a native speaker, and the organization is strictly alphabetical (no groupings or lists), so it's not clear who the target audience is.
Last word: zowie.
January 21, 2010
mollusque commented on the word retinitis pigmentosum
"Valid variation"? Not in Latin or medical English. Words ending in -itis are feminine, so the adjective should be in feminine form. Compare *itis *osa and *itis *osum* on Onelook. Words ending in -derma are neuter, hence the -um ending with "xeroderma pigmentosum".
January 21, 2010
mollusque commented on the word Dictionary of American Slang
By Harold Wentworth and Stuart Berg Flexner, 1975, Second Supplemented Edition. The appendices contain some massive lists: words sorted by suffix groups (-aroo, -eroo, -roo, -oo), shortenings, reduplications (first, second and third order). These guys would have loved Wordie/Wordnik.
Last word: Zulu, last word of supplement: zot.
January 19, 2010
mollusque commented on the word A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English
By Eric Partridge, 1970. Subtitle: Colloquialisms and Catch-phrases, Solecisms and Catachreses, Nicknames, Vulgarisms and such Americanisms as have been naturalized. 7th edition, two volumes in one (dictionary and supplement).
Last word: zymy (from zymotic).
January 19, 2010
mollusque commented on the word Historical Dictionary of Slang
By J. S. Farmer and W. E. Henley. Subtitle: Three hundred years of colloquial, unorthodox and vulgar English". 1987 reprint of 1890 work titled Slang and its Analogues, 2 volumes. Provides citations illustrating the use of the words, and synonyms in various European languages.
Last word: Zu-zu.
January 19, 2010
mollusque commented on the list dictionaries
Heads up, ruzuzu!
January 19, 2010
mollusque commented on the word retinitis pigmentosum
Should be "retinitis pigmentosa". Maybe Gabaldon confused the spelling with "xeroderma pigmentosum"?
January 19, 2010
mollusque commented on the word subendolymphatic
And now the singular has been found, coined seven years before Borgmann constructed it:
The name illustrates an important feature of this disease, "subendolymphatic hyperplastic proliferation." . . . It was Dr. Frank's feeling that this was a subendolymphatic proliferation of the endothelium lining these spaces . . . .
--American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology (1957) 73: 1070
January 19, 2010
mollusque commented on the user feedback
I've been curating my panvocalic lists, mostly to convert listings that need capitalization, and it's given me a new appreciation for the Examples, the images from Flickr and even the Twitter feed. Sometimes they provide the only results for a word: Calepodius, Mahmoudieh, Codiaeum, Bufonidae, Austin Powers.
Since developing better ways of dealing with capitalization is on the upgrade list, here's a couple more observations.
On Wordie I didn't tag the items in (for example) Panvocalic Proper with vowel sequences because it would have mixed upper and lower case words together on the tag list without distinguishing them. On Wordnik this isn't a problem since capitalization is preserved, so I can have a mixed list e.g., aeiou. So I hope whatever is being developed to handle capitalization keeps the visual distinction but maps the associated items together. At the moment it seems that the Twitter and images mappings are not case-sensitive, but the definition and example mappings are.
In most cases, converting to upper case increased the number of words that got a definition feed from the linked dictionaries, however, in some cases with the Century Dictionary, capitalization broke the link.
I imagine the hardest part with be merging the comments, since comments from capitalized words will intercalate with those from uncapitalized ones, if chronological order is maintained. Maybe in cases where both forms of the word have comments, the ones coming from the capitalized form could have a note to that effect added.
January 19, 2010
mollusque commented on the user feedback
Fixed. Thanks, John!
January 19, 2010
mollusque commented on the word pithiatic
I encountered it in the same place; it seems to mean "hysterical". Online it appears in the delightful phrase, "pithiatic rhinolalia".
January 19, 2010
mollusque commented on the word caverniloquy
In a cavern, in a canyon,
Excavating for a mine,
Dwelt a miner, forty-niner,
And his daughter Clementine.
January 18, 2010
mollusque commented on the word caverniloquy
Caverniloquy, or cavernous pectoriloquy, is the speech of the patient as heard over an ordinary cavity.
--Richard C. M. Page, 1897, A Handbook of Physical Diagnosis of Diseases of the Organs of Respiration, p. 181
January 18, 2010
mollusque commented on the word caverniloquy
Another panvocalic milestone: a word other than an adverb with all six vowels in alphabetical order.
January 18, 2010
mollusque commented on the list panvocalic-proper
The first panvocalic couple: Areithous and Philomedusa (found here).
January 18, 2010
mollusque commented on the list stately-flowers
Ahem, our trees ; )
January 18, 2010
mollusque commented on the user mollusque
I have about 70 dictionaries, mostly English, but also Latin, French, German, Yiddish, Hebrew, Tagalog, and Hawaiian. My entomological shelf is maintained by Google Books.
January 18, 2010
mollusque commented on the word dipneumonan
One of the most amazing fish is the dipneumonan Lepidosiren, a lunged fish that can survive on dry land.
--Géraldine Véron, 1998, On the Trail of Big Cats, p. 101
January 18, 2010
mollusque commented on the user feedback
I'm unable to update the description of my list Panvocalic Euryvocalic. I get the message saying it has been successfully updated, but nothing changes and the edits are not saved.
January 18, 2010
mollusque commented on the word Hungerfordian
In reviewing the earlier travel books one comes across Eli Bowen, a postal official and writer who emphasized the railroads in a real Hungerfordian manner.
--Frank P. Donovan, 1940, The Railroad in Literature, p. 105
January 18, 2010
mollusque commented on the word Geibroula
Variant of "Gebroulaz", Italy, in 19th century discussions of the mineral sellaite
January 16, 2010
mollusque commented on the user hernesheir
I think something else is being smoked (H, maybe tagging rather than commenting would suffice?)
January 15, 2010
mollusque commented on the user feedback
How about making "random word" show a random listed word? That should get around the problem of it leading mostly to junk.
January 14, 2010
mollusque commented on the word stum
I have a few on Odd Anagrams (vile, evil; parental, paternal; enraged, angered), but it's not restricted to such.
January 14, 2010
mollusque commented on the user mollusque
Hi PossibleUnderscore, as stated in the list description, all of the listed panvocalics have been used at least once in print, by an author who was not seeking to create a vowel or letter pattern.
Under Panvocalic euryvocalic, you'll see that I rejected subendolymphatic because it was coined for the pattern rather than the meaning.
So, yes, I consider all of the items listed to be legitimate words. For obscure words (rare and non-obvious meanings) I generally tag them with a dictionary in which they appear, or provide a quotation.
"Counterpain" gets more than 600 hits in Google Books. Some of them are misspellings of counterpane, but many are used in the sense of analgesic. Cotigulate I tagged with OED2, since it's listed there (meaning "to tile a house"). Schizoneuran is used in the entomological literature.
January 13, 2010
mollusque commented on the list triads
Thanks all, for the various suggestions. I put one trick pony on Triads 3 and KitKatClub on Triads 2. Nanny, nanny, boo-boo sounds more like a quartet than a triad.
Ruzuzu, do you mean Music! Music! Music! by Weiss & Baum or Music Music Music by Brewerman?
January 13, 2010
mollusque commented on the word procrustesian
Try procrustean (lower case).
January 12, 2010
mollusque commented on the word peckable
My Tagalog dictionary lists pekpek rather than peck.
January 12, 2010
mollusque commented on the word no man is an island
See syllogistic.
January 9, 2010
mollusque commented on the user feedback
The related words feature has some interesting behavior, which I discovered when I accidentally listed "foot" as an antonym of autopodium. There was no apparent way to delete the entry, but when I then added "foot" as synonym, it replaced the entry for antonym. More testing shows that a word can be listed as only one of the options (antonym, synonym, cross-reference, related word, rhyme, variant). "Related word" is the most general; if the same word is then listed as a synonym, "synonym" replaces "related word", but more general categories don't supplant more specific ones.
That's a clever bit of programming, but it prevents some possibilities, such as listing "ramble" as a rhyme and a synonym of "amble", or "sanction" as both synonym and antonym of "encouragement".
Some other possibilities could be added to the drop-down list: "more general", "more specific", "bigger", "smaller", "more positive", "more negative". This would allow automatic generation and display of word chains such as:
polygon, quadrilateral, parallelogram, rectangle, square;
universe, supercluster, galaxy, solar system, star, planet, moon;
ecstatic, delighted, happy, content, disgruntled, miserable, despondent.
Might I also suggest that the drop-down list should have a blank rather than "antonym" as a default.
January 7, 2010
mollusque commented on the word ambilextrous
Defined as "having the ability to switch between two lexicons in competitive Scrabble" (e.g., OSPD and SOWPODS) in Letterati by Paul McCarthy (2008, p. 287).
January 6, 2010
mollusque commented on the word satine
Aim for "satine" plus the blank in Scrabble for the maximum chance of playing a seven-letter word. See Sera's satine list.
January 6, 2010
mollusque commented on the list lost-for-word
I hadn't come across autopod Jubjub, but judging from results in Google books, it's used almost as frequently as autopodium. Pro: does autopod qualify as colloquial? Gangerh: snort!
January 6, 2010
mollusque commented on the list lost-for-word
Paws up for autopodium (illustrated here).
January 5, 2010
mollusque commented on the word chalkstony
But there was enough for the shattered man, once a blood, and twice a dandy, but now a querulous, chalkstony valetudinarian — enough for his beautiful, blackbrowed, black-eyed, Frenchified daughter, who came with no good grace from her Boulogne circle of scampish pleasantness to rusticate in au English country-house.
--Shirley Brooks, 1853, "Aspen Court", Graham's Magazine 43(1): 370
January 2, 2010
mollusque commented on the word malacozoon
"malacozoon . . . a soft animal; a mollusc."
--George M. Gould & R. J. E. Scott, 1916, The Practioner's Medical Dictionary, 3rd edition, p. 531
January 2, 2010
mollusque commented on the word flammivorous
Then the hill that hid the furnaces was rounded; the flammivorous smelters blooded the silver night for the last time; the moonlight ebbed and flowed upon the lime-cliffs.
--Randolph Bedford, 1905, The Snare of Strength
January 2, 2010
mollusque commented on the word effluxional
The problem's constructional; the answer's deductional;
The text is instructional; the States are effluxional.
--Michael Coper & George Williams, 1997, How Many Cheers for Engineers?, p. 153
January 1, 2010
mollusque commented on the word caecum
Where do you findum?
January 1, 2010
mollusque commented on the word 2010
No such luck, Pro. They're using fat ones.
January 1, 2010
mollusque commented on the word backstein
It's listed in MW3, defined as "a German cheese resembling limburger that is produced in a brick shape".
December 31, 2009
mollusque commented on the word vixen
Interesting comment among the definitions from American Heritage.
December 24, 2009
mollusque commented on the word mulletin board
Seen here.
December 24, 2009
mollusque commented on the list panvocalics
Is that a non-vocalic, PossibleUnderscore?
December 24, 2009
mollusque commented on the user ruzuzu
Thanks ruzuzu! I picked up Brachypolemius and Macroxyletinus for Panvocalic organisms.
Edit: changed "Proper" to "organisms".
December 22, 2009
mollusque commented on the word re-too
We'll have to retool it.
December 20, 2009
mollusque commented on the word ophyron
Sionnach, your source is inaccurate. The space between the eyebrows is the glabella. The glabella is just below the ophryon (not "ophyron") (and just above the nasion). Diagram here.
December 20, 2009
mollusque commented on the word colorway
Spectrum?
December 20, 2009
mollusque commented on the word tansy
One day she appeared at the schoolhouse itself, partly out of amused curiosity about my industries; but she explained that there was no tansy in the neighborhood with such snap to it as some that grew about the schoolhouse lot. Being scuffed down all the spring made it grow so much the better, like some folks that had it hard in their youth, and were bound to make the most of themselves before they died.
--Sarah Orne Jewett, 1896, The Country of the Pointed Firs
December 18, 2009
mollusque commented on the word New England
I tell you, Leslie, that for intense, self-centred, smouldering volcanoes of humanity, New England cannot be matched the world over.
--Sarah Orne Jewett, 1884, A Country Doctor
December 18, 2009
mollusque commented on the word cottonless
The opposite of a Vexample; the only example (from Sarah Orne Jewett) is the very one I came here to add.
December 18, 2009
mollusque commented on the word wing and wing
There is another story I'd like to have ye hear, if it's so that you ain't beat out hearing me talk. When I get going I slip along as easy as a schooner wing-and-wing afore the wind.
--Sarah Orne Jewett, 1877, Deephaven
December 18, 2009
mollusque commented on the word fishwifery
Worse still, spirits of the noblest strain, like Edith and Bonduca, suddenly break out into the same fishwifery, and rail with an excess of epithet that is as repulsive as it is picturesque.
--Gamaliel Bradford, Jr., 1908, "Beaumont and Fletcher", The Atlantic Monthly 101: 131
December 18, 2009
mollusque commented on the word shrewery
Alone, the suitors, complaining, impress us with Kate's shrewery. She must be so sung up, so made a champion of, for the oncoming battle royal.
--Theodore R. Weiss, 1974, The breath of clowns and kings: Shakespeare's early comedies and histories, p. 56
December 18, 2009
mollusque commented on the word hoik
Isn't this just a variant of hoick?
December 16, 2009
mollusque commented on the user grant_barrett
It's under blog.
December 15, 2009
mollusque commented on the user disputecredit90
SPAM Alert!
December 15, 2009
mollusque commented on the list dont-drink-this
Crusade, grenade, pavesade.
December 15, 2009
mollusque commented on the word dumbassery
Which came first, dumbassery or asshattery?
December 14, 2009
mollusque commented on the word terrebellum
Terebellum happens to be a genus of mollusk; I hadn't known it was also an asterism.
December 14, 2009
mollusque commented on the word terrebellum
Do you mean terebellum, ruzuzu?
December 14, 2009
mollusque commented on the word swift
A bird and a lizard.
December 14, 2009
mollusque commented on the word naked mole rat
Naked mole rats don't get cancer. However, they can die of embarrassment.
December 13, 2009
mollusque commented on the word spaghetti
Big Apple sauce.
December 13, 2009
mollusque commented on the user hikealot
SPAM alert!
December 13, 2009
mollusque commented on the word gangtelope
Mr. English errs: the word is gantelope.
December 13, 2009
mollusque commented on the word halo halo
Means mix-mix; also listed as halo-halo. It's a dessert, not drink (unless you let it melt for a while).
December 13, 2009
mollusque commented on the word chuckwalla
So the chuckwalla handles unruly lounge lizards!
December 11, 2009
mollusque commented on the word Wordnik
And it's reversible.
December 11, 2009
mollusque commented on the list nonsense--5
Hi rover, a couple of us have wandered down this road: see Hogwash! and Humbug and bafflegab. I'll be interested to see where it takes you.
December 11, 2009
mollusque commented on the list panvocalics
Thanks, PU and marky! Marky, do you mean Century Dictionary sense 1 or something rad on Urban Dictionary?
December 11, 2009
mollusque commented on the word sheltopusik
Variant of scheltopusik.
December 10, 2009
mollusque commented on the word chuckwalla
The American Heritage Dictionary is aiming to displace Weirdnet. Did you know that the chuckwalla is a "large herbaceous lizard"?
December 10, 2009
mollusque commented on the word neoligism
Hi captaincloud, are you creating a new word, or do you mean neologism?
December 9, 2009
mollusque commented on the list two-for-price-of-one
I found a way to salvage chicks, marky.
December 8, 2009
mollusque commented on the user feedback
I just noticed in leaving a comment on the blog that absolute rather than relative links must be used there. At least, that's the case in linking to a tag, since the blog has tags of its own. Is it possible to edit comments on the blog?
December 8, 2009
mollusque commented on the list two-for-price-of-one
I hadn't anticipated words like "pup", "calf" and "chick" when I started the list. My original thought was words (or phrases in the case of monkey puzzle) that arose independently. "Bug", "primate", etc. don't qualify because they apply to all members of their group and so don't have different origins or meanings.
"Pup" and "calf" aren't independent words when applied to dog and seal or cow and whale, but the organisms aren't closely related. The young of carnivores might be called "kits" or "cubs" and of ungulates "fawns", "foals", or "shoats". So I'd say they do bring two different kinds of animals to mind.
"Chick" doesn't fit; there are lots of animals terms that can be applied to people (hog, hawk, rabbit). Doesn't someone have a list like that?
December 7, 2009
mollusque commented on the list 1-2-syllable-animals
Time to turn turtle.
December 7, 2009
mollusque commented on the list 1-2-syllable-animals
Thanks Pro! You can add it to Two for the price of one.
December 7, 2009
mollusque commented on the list animal-animalia
How about cockroach?
December 7, 2009
mollusque commented on the list 1-2-syllable-animals
I added roach and realized it refers independently to two different animals (fish and insect). I wonder how many others there are?
December 7, 2009
mollusque commented on the list 1-2-syllable-animals
We reached 100 just in time then!
December 6, 2009
mollusque commented on the list 1-2-syllable-animals
Squirrel could go on both lists!
December 6, 2009
mollusque commented on the word hyphen
I think PossibleUnderscore is becoming increasingly probable.
December 6, 2009
mollusque commented on the list 1-2-syllable-animals
So do I. I'm just thinking it would be fun to read with one list for one syllable words and another for two. If marky doesn't take up the idea, maybe I'll pursue it.
Edit: marky's post came in while I was writing mine. Marky, I think we can push one syllable over 100 words.
December 6, 2009
mollusque commented on the list 1-2-syllable-animals
Marky, this list would have more punch if restricted to one syllable words. BTW, jellyfish has three.
December 6, 2009
mollusque commented on the user feedback
The "next" link on lists with more than 100 words is no longer working. The page says "words 101 through 200", but still displays 1-100.
December 6, 2009
mollusque commented on the word spaghetti
What about ramen? Break the block before cooking or leave intact for subsequent slurping?
December 6, 2009
mollusque commented on the word write
Modern day abacination! *Throws reesetee wet cloth*
December 5, 2009
mollusque commented on the word as if one is a small garden snake attempting to eat Brazil
Pleased to bracket subjunctive please and subjunctive please, please pleas.
December 5, 2009
mollusque commented on the user siriusdorr
SPAM alert!
December 5, 2009
mollusque commented on the word traduzzione
Thanks, Pro. I also cleaned up some of the borked diacritics in the list description.
December 5, 2009
mollusque commented on the word bonking
It's bopping, not bonking, in the earworm now playing here.
December 4, 2009
mollusque commented on the word as if one is a small garden snake attempting to eat Brazil
Subjunctive please!
December 4, 2009
mollusque commented on the word spaghetti
I want to know if uselessness got sauce on his keyboard.
December 4, 2009
mollusque commented on the list funny-place-names-in-the-garden-state
Here's a profile of Bivalve.
Are you the same person as Kat?
December 3, 2009
mollusque commented on the word pornial
Excellent! Do you know of other such that I could add to Dictionary words & escapees?
On Wordie, a ghost word was one no longer on any lists. See Former ghosts and Ghosted.
December 2, 2009
mollusque commented on the word WTBH
Yup, it's in use.
December 2, 2009
mollusque commented on the word spaghetti
I thought the idea was to let the flavor out. Sort of like bone marrow.
December 2, 2009
mollusque commented on the word spaghetti
Cutting spaghetti is acceptable only if all the cutting occurs at once at the beginning of the meal. I use a crosshatch cut.
December 2, 2009
mollusque commented on the list funny-place-names-in-the-garden-state
What about Bivalve?
December 2, 2009
mollusque commented on the word wordnik
For me, only a few more things need to be tweaked and Wordnik will have equaled Wordie for (fun)ctionality.
1) Move tags to the comments page, and show them larger, directly under the word. As the leading tagger on Wordie/Wordnik, I find I have little incentive to tag when the tags are relegated to a sidebar on a page that otherwise can't be modified by users. Tags aren't fun anymore.
2) Restore more of the listings of top ten for the week (e.g., top ten commenters). And restore the links to the all-time lists. Some of us like looking at the wordometer. Newbies can crack the top 100 in a week; it takes (took) fewer than 1000 words listed.
3) Restore the iconic links to various dictionaries on the comments page. I often used them, particularly the OneLook link.
4) Under profiles, restore the list of comments by user. I often used that to find the threads I wanted to catch up on, and I'd use it now to find any remaining borked bits from the transition and fix them.
After that, imagine when the "Take this word" options include "define it", "etymologize it", "exemplify it".
December 1, 2009
mollusque commented on the word autocomplete
It just needs to be rejiggered so that only the letters typed are entered unless one chooses one of the other items on the list of suggestions.
November 29, 2009
mollusque commented on the list sound-or-sequence
Glad you like it, pollyanna. Your
November 29, 2009
mollusque commented on the user feedback
Tags with apostrophes seem not to be working. Both zz and zzz are tagged z's, but clicking on the tag gives the message "No words have been tagged z's yet. Why not go tag some?"
November 28, 2009
mollusque commented on the word subendolymphatic
Borgmann's coinage is no longer purely madeupical (but the singular form still hasn't been spotted outside the laboratory):
"The increased prevalence of salpingitis due to N. gonorrhoeae at the time of menses has fostered the contention that the loss of mucosal integrity and the rich supply of subendolymphatics are important variables in transforming occult glandular infection into clinically recognized disease."
--Gilles R. G. Monif and David A. Baker, 2008, Infectious Diseases in Obstetrics and Gynecology, p. 451
November 27, 2009
mollusque commented on the word subendolymphatic
Well, it is possible to reach the 16-letter plateau with SUBENDOLYMPHATIC, a contrived word best interpreted as meaning "partly within a lymphatic vessel.
--Dmitri A. Borgmann, 1965, Language on Vacation: an Olio of Orthographical Oddities, p. 126
November 27, 2009
mollusque commented on the list the-sound-of-one-hand-typing
How about detartrated?
November 26, 2009
mollusque commented on the word illusion bra
Did you know that bilby prefers strapless? (Evidence).
November 26, 2009
mollusque commented on the word thanksgiving
Let the gallopavonian pursuits begin!
November 26, 2009
mollusque commented on the word illusion bra
Could we disbra you instead?
November 26, 2009
mollusque commented on the user feedback
It seems that the person listed as having first listed a word is often not the person who first listed a word. For example, curbstone on bilby's I Can't Believe It's Not Listed.
Also when someone listed a Word more than once on Wordie, all the List occurrences were grouped together, but Wordnik sorts them in order of listing, which seems preferable, unless moving the word to a different list means they are no longer credited with having first listed the word.
November 26, 2009
mollusque commented on the word madeupical
This reminds me of arguments about what is a species. No definition of "species" works in all situations, and the same is true of "word". OED2 says about species, "The exact definition of a species, and the criteria by which species are to be distinguished (esp. in relation to genera or varieties), have been the subject of much discussion."
Some of the hallmarks of words are that they are pronounceable, used for open communication, have inferable meanings, and are related to other words (have derivations).
I don't think every combination of letters can be considered a word. "Madeupical" meets all four of the criteria above; "dhn" mets none of them. The meaning of madeupical, might be inferred by a native speaker of English even without a context, even though it is not a standard formation. The meaning of dhn cannot be determined without a context. It might be an acronym, or it might be an arbitrary string of characters that conveys meaning only as a code.
November 26, 2009
mollusque commented on the word guage
Watch your langauge!
November 21, 2009
mollusque commented on the user feedback
I miss the Wordie visual distinction between internal (relative) and external (absolute) links.
November 21, 2009
mollusque commented on the user feedback
Also on the subject of examples, some lack an attribution. For example, the third one for retronym comes from William Safire.
November 21, 2009
mollusque commented on the user feedback
How are examples selected? The first five for bayesianism are essentially repeats of a large alphabetical list.
November 21, 2009
mollusque commented on the word Austrialian
A new riality show?
November 21, 2009
mollusque commented on the word shoreless
Maybe chartles.
November 21, 2009
mollusque commented on the word bol
Could be Manute Bol, the basketball player.
November 21, 2009
mollusque commented on the word shoreless
When we came down from the lighthouse and it grew late, we would beg for an hour or two longer on the water, and row away in the twilight far out from land, where, with our faces turned from the Light, it seemed as if we were alone, and the sea shoreless; and as the darkness closed round us softly, we watched the stars come out, and were always glad to see Kate's star and my star, which we had chosen when we were children.
--Sarah Orne Jewett, 1877, Deephaven
November 21, 2009
mollusque commented on the word coaster
Almost all the coasters came in sight of Deephaven, and the sea outside the light was their grand highway. Twice from the lighthouse we saw a yacht squadron like a flock of great white birds.
--Sarah Orne Jewett, 1877, Deephaven
November 21, 2009
mollusque commented on the word power
As Mrs. Kew had said, there was "a power of china." Kate and I were convinced that the lives of her grandmothers must have been spent in giving tea-parties. We counted ten sets of cups, beside quantities of stray ones; and some member of the family had evidently devoted her time to making a collection of pitchers.
--Sarah Orne Jewett, 1877, Deephaven
November 21, 2009
mollusque commented on the word endles
Needles to say.
November 21, 2009
mollusque commented on the word endles
Don't get me started.
November 21, 2009
mollusque commented on the word eu oi oìa u ou e u oìa
Thanks, Pro! Old MacDonald has met his match.
November 21, 2009
mollusque commented on the list un
Do three lefts make it right: unununium?
November 20, 2009
mollusque commented on the user feedback
Purpureous bliss!
November 20, 2009
mollusque commented on the list words-that-sound-musical-but-arent
What about words that no longer sound musical: keynote, fiddlesticks?
November 20, 2009
mollusque commented on the list words-that-sound-musical-but-arent
Oops, typed too fast. How do I delete a word from an open list?
November 20, 2009
mollusque commented on the user frogapplause
Yippidie!
November 20, 2009
mollusque commented on the list un
how about ununified?
November 20, 2009
mollusque commented on the list lists-of-the-day
Very strange. Panvocalics wasn't listed, but as soon as I ahemed, it showed up. How'd you do that Grant?
November 20, 2009
mollusque commented on the list lists-of-the-day
Ahem . . .
November 20, 2009
mollusque commented on the word comments
I agree with dontcry. I always used to read Wordie by scanning for the threads in purple first, to pick up where I'd left off. Also in some operations I do on lists, knowing that I've clicked before saves a lot of time.
November 20, 2009
mollusque commented on the word no smoking
Doesn't it qualify for your Road Signs list, bilby?
November 19, 2009
mollusque commented on the word extract its vowels with forge tongs
Disemvowelment?
November 19, 2009
mollusque commented on the word BANANA
It's the last word in alpha order on my miscellaneous list, but it suffers from "Disallowed key characters in global data".
November 19, 2009
mollusque commented on the word gingerbread
They flanked opposite ends of the house and were probably architectural absurdities, redeemed in a measure indeed by not being wholly disengaged nor of a height too pretentious, dating, in their gingerbread antiquity, from a romantic revival that was already a respectable past.
--Henry James, 1898, The Turn of the Screw
November 19, 2009
mollusque commented on the word menaced
If I had a great deal to do I had still more to think about, and the moment came when my occupations were gravely menaced by my thoughts.
--Henry James, 1896, The Way it Came
November 19, 2009
mollusque commented on the word clockface
She had reached the period of life that he had long since reached, when, after separations, the dreadful clockface of the friend we meet announces the hour we have tried to forget.
--Henry James, 1895, The Altar of the Dead
November 19, 2009
mollusque commented on the word cheesemonger
Gravener was profound enough to remark after a moment that in the first place he couldn't be anything but a Dissenter, and when I answered that the very note of his fascination was his extraordinary speculative breadth, my friend retorted that there was no cad like your cultivated cad and that I might depend upon discovering (since I had had the levity not already to have inquired) that my shining light proceeded, a generation back, from a Methodist cheesemonger.
--Henry James, 1894, The Coxon Fund
November 19, 2009
mollusque commented on the word twenty-six
Already, at hungry twenty-six, Gravener looked as blank and parlimentary as if he were fifty and popular.
--Henry James, 1894, The Coxon Fund
November 19, 2009
mollusque commented on the word aristophanesque
I wondered whether he had lost his humour, or only, dreadful thought, had never had any--not even when I had fancied him most Aristophanesque.
--Henry James, 1894, The Coxon Fund
November 19, 2009
mollusque commented on the word glottery
Does trying to say them all at once result in epiglottery?
November 17, 2009
mollusque commented on the word list of the day
Ruzuzu's Capitonyms or capitonyms is timely.
November 17, 2009
mollusque commented on the user Prolagus
Hi, Prolagus! Could you edit your comment on my Letters list, to fix "ḍ as in puḍḍica"?
November 17, 2009
mollusque commented on the user uselessness
Psst, your profile page is under your real name, so you might want to tweak your settings. You know, to keep up the uselessness mystique.
November 17, 2009
mollusque commented on the word comments
Thanks, John! (By the way, weren't you capitalized on Wordie?)
November 16, 2009
mollusque commented on the word comments
Was I being dense below, or prescient? The top of the comments box says that double brackets link to the comments pages.
November 16, 2009
mollusque commented on the word suggestions
I think a royal blue might be easier to read than the cornflower blue.
November 16, 2009
mollusque commented on the word janusian
I've never heard it pronounced, but I'd follow the pattern of Venusian.
November 15, 2009
mollusque commented on the word suggestions
John, how about delegating some of the clean-up to longtime users? If you gave them superuser powers, they could search out (given appropriate tools) the remaining problems with character conversions and fix them. This would mean allowing the superusers to edit other users comments.
You could harness that fijiti ocsjts energy for something beyond meta!
November 15, 2009
mollusque commented on the word dight
If those don't fill you up, try these.
November 15, 2009
mollusque commented on the word comments
Where a word hasn't been listed, the "Be the first!" link goes to "Create a new word list" instead of to "Take this word and . . . List it".
November 15, 2009
mollusque commented on the word comments
Yet another aspect of the split: try looking up some of the Wordie neologisms, like alphavocalic. The definitions page gives no hint that Wordnik has information about such words, i.e., that they've been listed and commented on. It should show when words have been listed (maybe showing the first ten lists). To make room for this, how about moving the tags to the comments page (since tagging is a form of commenting), and cutting out six of the picture from Flickr so the right column is continuous.
November 15, 2009
mollusque commented on the word janusian
"Janusian thinking"—the capacity to conceive and utilize two or more opposite or contradictory ideas, concepts, or images simultaneously—is discussed in relation to its role in the creative process in art, literature, architecture, music, science, and mathematics. I feel that understanding the psychological factors in creativity should be of importance in the theory and everyday practice of the art of psychotherapy.
--Albert Rothenberg, 1971, "The Process of Janusian Thinking in Creativity", Archives of General Psychiatry 24(3): 195
November 15, 2009
mollusque commented on the word comments
While writing the previous comment, I realized the shortcoming of have the comment box at the top: it's smaller than before, which makes it harder to compose longer comments. How about popping up a larger window for comments, like the tags box we used to have on Wordie? Or automatically enlarging the comment box once typing hits the fifth line?
November 15, 2009
mollusque commented on the word comments
I'm starting to get used to the janusian feel of the Wordienik chimaera. The Wordnik definition pages show the ducks from above, and the Wordie zeitgeist pages show the spirited paddling underneath. I'm not sure I want more people to pay attention to the activity below. Might we be overwhelmed if too many people joined the fray?
The split is odd at times though. Clicking on a bracketed word brings you to the definition page, not the comment page, yet the words are often being bracketed to refer to another comment. And tags can be added only from the definitions pages, not the comments pages. We need an option "Take this word and . . . tag it", and a short cut for linking a word to its comment page. (Maybe double square brackets?)
November 15, 2009
mollusque commented on the word ☃
I see a snowman surrounded by conch embryos.
November 15, 2009
mollusque commented on the word googlewhack
Google doesn't seem to index Wordnik very often. A search for "gubernatoric hubris" (see below) finds Wordie but not Wordnik.
November 14, 2009
mollusque commented on the word anamonic
Lipton uses anamonics to keep track of large numbers of words. In simplest terms, an anamonic is a phrase that helps the player remember a group of words made up of similar letters, like the seven-letter word POLENTA plus a blank.
--Paul McCarthy, 2008, Letterati, p. 135
November 14, 2009
mollusque commented on the word scallop
Give me my scallop-shell of quiet,
My staff of faith to walk upon;
My scrip of joy, immortal diet;
My bottle of salvation;
My gown of glory, hope's true gage,
And thus I'll take my pilgrimage!
--Sir Walter Raleigh, 1603, Pilgrimage
November 14, 2009
mollusque commented on the list wuthering-heights-list-4
Hi jclerch. Do you want contributions to this list (it's open), or do you intend to stick to ten words as in the list description?
November 14, 2009
mollusque commented on the word snail
I gazed long at the weather-worn block; and, stooping down, perceived a hole near the bottom still full of snail-shells and pebbles, which we were fond of storing there with more perishable things. . .
--Emily Brontë, 1847, Wuthering Heights
November 14, 2009
mollusque commented on the word list of the day
I like the "list of the day" idea, introduced yesterday on the blog. How do we nominate lists?
November 14, 2009
mollusque commented on the list sensory
Make that "list", not "lost". We don't seem to have the ability to edit comments at the moment.
November 12, 2009
mollusque commented on the list sensory
Hi tiara, interesting list! May I recommend putting the parenthetical remarks as comments instead of with the words? Also, try entering the words in lower case unless they need to be capitalized. You'll see that some of them are on some other color lists, which might give more fodder for your lost.
Also, take a look at the tag
November 12, 2009
mollusque commented on the word xygen
*Turns blue*
November 10, 2009
mollusque commented on the user Prolagus
Hi Pro! I didn't know there were two of you. When did you become paraphyletic?
November 9, 2009
mollusque commented on the word 15000
Wordies, as of November 8, 2009.
November 9, 2009
mollusque commented on the word professor schmartzenpantz
Sionnach, I think you need to revisit Professor von Schmartzenpanz.
November 9, 2009
mollusque commented on the word probablility
But less likely than certaintity.
November 9, 2009
mollusque commented on the word wordnik
Thanks for the update, John. I like "seemless", which seems less corporate than "seamless".
November 9, 2009
mollusque commented on the user chained_bear
Congratulations on becoming paraphyletic (again)!
November 7, 2009
mollusque commented on the word bouteillan
He entered the Gothic archway of the hall where Bouteillan, the old bald butler who unprofessionally now wore a mustache (dyed a rich gravy brown) met him with gested delight. . .
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1969, Ada, or Ardor
November 5, 2009
mollusque commented on the word avournine
He could not say afterwards, when discussing with her that rather pathetic nastiness, whether he really feared that his avournine (as Blanche was to refer later, in her bastard French, to Ada) might react with an outburst of real or well-feigned resentment to stark display of desire. . .
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1969, Ada, or Ardor
November 5, 2009
mollusque commented on the word marguerite
Citation at anadem.
November 5, 2009
mollusque commented on the word anadem
Next day, or the day after the next, the entire family was having high tea in the garden. Ada, on the grass, kept trying to make an anadem of marguerites for the dog while Lucette looked on, munching a crumpet.
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1969, Ada, or Ardor
November 5, 2009
mollusque commented on the word guermantoid
. . .the Odettian Sphinx had turned, bless him, into an elephantoid mummy with a comically encased trunk of the guermantoid type. . .
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1969, Ada, or Ardor
November 5, 2009
mollusque commented on the word rabbitry
She carefully closed a communicating door as they entered into what looked like a glorified rabbitry at the end of a marble-flagged hall (a converted bathroom, as it transpired).
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1969, Ada, or Ardor
November 5, 2009
mollusque commented on the word jikker
I did the opposite, yarb. I wrote down lots of words to start with, when I was on my Nabokov jag a few months ago. But I petered out on Ada after about 100 pages; I just didn't care for the story.
November 5, 2009
mollusque commented on the word inkline
You could clip and kiss, and survey in between, the reservoir, the groves, the meadows, even the inkline of larches that marked the boundary of the nearest estate miles away, and the ugly little shapes of more or less legless cows on a distant hillside.
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1969, Ada, or Ardor
November 4, 2009
mollusque commented on the word jikker
Rolled up in its case was an old "jikker" or skimmer, a blue magic rug with Arabian designs, faded but still enchanting, which Uncle Daniel's father had used in his boyhood and later flown when drunk.
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1969, Ada, or Ardor
November 4, 2009
mollusque commented on the word bathless
Citation at towel horse.
November 4, 2009
mollusque commented on the word towel horse
Van had never encountered a towel horse before, never seen a washstand made specially for the bathless.
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1969, Ada, or Ardor
November 4, 2009
mollusque commented on the list nabokov-start
Hi, lesurze. Glad to see another Nabokov list. If you're so inclined, post quotations for the words (e.g., mnemoptical).
Welcome to Wordie!
November 4, 2009
mollusque commented on the word lunule
Also a part of some clam shells.
November 3, 2009
mollusque commented on the word pretent
Eat peanut butter first.
November 2, 2009
mollusque commented on the word wordnik
John, your reply to madmouth on Craigslist - stuff for sale raises a question. Will we be able to capitalize existing listed words that are supposed to be capitalized, or will we have to drop one and add the other?
November 1, 2009
mollusque commented on the list pocketful-of-i-ry-i
Druidry, balladry, cannonry, constabulary, corsetry, crockery, cutlery, deaconry, enginery, felonry, furriery, gadgetry, gendarmery, gentry, hosiery, gunnery, helotry, legionry, merchantry missilery, monkery, musketry, peltry, phratry, plumery, priestery, saddlery, servantry, soldiery, squiry tenantry, toggery, trinketry, weaponry, weedery, yeomanry.
October 31, 2009
mollusque commented on the word earcatcher
The opening sentence must be an earcatcher of sufficient value to retain the listener's interest. Sometimes, a catchy melody or a fanfare is the perfect for this opening "teaser."
--Barbara E. Benson, 1945, Music and Sound Systems in Industry, p. 52
October 31, 2009
mollusque commented on the word punctoglyph
Then punctoglyph is broader than emoticon. Let's hope it catches on.
October 31, 2009
mollusque commented on the word punctoglyph
Is the ascii squid a punctoglyph?
October 30, 2009
mollusque commented on the list take-five
Thanks, madmouth! I've opened the list.
October 30, 2009
mollusque commented on the word earcatcher
Your offspring?
October 30, 2009
mollusque commented on the list words-to-have-topped-the-most-wordied-last-7-days-list-since-june-9-2008
I used the F5 trick that bilby suggested (see bugs).
October 30, 2009
mollusque commented on the list words-to-have-topped-the-most-wordied-last-7-days-list-since-june-9-2008
Yarb, another monosyllable is tops at the moment--grace.
October 29, 2009
mollusque commented on the word umbragenous
Umbragella, an umbrage deflector?
October 29, 2009
mollusque commented on the word umbragenous
Umbraglio is excellent, madmouth. Does it refer to exchanges of phony or real umbrage or both?
October 29, 2009
mollusque commented on the word poilu
I think Wordnet has this wrong; it should be purloo in the stew meaning. I can't find poilu used with any meaning but soldier in Google Books.
October 29, 2009
mollusque commented on the word bugs
Thanks, bilby---I didn't know about F5.
October 29, 2009
mollusque commented on the word ethnomasochism
Brackets on punctoglyph please, rolig.
October 29, 2009
mollusque commented on the word bugs
I can't refresh the homepage. Even though I'm signed in, I get the sign-in screen and the comments from a couple of days ago.
October 29, 2009
mollusque commented on the user ruzuzu
Thanks, ruzuzu! I've added you to Monovocalic Proper
October 29, 2009
mollusque commented on the word zooeae
Shouldn't this be zoeae?
October 28, 2009
mollusque commented on the word agrume
At a recent meeting of the Berlin Geographical Society, reported in Ocean Highways, Herr Langenbach read a paper on the culture of the Orange in Sicily. The Agrume is first met with in latitude 44°, while the sweet Orange does not grow plentifully above 41°. The lecturer stated that there are seven different species of Sicilian Oranges, which are subdivided into no less than thirty-two different kinds.
--The Garden 3: 76, January 25, 1873
October 28, 2009
mollusque commented on the word agrume
How'd I miss this for my citrus list?
October 28, 2009
mollusque commented on the word cockneyfied
The place, as he approached it, seemed bright and breezy to him; his roamings had been neither far enough nor frequent enough to make the cockneyfied coast insipid.
--Henry James, 1893, "Sir Dominick Ferrand", The Real Thing, and other tales, p. 88
October 28, 2009
mollusque commented on the word catchpenny
His book was a novel; it had the catchpenny cover, and while the romance of life stood neglected at his side he lost himself in that of the circulating library.
--Henry James, 1893, "The Middle Years", Scribner's Magazine 13: 610
October 28, 2009
mollusque commented on the word musicmonger
He was happy and various—as little as possible the mere long-haired musicmonger.
--Henry James, 1892, "Collaboration", The English Illustrated Magazine 9: 912
October 28, 2009
mollusque commented on the word a hedge of encyclopaedias
He found him in the little wainscoted Chelsea house, which had to Peter's sense the smoky brownness of an old pipebowl, surrounded with all the emblems of his office—a litter of papers, a hedge of encyclopaedias, a photographic gallery of popular contributors—and he promised at first to consume very few of the moments for which so many claims competed.
--Henry James, 1892, "Sir Dominick Ferrand", The Cosmopolitan 13: 325
October 28, 2009
mollusque commented on the word newspapery
The year before, in a big newspapery house, he had found himself next her at dinner, and they had converted the intensely material hour into a feast of reason.
--Henry James, 1892, "Nona Vincent", The English Illustrated Magazine 9: 365
October 28, 2009
mollusque commented on the word it sucks to be me
If it sucks only a little is it suckling?
October 28, 2009
mollusque commented on the word laneway
Hadn't heard it before now, so it's rare in the United States, if used at all.
October 26, 2009
mollusque commented on the word anatidaephobia
Coined by Gary Larson, but should have been anatiscopophobia.
October 25, 2009
mollusque commented on the word holy roller coaster
What's false about this one?
October 25, 2009
mollusque commented on the word zygodactyl
The only flightless zygodactyl I can think of is the kakapo. I suppose with a combination of hopping and waddling, it might break into an occasional scurry.
October 25, 2009
mollusque commented on the word zygodactyl
Climbing yes, but which zygodactyls scurry?
October 25, 2009
mollusque commented on the word douter
Extinguisher, particularly of candles.
October 25, 2009
mollusque commented on the user mollusque
Thanks, gangerh! It seems to happen about once a year. See mollusque baugh.
October 23, 2009
mollusque commented on the word conchotome
I'm glad it's not for chopping up mollusks.
October 21, 2009
mollusque commented on the word corsette
Variant of corset.
October 21, 2009
mollusque commented on the word ij
Digraph, maybe?
October 20, 2009
mollusque commented on the word manucode
Bird wird, reesetee!
October 20, 2009
mollusque commented on the list pterodactyl-s-game-of-postal-abbreviations
Thanks pterodactyl! I think bilby should win a trip to Marineland for finding a ten-letter word.
October 20, 2009
mollusque commented on the word auroch
Apparently not, c_b. Series, corps, and species aren't colisted anywhere on Wordie.
October 20, 2009
mollusque commented on the word wordnik
Excellent and disturbing point, sobriquet. All 20 of the examples Wordnik pulls in for "gound" are incorrect, based on typos of "ground". What is Wordnik doing that adds any authoritativeness? Why pull in definitions from other online dictionaries? Doesn't OneLook serve that purpose? Or the dictionary links on Wordie?
I'd much rather see Wordnik give a venue for "lexigraphic irregulars" to help devise definitions and provide compelling quotations, than be another portal that mashes up the same old stuff.
October 19, 2009
mollusque commented on the word wordnik
Gangerh, good observation about the vertical lists. I can pick panvocalics out of a vertical list much more rapidly than out of a horizontal list. I'd say relegate horizontal lists to cloud view.
October 19, 2009
mollusque commented on the word wordnik
Good work, John! Definitely an improvement over the old Wordnik. A few comments and questions.
On the Wordnik profile, I would like my favorites to be public but my browsing history to be private, as on Wordie, but that's not an option on Wordnik.
Should I update my Wordnik profile, or will my Wordie profile be migrated?
Unlike Wordie, Wordnik has a pre-existing corpus. Will Wordnik still show who first listed a word? Will it be possible to add words to the corpus without listing them? To me, listing words and building the dictionary are two separate activities. The only downside of separating them is that it would no longer be possible to have "ghost words".
I'm not sure I like the homepage. It makes a reasonable first impression, but I think it will get old quickly. I find myself thinking, it would be cleaner if "is" weren't in blue. And maybe the same for "in the known universe". How about just "Wordnik: the most comprehensive dictionary".
On the zeitgeist page, "Favorited" should be "Favourited" for panvocalicness.
How will comments be mapped from Wordie to Wordnik for words like polish where capitalization matters?
October 17, 2009
mollusque commented on the word asuume
So suu me.
October 17, 2009
mollusque commented on the word overdue
If you renew, the loan service could almost redue you.
October 17, 2009
mollusque commented on the word miksch's law
Möbius disagrees.
October 17, 2009
mollusque commented on the word debigulator
Settlers avoid overcrowding by shrinking themselves with a "debigulator." (The physics of the device were sketchy.)
--Mother Jones Magazine, 24(3): 88 (1999)
October 16, 2009
mollusque commented on the word unwed father
Less evidence?
October 16, 2009
mollusque commented on the word feline obstinacy syndrome
Isn't this redundant?
October 16, 2009
mollusque commented on the word myacidae
Now called Myidae.
October 15, 2009
mollusque commented on the word myaria
Now called Myidae.
October 15, 2009
mollusque commented on the word hitchhiker
I'm sorry, that information has been withheld.
October 14, 2009
mollusque commented on the word antihelmintic
And completing the set, in Google Books, anthelmintic is actually the most common of the four spellings.
October 13, 2009
mollusque commented on the word challenge
Will this serve?
October 13, 2009
mollusque commented on the word antihelmintic
Variant of antihelminthic.
October 13, 2009
mollusque commented on the word mutt's nuts
Is this one of your strays, c_b?
October 12, 2009
mollusque commented on the word least resistance
Presumably you use a "leash de resistance"?
October 12, 2009
mollusque commented on the list lost-for-word
Chagrin?
October 12, 2009
mollusque commented on the word keedug
It's Irish; try searching Google Books.
"A toper there lived at Rashedag
Who was so very fond of the wee jug
His coat, hat, and sheen
He'd sell for poteen,
An' he went to the Mass with a keedug
--Dugald MacFadyen, 1887, "Donegal Doggerel", Songs from the City, p. 192
October 11, 2009
mollusque commented on the word quiet
Quite quiet.
October 11, 2009
mollusque commented on the word pop-tart
As a kid I liked eating the top parts of Pop-tarts.
October 11, 2009
mollusque commented on the word 8 bottles
Rediscovered 10 October 2009.
October 10, 2009
mollusque commented on the word none in particular
Nada.
October 10, 2009
mollusque commented on the word furloug
Times really are toug.
October 9, 2009
mollusque commented on the word nychtophoniac
Should be nyctophoniac.
October 9, 2009
mollusque commented on the word duck boots
They chafe too.
October 9, 2009
mollusque commented on the word bumberchute
Usually spelled bumbershoot.
October 9, 2009
mollusque commented on the word metastatize
Variant of metastasize.
October 9, 2009
mollusque commented on the word cephalization
OED2 cites 1864, but Dana first used the term in 1852.
"This centralization is literally a cephalization of the forces. In the higher groups, the larger part of the whole structure is centered in the head, and contributes to head functions, that is, the functions of the senses and those of the mouth."
--James D. Dana, 1852, Crustacea. Part II. United States Exploring Expedition 13: 1397
October 9, 2009
mollusque commented on the word north american english dialects
I added frogappeal to Terms of Enfrogment, a list to which you have not even contributed, reesetee. No wonder frogapplause has her doubts about you.
October 9, 2009
mollusque commented on the word north american english dialects
I work in Philadelphia, but grew up in South Jersey in an area which on that map is Atlantic Midland, but is actually East Midland; the border is farther north than Vineland.
I don't merge any of the vowels in question, so I guess I'm either East Midland or General American. What's the distinction between those two?
October 8, 2009
mollusque commented on the list is-this-a-kissing-book
Holocaust cloak.
Prepare to die.
Anybody want a peanut?
Rodents of unusual size.
October 8, 2009
mollusque commented on the word cryptotesticular
Doesn't it though? Unfortunately, the "real" word is cryptorchid or cryptorchidic.
October 8, 2009
mollusque commented on the word obstropalous
Satinna, you'll find it listed under obstropolous in OED2. It's also defined in A Supplementary English Glossary by T. Lewis and O. Davies (1881).
October 7, 2009
mollusque commented on the word obstropalous
It's a thousand pities she can't keep on goin' to school," said Mrs. Jones; "if 'twarn't for the trouble of lookin' arter her, I wouldn't mind givin' her her wittles, but such gals is so obstropalous."
--Mrs. E. Little, 1846, "Riches without Wings", The Ladies' Wreath 1: 309
October 7, 2009
mollusque commented on the word cryptotesticular
And since it's not really a word, I can't list it as a panvocalic. (At least I have the pattern with lymphoreticular).
October 6, 2009
mollusque commented on the word lullabye
Variant of lullaby.
October 6, 2009
mollusque commented on the word i think not
Therefore I'm not.
October 6, 2009
mollusque commented on the word stimthought
I only get one present?
October 6, 2009
mollusque commented on the word otakuness
Perhaps if like me he'd been able to hide his otakuness maybe shit would have been easier for him, but he couldn't. Dude wore his nerdiness like a Jedi wore his light saber or a Lensman her lens.
Junot Díaz, 2007, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, p. 21
October 6, 2009
mollusque commented on the word nerdliness
His adolescent nerdliness vaporizing any iota of a chance he had for young love.
--Junot Díaz, 2007, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, p. 23
October 6, 2009
mollusque commented on the word boycrazy
To be called boycrazy in a country like Santo Domingo is a singular distinction; it means that you can sustain infatuations that would reduce your average northamericana to cinders.
--Junot Díaz, 2007, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, p. 88
October 6, 2009
mollusque commented on the word pernicious
I thought Knids were vermicious.
October 5, 2009
mollusque commented on the word u-shaped course of development
*makes room for bilby*
October 5, 2009
mollusque commented on the list isograms
I guess I should.
October 5, 2009
mollusque commented on the word uselessnesses
The Good Humor trucks blared bells
Each afternoon, their engines
Whirring to save the delight
Of cold, sweet uselessnesses.
Nuclear stereos rocked
The boulevards, the old piers
Splintering and rotting out.
--David Rothman, 2007, Goodbye to Greenpoint, p. 19 in
Sailing in the Mist of Time
September 26, 2009
mollusque commented on the word wordnikie suggestion box
C_b, I meant that anyone could mark anyone's comment as a definition or citation. I suppose that could be misused, but I don't see people have been intentionally marking, for example, verbs as conjunctions. Another possibility might be to allow multiple people to mark a comment as a definition, which could bubble it to the top in a subtler way that Urban Dictionary.
September 26, 2009
mollusque commented on the word wordnikie suggestion box
How about more access to the underlying database? So that one could query, say, for words appearing on lists with "bird" in the name and also on lists with "panvocalic" in the name. Or for adverbs tagged as palindromes (if any exist). Or English adjectives derived from Swedish. Or words with the repeat pattern for letters of 12345234.
September 25, 2009
mollusque commented on the word wordnikie suggestion box
I prefer the term "comments": it's the current name on Wordie, it's relatively neutral, and it's a standard database name for a field that contains discursive information.
I'd like to be able to mark comments as definitions or citations in the same way that we can mark parts of speech under tags. That means that anyone could mark a comment as a citation or definition (or both, or presumably unmark it), so that past comments could be categorized. That would allow one to view only comments that are definitions or citations if desired.
I don't want to see many options for marking comments though, because as Prolagus suggests, it could be deadening. Imagine marking jokes as such *shudders*.
September 25, 2009
mollusque commented on the word atchara
Pickled papaya, a Filipino condiment.
September 15, 2009
mollusque commented on the word tamilok
Shipworms eaten as a delicacy, raw or cooked, in Palawan.
September 15, 2009
mollusque commented on the word dont jinx it
Too late.
September 11, 2009
mollusque commented on the word instigte
Maybe not.
September 11, 2009
mollusque commented on the word wordnik
Could this be the start of the Human Lexome Project? Where do I send my resume to be biology editor for Wordnik?
(Lexome or lexisphere . . . lexome or lexisphere?)
September 11, 2009
mollusque commented on the word zoicks
An exclamation along the lines of "zounds".
September 10, 2009
mollusque commented on the word kindrow
The verbal equivalent of a dust bunny.
September 10, 2009
mollusque commented on the word wordnik
John, presumably Erin has a Wordie account. Why not ask her to say a few words to us?
September 10, 2009
mollusque commented on the word frogmarch
The frogs go marching one by one, hurrah, hurrah . . .
September 9, 2009
mollusque commented on the user yarb
Hi yarb, I'm off to the Philippines again on Friday for three weeks, so keep an extra beady or two on the Words to have topped list.
September 9, 2009
mollusque commented on the word wordnik
Congratulations, John!
Having played around on Wordnik for a few minutes now, I'd guess Wordie could be a portal into Wordnik once the databases are integrated. That could let the minimalist Wordieview be maintained.
There are some great features on Wordnik, like the ability to suggest related words. (Something that was suggested on Wordie a while ago, by yours truly.) So John, I hope you'll dredge back through the features suggestions and dust off some of them for implementation.
Does this mean we get capitalization? How is Wordnik going to handle all our games and non-English characters (like ΒΑ�?Α�?Α)?
September 9, 2009
mollusque commented on the word detartrated
Having the tartar removed, used in reference to grapes and wine, but potentially also in reference to visits to the dentist.
September 9, 2009
mollusque commented on the word wtf
Wet the frog?
September 9, 2009
mollusque commented on the list 180-degree-words
See the tags auto-antonym and janusword. Also called contranyms. I wonder if pejorations or amelioration is more common when meanings evolve.
September 8, 2009
mollusque commented on the word fliflam
Short-changed?
September 7, 2009
mollusque commented on the word black walnuts
Recipe here for persimmon fudge with walnuts.
September 7, 2009
mollusque commented on the word �?�
I saw it.
September 7, 2009
mollusque commented on the word black walnuts
Is that all you're craving, reesetee?
September 6, 2009
mollusque commented on the word ubiquidous
Ubi?
September 5, 2009
mollusque commented on the word commas
He was a guy who talked with commas, like a heavy novel. Over the phone anyway.
Raymond Chandler, 1953, The Long Goodbye, chapter 11
September 5, 2009
mollusque commented on the word magoozlum
I've written twelve best sellers, and if I ever finish that stack of magoozlum on the desk there I may possibly have written thirteen.
Raymond Chandler, 1953, The Long Goodbye, chapter 24
September 5, 2009
mollusque commented on the word quitclaim
They gave him a grand for a quitclaim just to save time and expense, and now somebody is going to make a million bucks clear, out of cutting the place up for residential property.
Raymond Chandler, 1953, The Long Goodbye, chapter 25
September 5, 2009
mollusque commented on the word waterhen
Towards the far shore, which wasn't very far, a black waterhen was doing lazy curves, like a skater. They didn't seem to cause as much as a shallow ripple.
Raymond Chandler, 1953, The Long Goodbye, chapter 24
September 5, 2009
mollusque commented on the word dingoes
I knew it was going to be one of those crazy days. Everybody has them. Days when nobody rolls in but the loose wheels, the dingoes who park their brains with their gum, the squirrels who can't find their nuts, the mechanics who always have a gear left over.
Raymond Chandler, 1953, The Long Goodbye, chapter 21
September 5, 2009
mollusque commented on the word cheaters
I turned and saw Mrs. Loring on a couch beside a prissy- looking man in rimless cheaters with a smear on his chin that might have been a goatee.
Raymond Chandler, 1953, The Long Goodbye, chapter 23
September 5, 2009
mollusque commented on the word shantung
Citation at collapsed lung.
September 5, 2009
mollusque commented on the word collapsed lung
A guy in a shantung jacket and an open neck shirt came up behind her and grinned at me over the top of her head. He had short red hair and a face like a collapsed lung.
Raymond Chandler, 1953, The Long Goodbye, chapter 24
September 5, 2009
mollusque commented on the word tailormade
On a bar stool a woman in a black tailormade, which couldn't at that time of year have been made of anything but some synthetic fabric like orlon, was sitting alone with a pale greenish-colored drink in front of her and smoking a cigarette in a long jade holder.
Raymond Chandler, 1953, The Long Goodbye, chapter 22
September 5, 2009
mollusque commented on the word music stand
Citation at sharping.
September 5, 2009
mollusque commented on the word sharping
It seemed to me for an instant that there was no sound in the bar, that the sharpies stopped sharping and the drunk on the stool stopped burbling away, and it was like just after the conductor taps on his music stand and raises his arms and holds them poised.
Raymond Chandler, 1953, The Long Goodbye, chapter 13
September 5, 2009
mollusque commented on the word intercom
And right now I didn't need the work badly enough to let some fathead from back east use me as a horse-holder, some executive character in a paneled office with a row of pushbuttons and an intercom and a secretary in a Hattie Carnegie Career Girl's Special and a pair of those big beautiful promising eyes.
Raymond Chandler, 1953, The Long Goodbye, chapter 13
September 5, 2009
mollusque commented on the word puddler
He has as much charm as a steel puddler's underpants.
Raymond Chandler, 1953, The Long Goodbye, chapter 15
September 5, 2009
mollusque commented on the word antrum
You go in and complain of a sinus headache and he washes out your antrums for you.
Raymond Chandler, 1953, The Long Goodbye, chapter 15
September 5, 2009
mollusque commented on the word gussing
Outside in the tecoma a bird was gussing around, talking to himself in low chirps, with an occasional brief flutter of wings.
Raymond Chandler, 1953, The Long Goodbye, chapter 12
September 5, 2009
mollusque commented on the word tecoma
He was looking a little sideways when he said this, towards the window over the sink and the tecoma bush that fretted against the screen.
Raymond Chandler, 1953, The Long Goodbye, chapter 5
September 5, 2009
mollusque commented on the word steam bath
Citation at rubdown.
September 5, 2009
mollusque commented on the word needle shower
Citation at rubdown.
September 5, 2009
mollusque commented on the word rubdown
Then I went to a Turkish bath place. I stayed a couple of hours, had a steam bath, a plunge, a needle shower, a rubdown and made a couple of phone calls from there.
Raymond Chandler, 1953, The Long Goodbye, chapter 5
September 5, 2009
mollusque commented on the word tertian ague
"It must be something like the tertian ague," he said. "When it hits you it's bad. When you don't have it, it's as though never did have it."
Raymond Chandler, 1953, The Long Goodbye, chapter 3
September 5, 2009
mollusque commented on the word atoasting
But I had no mental picture at all of Terry Lennox loafing around one of the swimming pools in Bermuda shorts and phoning the butler by R/T to ice the champagne and get the grouse atoasting.
Raymond Chandler, 1953, The Long Goodbye, chapter 3
September 5, 2009
mollusque commented on the word subphallic
I had a mental picture of the kind of eighteen-room shack that would go with a few of the Potter millions, not to mention decorations by Duhaux in the latest subphallic symbolism.
Raymond Chandler, 1953, The Long Goodbye, chapter 3
September 5, 2009
mollusque commented on the word sneezer
Citation at hackie.
September 5, 2009
mollusque commented on the word hackie
. . . almost his last dollar had gone into paying the check at The Dancers for a bit of high class fluff that couldn't stick around long enough to make sure he didn't get tossed in the sneezer by some prowl car boys, or rolled by a tough hackie and dumped out in a vacant lot.
Raymond Chandler, 1953, The Long Goodbye, chapter 1
September 5, 2009
mollusque commented on the word fizzwater
On a coffee table in front of a hard green davenport there was a half empty Scotch bottle and melted ice in a bowl and three empty fizzwater bottles and two glasses and a glass ash tray loaded with stubs with and without lipstick.
--Raymond Chandler, 1953, The Long Goodbye, chapter 1
September 5, 2009
mollusque commented on the word sidewalk gray
Its color scheme was bile green, linseed-poultice brown, sidewalk gray and monkey-bottom blue. It was as restful as a split lip.
--Raymond Chandler, 1949, The Little Sister, chapter 34
September 5, 2009
mollusque commented on the word unnaturally
I rang a bell and a large soft man oozed out from behind a wall and smiled at me with moist soft lips and bluish-white teeth and unnaturally bright eyes.
--Raymond Chandler, 1949, The Little Sister, chapter 34
September 5, 2009
mollusque commented on the word nut hatch
It had the sort of lobby that asks for plush and india-rubber plants, but gets glass brick, cornice lighting, three-cornered glass tables, and a general air of having been redecorated by a parolee from a nut hatch.
--Raymond Chandler, 1949, The Little Sister, chapter 34
September 5, 2009
mollusque commented on the word unclassifiable
She was unclassifiable, as remote and clear as mountain water, as elusive as its color.
--Raymond Chandler, 1953, The Long Goodbye, chapter 13
September 5, 2009
mollusque commented on the word atlas
mountains?
September 5, 2009
mollusque commented on the word thumbnail
He scratched a match on his thumbnail and watched it burn and tried to blow it out with a long steady breath that just bent the flame over.
--Raymond Chandler, 1943, The Lady in the Lake, chapter 35
September 4, 2009
mollusque commented on the word ashcan
"Two bucks to spend the night in this manhole," I said, "when for free I could have a nice airy ashcan."
--Raymond Chandler, 1943, The Lady in the Lake, chapter 13
September 4, 2009
mollusque commented on the word eggheaded
The eggheaded clerk separated me from two dollars without even looking at me.
--Raymond Chandler, 1943, The Lady in the Lake, chapter 13
September 4, 2009
mollusque commented on the word caterpillars
I separated another dollar from my exhibit and it went into his pocket with a sound like caterpillars fighting.
--Raymond Chandler, 1943, The Lady in the Lake, chapter 13
September 4, 2009
mollusque commented on the word homesteader
I said goodnight and went on out, leaving him there moving his mind around with the ponderous energy of a homesteader digging up a stump.
--Raymond Chandler, 1943, The Lady in the Lake, chapter 12
September 4, 2009
mollusque commented on the word handhewn
There's a bunch of old handhewn log cabins that's been falling down ever since I recall . . .
--Raymond Chandler, 1943, The Lady in the Lake, chapter 11
September 4, 2009
mollusque commented on the word icebucket
There was a bottle of Vat 69 and glasses on a tray and a copper icebucket on a low round burl walnut table with a glass top.
--Raymond Chandler, 1943, The Lady in the Lake, chapter 3
September 4, 2009
mollusque commented on the word manzanita
A fire was laid behind the screen and partly masked by a large spray of manzanita bloom.
--Raymond Chandler, 1943, The Lady in the Lake, chapter 3
September 4, 2009
mollusque commented on the word overmantel
He held the door wide and I went in past him, into a dim pleasant room with an apricot Chinese rug that looked expensive, deepsided chairs, a number of white drum lamps, a big Capehart in the corner, a long and very wide davenport in pale tan mohair shot with dark brown, and a fireplace with a copper screen and an overmantel in white wood.
--Raymond Chandler, 1943, The Lady in the Lake, chapter 3
September 4, 2009
mollusque commented on the list triads
Thanks, bilby! Hadn't heard of it, but it seems popular enough.
September 4, 2009
mollusque commented on the list monovocalics
Thanks, yarb!
September 4, 2009
mollusque commented on the word fiblet
It's a fiblet — a little lie for a very good reason. The choice is to enter the patient's world and comfort, not to confront.
--Joanne Koenig Coste, p. 35 in Betsy Peterson, 2004, Voices of Alzheimer's
September 4, 2009
mollusque commented on the word black walnuts
But it has: see black walnut.
September 4, 2009
mollusque commented on the word peak dinosaur
Peak bird, in terms of discovering species, was around 1850.
September 3, 2009
mollusque commented on the word catapostrophe
Apparently first coined in French, with a different meaning:
"Derrida called it a 'catapostrophe' — that is, an inversion of Aristotle's apostrophe."
--David Lehman, 1991, Signs of the times: deconstruction and the fall of Paul de Man, p. 247
September 2, 2009
mollusque commented on the word stapelia
Should be glabrous, not glubrous.
September 2, 2009
mollusque commented on the list word-for-word
Seems more like a run dry run kind of phrase. (Which is a great list by the way.)
September 2, 2009
mollusque commented on the word peak dinosaur
This assumes that the discovery curve is sigmoidal, with the x-axis being time and the y-axis being number of genera known. It also assumes that our concept of what constitutes a genus won't change, that the peak should be defined in terms of genera instead of species, and that birds aren't dinosaurs.
September 2, 2009
mollusque commented on the word 烘托epsy
Epil? Narcol?
September 1, 2009
mollusque commented on the list word-for-word
Thanks for the contributions, sarra and fbharjo! fb, what do you mean by "in between in". It doesn't seem like a normal phrase or idiom to me.
September 1, 2009
mollusque commented on the list x-s-y-where-x-is-somebody-s-name
Dollo's law.
August 29, 2009
mollusque commented on the word zymergy
Do you mean zymurgy?
August 28, 2009
mollusque commented on the word thin space
Is this used for kerning? What about 0x0aa8 (hair space)?
August 27, 2009
mollusque commented on the list bird-wirds-nicknames
How about coddy-moddy?
August 27, 2009
mollusque commented on the word 09-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-41-56-c5-63-56-88-c0 = i
See AACS encryption key controversy.
August 27, 2009
mollusque commented on the word swellop
Of course it's a real word--it's just a madeupical one. (It's also one of Aidan Swellop Millofpckszy Stokes names.) Welcome to Wordie!
August 26, 2009
mollusque commented on the list letters
Thanks, Milosrdenstvi. I could just take them from Wikipedia, but it's more fun to spot them as they're used on Wordie. Apparently there's more than one way to write the Georgian alphabet. What did you learn about that?
August 26, 2009
mollusque commented on the word 0
Really not listed until today?
August 26, 2009
mollusque commented on the word out of sorts
Assorted, I hope.
August 26, 2009
mollusque commented on the word ჭიკჭიკი
Thanks, Milosrdenstvi!
August 26, 2009
mollusque commented on the word tschinke
Shouldn't it be on your list of that name, reesetee?
August 26, 2009
mollusque commented on the word alopine
Apparently a nonce word based on the genus name Alopex.
August 26, 2009
mollusque commented on the word nuvole
Ecole?
August 25, 2009
mollusque commented on the word wtf
Whitefish.
August 25, 2009
mollusque commented on the word clapperclaw
But sooth the other was a doughty sparhawk
To clapperclaw him well; and both of them
Fell in the middle of the boiling pond.
--Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1909, p. 133
August 25, 2009
mollusque commented on the word henious
Rather.
August 25, 2009
mollusque commented on the word ruelle
My sister and I called in Narnia when we were kids.
August 25, 2009
mollusque commented on the word cool hand luke
Where'd the extra three come from?
August 24, 2009
mollusque commented on the word authoritativeness
Until now, Wordie has lacked authoritativeness.
August 24, 2009
mollusque commented on the list people-commonly-known-by-their-first-names
How about stage names (Charo), or non-human people (Bilbo), or people who had only one name (Socrates)?
August 23, 2009
mollusque commented on the word chargoggagoggmanchauggauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg
Variant of Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg.
August 23, 2009
mollusque commented on the word formaldehydetetramethylamidofluorimum
Said to be in OED2, but occurs only in a quotation under pyronin.
August 23, 2009
mollusque commented on the word 心
Penguin?
August 23, 2009
mollusque commented on the word cool hand luke
What we've got here is a failure to communicate.
August 23, 2009
mollusque commented on the word binaral rivalry
Shouldn't it be binarial, on the pattern of narial?
August 22, 2009
mollusque commented on the word omntac
What do you call a typo of a typo?
August 21, 2009
mollusque commented on the word usain bolt
Two world records this week: 100 meters in 9.58 seconds and 200 meters in 19.19 seconds, in both cases breaking his previous record by 0.11 seconds. Astounding!
August 21, 2009
mollusque commented on the word doubly uniparental inheritance
Getting mitochondria from both mother and father (instead of just the mother), a pattern found in some bivalves.
August 21, 2009
mollusque commented on the word dui
Doubly uniparental inheritance.
August 21, 2009
mollusque commented on the word out of sorts
Time to restock.
August 20, 2009
mollusque commented on the user reesetee
The 10K's have been tagged (so far), so I figured the 20K's should be too. C_b almost snuck hers by, but I happened to be watching.
August 18, 2009
mollusque commented on the user mollusque
Thanks, reesetee and c_b. FYI, leagues joins swim and devincenzia on the 20K list.
August 18, 2009
mollusque commented on the list triads
No, the dyadic nature of Calvin and Hobbes is too strong. They're on the Couples & Duos list.
August 16, 2009
mollusque commented on the list triads
And then two in ten minutes! (Affixes, prefixes, suffixes inspired by SoSheShall).
August 16, 2009
mollusque commented on the list triads
Thanks, xundra! It's been a long time since a new triad surfaced.
August 16, 2009
mollusque commented on the user bilby
Thanks bilby! The wordometer clicked over to 20K about a week ago.
August 16, 2009
mollusque commented on the word sargasm
Floating on the Sargasm Sea?
August 16, 2009
mollusque commented on the word succes
Maybe not.
August 15, 2009
mollusque commented on the list isograms
Yes. But maybe I should drop the "i". It looks sort of odd, and it's not too likely the numbers themselves would otherwise be used as tags.
Edit: done.
August 15, 2009
mollusque commented on the word skiwi
Seen here.
August 15, 2009
mollusque commented on the list monsieur-prolagus-s-holiday
South Florida is pretty flat. For unusual landscapes how about Utah? Bryce and Zion National Parks.
August 13, 2009
mollusque commented on the word anthropophagodidymosiamailurophobia
It's cannibalism only if they eat each other.
August 13, 2009
mollusque commented on the word antevasin
The antevasin was an in-betweener. He was a border-dweller. He lived in sight of both worlds, but he looked toward the unknown.
--Elizabeth Gilbert, 2006, Eat, Pray, Love, p. 204
August 13, 2009
mollusque commented on the word pewtery
The moon was lusciously ripe and full, and it hovered right above me, spilling a pewtery light all around.
--Elizabeth Gilbert, 2006, Eat, Pray, Love, p. 202
August 13, 2009
mollusque commented on the word onomonotopeia
An escapee from Odamoddypia. And John's new alphabetic browse reveals several others.
August 12, 2009
mollusque commented on the word kimset
Maybe not.
August 12, 2009
mollusque commented on the word shmozzle
And schlimazel.
August 11, 2009
mollusque commented on the word twaddle
They have only two varieties of pizza here — regular and extra cheese. None of this new age southern California olives-and-sun-dried-tomato wannabe pizza twaddle.
--Elizabeth Gilbert, 2006, Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything across Italy, India and Indonesia, p. 80
August 10, 2009
mollusque commented on the word jones
Traveling-to-a-place energy and living-in-a-place energy are two fundamentally different energies, and something about meeting this Australian girl on her way to Slovenia just gave me such a jones to hit the road.
--Elizabeth Gilbert, 2006, Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything across Italy, India and Indonesia, p. 78
August 10, 2009
mollusque commented on the word patina
It's no wonder you're confused, bilby: Patella and Patina are both genera of limpets.
August 10, 2009
mollusque commented on the word scratching post
But never again use another person's body or emotions as a scratching post for your own unfulfilled yearnings.
--Elizabeth Gilbert, 2006, Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything across Italy, India and Indonesia, p. 65
August 10, 2009
mollusque commented on the word illitterati
..litter..
August 9, 2009
mollusque commented on the word pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis
What's up here? It's not misspelled (despite the tag), but isn't merged with the main listing because of the different URL.
August 9, 2009
mollusque commented on the word boyd
Boyd woyd, reesetee!
August 9, 2009
mollusque commented on the list ruby-reserved-words
Mr. Potato Head? That might explain some things around here.
August 9, 2009
mollusque commented on the word little plowshare
Thanks, telofy!
August 9, 2009
mollusque commented on the word little plowshare
Telofy, please make it a link not an image. Otherwise I'll have to avoid Wordie till it's off the homepage.
August 9, 2009
mollusque commented on the word sweeperesses
And so there was a marriage after all, a wedding at the end with orchestra and fireworks and a reception at the Taj and the Gateway blocked off again for a dance sequence by the sweepers and sweeperesses of Bombay.
--I. Allan Sealy, 1991, Hero: a fable, p. 105
August 8, 2009
mollusque commented on the word illitterati
Hmmm.
August 8, 2009
mollusque commented on the word warp of cloth
Stamina.
August 8, 2009
mollusque commented on the word the vault
Alcove.
August 8, 2009
mollusque commented on the word ruby on rails
Clicking camel chicken somehow brought me to a page saying "Ruby on Rails application could not be started".
August 8, 2009
mollusque commented on the word blobitectural
Greg Lynn's conceptual "Embryological House" is the quintessential — if virtual — blobitectural structure.
--John K. Waters, 2003, Blobitecture: waveform architecture and digital design
August 8, 2009
mollusque commented on the word benjamin
Benjamin is a benjanym.
August 7, 2009
mollusque commented on the word metallege
See metallage.
August 4, 2009
mollusque commented on the word metallage
This species of interference . . . . may be called Metallagē, or more simply "Cross Compensation," a name I gave it towards a quarter of a century ago . . . . the earlier of two letters is displaced by a later one; but then, instead of repeating the latter in its proper place, the hand instantly and automatically executes the mental instruction first given it by dashing in the earlier and displaced letter where the later one should be written; the result, therefore, has the aspect of a simple interchange; e.g. . . . Padoga for pagoda . . . .
--T. Le Marchant Douse, 1900, "On some minor psychological interferences: a study of misspellings and related mistakes." Mind: A Quarterly Review of Psychology and Philosophy 9: 88
August 4, 2009
mollusque commented on the word metallage
Also a misspelling or mispronunciation in which two letters in a word are switched in position. Misspelled metallege by no less an authority than Dmitri Borgmann.
August 4, 2009
mollusque commented on the word scraunched
See squirrelled.
August 4, 2009
mollusque commented on the word squirrelled
Longest English word pronounceable as one syllable.
August 4, 2009
mollusque commented on the word squirrely
Variant of squirrelly.
August 4, 2009
mollusque commented on the word generation z
How about Generation TMI?
August 3, 2009
mollusque commented on the word cinerious
Variant of cinereous.
August 3, 2009
mollusque commented on the word sticky carrot
Or when you can't get the spoon under the last bit of carrot sticking to the side of the soup bowl. Dern recalcitrant vegetables.
August 2, 2009
mollusque commented on the list color-adjectives
Thanks! (Did you know that you have bleu in your username?)
August 2, 2009
mollusque commented on the word aureolous
I was formed of night yolk aureolous and the albumen black empty wind hustles my skin . . .
--Martin Booth, 1974, Brevities, p. 2
August 2, 2009
mollusque commented on the word atrorubent
For rain-sprigged yew trees, blockish as they guard
admonitory sparse berries, atrorubent
stone holt of darkness, no, of claustral light . . .
--Geoffrey Hill, 2007, "Offertorium: December 2002", Without Title, p. 22
August 2, 2009
mollusque commented on the word disemvowelling
Also see disemvoweling.
August 2, 2009
mollusque commented on the word contraption
Ears back for speed?
August 2, 2009
mollusque commented on the word jean dimmock
Burlap.
August 1, 2009
mollusque commented on the word killifish
But contrary to the linked article, they are not the only vertebrates that can reproduce without a mate. Parthenogenesis has been demonstrated in some sharks.
August 1, 2009
mollusque commented on the word ecodog
This might explain some incidents in customs. And here I thought the dogs were sniffing for drugs.
July 29, 2009
mollusque commented on the word hunker down
"It was open, so we had to hunker up against the side of the house and keep real quiet.
--Ralph Moody, 1991, Little Britches: Father and I Were Ranchers, p. 122
July 27, 2009
mollusque commented on the word motormouth
Any relation, madmouth?
July 25, 2009
mollusque commented on the word massif
It is.
July 24, 2009
mollusque commented on the word self-containted
Maybe not.
July 24, 2009
mollusque commented on the word inadvertant
Oops.
July 24, 2009
mollusque commented on the word garboil
Parboiled gargoyle?
July 24, 2009
mollusque commented on the list more-gruel
Thanks, madmouth!
July 7, 2009
mollusque commented on the word pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcaniosis
Only 41 letters. You left out "ocon" toward the end.
July 5, 2009
mollusque commented on the list a-crumb-of-comfort
There's an open list, Let Them Eat Cake..., which includes more than cake.
July 3, 2009
mollusque commented on the word chimpanzee
Good one babycakes!
July 3, 2009
mollusque commented on the list punca-s-list
Brackets on spammy, please.
July 3, 2009
mollusque commented on the word chatouille!
Mine too, but I'd already listed chatouiller.
July 1, 2009
mollusque commented on the word cellophane
See second comment at octopus.
June 29, 2009
mollusque commented on the list percussion
An onomatopoeic discovery: there is a percussion instrument starting with each (English) consonant, but none starting with "e", "i", "o", "u", or "y".
June 29, 2009
mollusque commented on the word scared of the girls who are good at volleyball
tioV imprinted on forehead.
June 28, 2009
mollusque commented on the word fence post pisser
Post turtles beware.
June 26, 2009
mollusque commented on the word felafel
But not shawarmageddon.
June 24, 2009
mollusque commented on the word tonguebanging
It was an OCR error copied from Google books. Fixed.
June 24, 2009
mollusque commented on the word felafel
But not falafal.
June 24, 2009
mollusque commented on the word open-list
I can see them.
June 23, 2009
mollusque commented on the word alfalfa
Alfalfa and entente are apparently the only seven English letter words where the first four letters are the same as the last four letters.
June 23, 2009
mollusque commented on the user mousescout
Hi mousescout, regarding your comment on 42: I think you've come up with another symptom of Wordie addiction!
June 21, 2009
mollusque commented on the word standardista
Accessibility expert and standardista Joe Clark, whose name will pop up more than once in this book, has created a Failed Redesigns campaign . . . designed to spread standards awareness while shaming those who produce new or redesigned sites that act as if "the 21st century is frozen in the amber of 1999."
--Jeffrey Zeldman, 2007, Designing with Web Standards, p. 53
June 21, 2009
mollusque commented on the user wordlover42
Hi wordlover42. See 42 and 21. Welcome to Wordie!
June 20, 2009
mollusque commented on the word וְ�?ָהַבְתָּ, �?ֵת יְהוָה �?ֱלֹהֶיךָ, בְּכָל-לְבָבְךָ וּבְכָל-נַפְשְ�?ךָ, וּבְכָל-מְ�?ֹדֶךָ.
Shevek, I'm not sure what you find disrepectful--the original posting or one or more of the comments that followed. Since the original list has apparently now been deleted, it's hard to tell what the context was. I posted the next line in transliteration, partly because it came immediately to mind, but also so that someone who wanted to find out what it was could do so by searching for some of the words.
A Google search for the tetragrammaton in Hebrew finds more than half a million instances. It's appearance on Wordie is not inherently disrepectful. A devout Jew would not write the tetragrammaton because of the risk that someone would throw out the paper it was written on rather than dispose of it through the appropriate ritual. The appearance on Wordie does not make someone likely to inadvertently pronounce it. Any who reads Hebrew automatically says "Adonai" or some other substitute.
June 20, 2009
mollusque commented on the word amalgama
He glued a bit of leather on a large piece of cork, and placed his amalgama on the leather . . .
--The Monthly Review, April 1784, p. 284
June 20, 2009
mollusque commented on the word foreordain
See every potential wordie list is an existing wordie list.
June 19, 2009
mollusque commented on the word וְ�?ָהַבְתָּ, �?ֵת יְהוָה �?ֱלֹהֶיךָ, בְּכָל-לְבָבְךָ וּבְכָל-נַפְשְ�?ךָ, וּבְכָל-מְ�?ֹדֶךָ.
V’ha-yu had’varim ha-eileh,
asher anochi m’tzav’cha ha-yom al l’vavecha.
(That's the next line, not a transliteration.)
June 18, 2009
mollusque commented on the word demice
I've heard caveat pronounced as two syllables.
June 17, 2009
mollusque commented on the word pointing out random animals from moving car
Rasp.
At least those that have radulas.
June 17, 2009
mollusque commented on the word pointing out random animals from moving car
Moo.
June 17, 2009
mollusque commented on the word mangkorn chomphoo
My favorite is the zebra millipede.
June 16, 2009
mollusque commented on the word chama
Also a genus of mollusks, the jewel box shells.
June 16, 2009
mollusque commented on the word shredded wheat
Rebracketed, with alternate quote characters that should work.
June 16, 2009
mollusque commented on the word shredded wheat
Unbracketed.
June 16, 2009
mollusque commented on the word individuate
inDIVIDuatE
June 15, 2009
mollusque commented on the word autodidiac
Self-tauigh.
June 15, 2009
mollusque commented on the word hippo
Short for hippopotamus, Weirdnet.
June 15, 2009
mollusque commented on the word clodpolish
Polishing them doesn't help.
June 15, 2009
mollusque commented on the word shredded wheat
Okay, bracketed.
June 15, 2009
mollusque commented on the word cardsharper
I wondered about that when I added the quotation. Sharper as a noun of similar meaning goes back to 1797 (OED2). Cardsharper became common in the 1850s perhaps because of the British racehorse of that name. Another possibility (inferred from the notes in the Library of America edition) is that Nabokov was echoing the ending of shuler and Schüler:
"I have often wondered why the Russian for it cardsharper . . . is the same as the German for 'schoolboy,' minus the umlaut . . ."
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1969, Ada, p. 175
June 14, 2009
mollusque commented on the word you can borrow all 5,485 of my books
Ordinary and inordinate, reesetee.
June 14, 2009
mollusque commented on the word shredded wheat
We put the “no�? in innovation.
June 14, 2009
mollusque commented on the word lunatic
. . . I perceived my entire skin as that of a leopard painted by a meticulous lunatic from a broken home.
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 243
June 13, 2009
mollusque commented on the word tactility
. . . I became aware of certain curious details: from the head down I was paralyzed in symmetrical patches separated by a geography of weak tactility.
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 242
June 13, 2009
mollusque commented on the word pyrotechny
The combination of those ingredients resulted in a dazzling pyrotechny of sense . . .
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 250
June 13, 2009
mollusque commented on the word congeric
. . . a diminutive golden pencil belonging to the eyelet of a congeric agenda in a vanity bag . . .
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 250
June 13, 2009
mollusque commented on the word utterable
Citation at interpellate.
June 13, 2009
mollusque commented on the word interpellate
One dire detail: in rapid Russian speech longish name-and-patronymic combinations undergo familiar slurrings: thus "Pavel Pavlovich," Paul, son of Paul, when casually interpellated is made to sound like "Pahlpahlych" and the hardly utterable, tapeworm-long "Vladimir Vladimirovich" becomes colloquialy similar to "Vadim Vadimych."
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 249
June 13, 2009
mollusque commented on the word air bladder
Citation at benumbed.
June 13, 2009
mollusque commented on the word benumbed
. . . my mouth stayed mute and benumbed until I realized I could feel my tongue—feel it in the phantom form of the kind of air bladder that might help a fish with his respiration problems, but was useless to me.
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 245
June 13, 2009
mollusque commented on the word subpalpebral
Citation at cloudway.
June 13, 2009
mollusque commented on the word cloudway
Yet, somehow, during my glide down those illusory canals and cloudways, and right over another continent, I did glimpse off and on, through subpalpebral mirages, the shadow of a hand or the glint of an instrument.
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 245
June 13, 2009
mollusque commented on the word wamble
. . . finally hearing returned—with a vengeance. The first crisp nurse-rustle was a thunderclap; my first belly wamble, a crash of cymbals.
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 244
June 13, 2009
mollusque commented on the word pinewood
Citation at marge.
June 13, 2009
mollusque commented on the word marge
Imagine me, an old gentleman, a distinguished author, gliding rapidly on my back, in the wake of my outstretched dead feet, first through that gap in the granite, then over a pinewood, then along misty water meadows, and then simply between marges of mist, on and on, imagine that sight!
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 240
June 13, 2009
mollusque commented on the word paresis
And yet I feel that during three weeks of general paresis (if that is what it was) I have gained some experience; that when my night really comes I shall not be totally unprepared.
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 239
June 13, 2009
mollusque commented on the word lepidopterist
Should I abandon my art, choose another line of achievement, take up chess seriously, or become, say, a lepidopterist, or spend a dozen years as an obscure scholar making a Russian translation of Paradise Lost that would cause hacks to shy and asses to kick?
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 97
June 13, 2009
mollusque commented on the word entomologist
It was now the publisher who bore the brunt of having my hand transformed directly into printed characters; and I know he disliked the procedure as a well-bred entomologist may find revolting an irregular insect's skipping some generally accepted stage of metamorphosis.
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 235
June 13, 2009
mollusque commented on the word preprandial
I was now reaching the end of my usual preprandial walk.
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 234
June 13, 2009
mollusque commented on the word gramineous
One of the streets projecting west beyond the traffic island traversed the Corso Orsini and immediately afterwards, as if having achieved an exhausting feat, degenerated into a soft dusty old road with traces of gramineous growth on both sides, but none of pavement.
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 233
June 13, 2009
mollusque commented on the word noumenal
. . . a stylized memoir dealing with the arbored boyhood and ardent youth of a great thinker who by the end of the book tackles the itchiest of all noumenal mysteries.
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 231
June 13, 2009
mollusque commented on the word gander
Chiefly American according to OED2.
June 13, 2009
mollusque commented on the word nosewing
A furrow sloped down from each nosewing, and a jowl pouch on each side of my chin formed in three-quarter-face the banal flexure common to old men of all races, classes, and professions.
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 228
June 13, 2009
mollusque commented on the word libellula
. . . the procession of my Russian and English harlequins, followed by a tiger or two, scarlet-tongued, and a libellula girl on an elephant.
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 228
June 13, 2009
mollusque commented on the word oysterous
The eyes, once an irresistible hazel-green, were now oysterous.
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 227
June 13, 2009
mollusque commented on the word scumble
My forehead, with its three horizontal wrinkles that had not really overasserted themselves in the last three decades, remained round, ample and smooth, waiting for the summer tan that would scumble, I knew, the liver spots on my temples.
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 227
June 13, 2009
mollusque commented on the word biograffitist
Reality would be only adulterated if I now started to narrate what you know, what I know, what nobody else knows, what shall never, never be ferreted out by a matter-of-fact, father-of-muck, mucking biograffitist.
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 226
June 13, 2009
mollusque commented on the word retroconsciously
I say "you" retroconsciously, although in the logic of life you were not "you" yet, for we were not actually acquainted and you were to become really "you" only when you said, catching a slip of yellow paper that was availing itself of a bluster to glide away with false insouciance: "No, you don't."
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 225
June 13, 2009
mollusque commented on the word photic
A small patch of countryside kept floating before my eyes like some photic illusion.
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 75
June 13, 2009
mollusque commented on the word cardsharper
Coincidence is a pimp and cardsharper in ordinary fiction but a marvelous artist in the patterns of fact recollected by a non-ordinary memoirist.
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 225
June 13, 2009
mollusque commented on the word tractatule
A mess of business correspondence and my tractatule on Space I stuffed into a large worn folder.
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 225
June 13, 2009
mollusque commented on the word separata
From the shelves, I swept into the wastebasket, or onto the floor in its vicinity, heaps of circulars, separata, a displaced ecologist's paper on the ravages committed by a bird of some sort . . .
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 225
June 13, 2009
mollusque commented on the word ephebe
I felt lacquered from head to foot, like that naked ephebe, the bright clou of a pagan procession, who died of dermal asphyxia in his coat of golden varnish.
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 206
June 13, 2009
mollusque commented on the word outvie
It was a very warm day in June and the farcical air-conditioning system failed to outvie the whiffs of sweat and the sprayings of Krasnaya Moskva, an insidious perfume which imbued even the hard candy (named Ledenets vzlyotnyy, "take-off caramel," on the wrapper) generously distributed to us before the start of the flight.
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 206
June 13, 2009
mollusque commented on the word alchemysterious
. . . certain of its other features, details of substance and items of information, were, let us say, "modified" by a new method, an alchemysterious treatment, a technique of genius, "still not understood elsewhere," as the chaps in the lab tactfully expressed people's utter unawareness of a discovery that might have saved countless fugitives and secret agents.
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 205
June 13, 2009
mollusque commented on the word crankcase
It goes well with dipstick.
June 13, 2009
mollusque commented on the word wordnap
Hey, give it back!
June 13, 2009
mollusque commented on the word fafhrd and the grey mouser
Listen hrdr.
June 13, 2009
mollusque commented on the word emeriting
His Temerity is said to have asked for a raise before emeriting.
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 194
June 13, 2009
mollusque commented on the word discarnation
Because of it, the process of my academic discarnation reached its ultimate stage. The last vestiges of human interconnection were severed, for I not only vanished physically from the lecture hall but had my entire course taped so as to be funneled through the College Closed Circuit into the rooms of head-phoned students.
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 194
June 13, 2009
mollusque commented on the word kegelkugel
My friend's affliction resulted in nausea, dizziness, kegelkugel headache.
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 181
June 13, 2009
mollusque commented on the word serenacin
Fortified by a serenacin tablet, I received my daughter and lawyer with the neutral dignity for which effusive Russians in Paris used to detest me so heartily.
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 165
June 13, 2009
mollusque commented on the word creaseless
She forced me out of the room; I went rumbling and groaning; she gave a perfunctory pat to the creaseless cot and followed the man of snow, the man of tallow, the dying lop-sided man.
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 144
June 13, 2009
mollusque commented on the word eoan
. . . at the eoan stage of an attack I am beyond alcohol, so could only taste the pineapple part of the mixture.
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 145
June 13, 2009
mollusque commented on the word dogface
Citation at dackel.
June 13, 2009
mollusque commented on the word dackel
A visitor interrupted her: a brown, gray-cheeked old dackel carrying horizontally a rubber bone in its mouth. It entered from the parlor, placed the obscene red thing on the linoleum, and stood looking at me, at Dolly, at me again, with melancholy expectation on its raised dogface.
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 144
June 13, 2009
mollusque commented on the word janitrix
A surly janitrix (reminding me in mnemonic reverse of the Cerberean bitches in the hotels of Soviet Siberia which I was to stop at a couple of decades later) insisted on my writing down my name and address in a ledge . . .
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 143
June 13, 2009
mollusque commented on the word mizzle
She met me in front of the house, strutting in triumph, brandishing a little key that caught a glint of sun in the hothouse mizzle.
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 143
June 13, 2009
mollusque commented on the word lilithan
Aimlessly I walked up and down several halls; abjectly visited the W.C.; but simply could not, short of castrating myself, get rid of her new image in its own portable sunlight—the straight pale hair, the freckles, the banal pout, the Lilithan long eyes . . .
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 138
June 13, 2009
mollusque commented on the word hummer
She could borrow, perhaps, his old sedan though he might not like the notion (pointing to a nondescript youth who was waiting for her on the sidewalk). He had just bought a heavenly Hummer to go places with her.
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 138
June 13, 2009
mollusque commented on the word hesitative
Citation at Botticellian.
June 13, 2009
mollusque commented on the word zygoma
Citation at Botticellian.
June 13, 2009
mollusque commented on the word botticellian
An expression of mild melancholy lent a new, unwelcome, beauty to her Botticellian face: its hollowed outline below the zygoma was accentuated by her increasing habit of sucking in her cheeks when hesitative or pensive.
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 130
June 13, 2009
mollusque commented on the word saurian
. . . he was one of the very few larger saurians in the émigré marshes who followed me in 1939 to the hospitable and altogether admirable U.S.A., where with egg-laying promptness he founded a Russian-language quarterly which he is still directing today, thirty-five years later, in his heroic dotage.
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 130
June 13, 2009
mollusque commented on the word varicolored
Citation at noncardial.
June 13, 2009
mollusque commented on the word noncardial
The book in my mind appeared first, under my right cheek (I sleep on my noncardial side), as a varicolored procession with a head and a tail, winding in a general western direction through an attentive town.
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 123
June 13, 2009
mollusque commented on the word mimodrama
We do not usually think in words, since most of life is mimodrama, but we certainly do imagine words when we need them, just as we imagine everything else capable of being perceived in this, or even in a still more unlikely world.
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 123
June 13, 2009
mollusque commented on the word criticule
By the middle of 1938 I felt I could sit back and quietly enjoy both the private praise bestowed upon me by Andoverton and Lodge in their letters and the public accusations of aristocratic obscurity which facetious criticules in the Sunday papers directed at the style of such passages in the English versions of my two novels as had been authored by me alone.
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 120
June 13, 2009
mollusque commented on the word synonymity
They confused the specimen with the species; Hop, Leap, and Jump wore in their minds the drab uniform of regimented synonymity; and not one page passed without a boner.
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 118
June 13, 2009
mollusque commented on the word ophidian
Annette would occasionally curb with an opaque, almost ophidian, look, her mother's volubility.
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 112
June 13, 2009
mollusque commented on the word stemma
I replied that I was the kind of snob who assumes that bad readers are by nature aware of an author's origins but who hopes that good readers will be more interested in his books than in his stemma.
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 111
June 13, 2009
mollusque commented on the word you can borrow all 5,485 of my books
I'm jealous. I have only 414 books about words.
June 13, 2009
mollusque commented on the list femanimales
How about jenny?
June 13, 2009
mollusque commented on the user chained_bear
Hi c_b! Clams can indeed locomote. Scallops can clap their valves together to produce little jets of water that let them swim. Ephippodonta have the valves permanently open and crawl along on their foot. Divariscintilla yoyo hangs from the walls of stomatopod burrows and bobs up and down. Phlyctaenachlamys lysiosquillina probably does the same. Enigmonia have a hole in the bottom valve through which they stick the foot to crawl up mangrove trees.
June 12, 2009
mollusque commented on the word dephlogisticated
So where's your "-icated" list, Milosrdenstvi?
June 12, 2009
mollusque commented on the list words-to-have-topped-the-most-wordied-last-7-days-list-since-june-9-2008
Eleventy-one words, yarb--a good haul for one year.
June 10, 2009
mollusque commented on the word bush-hogging
Better brush up on your Ithacan, reesetee. Did you know it ithacates there?
June 10, 2009
mollusque commented on the word snowman
(•,•)
June 9, 2009
mollusque commented on the word netherbetween
The netherbetween had smiled and then turned ner head back to face the doors
--Martin Todd, 2004, Dark Kin: The Jupiter Game, p. 26
June 8, 2009
mollusque commented on the word foreglimpse
. . . I cannot help suspecting it to be a warning symptom, a foreglimpse of the mental malady that is known to affect eventually the entire brain.
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 107
June 8, 2009
mollusque commented on the word intercadence
. . . sitting at a table and filling by means of a injector the semitransparent ends of carton-tubed cigarettes of which he never consumed more than thirty per day to avoid intercadence at night.
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 111
June 8, 2009
mollusque commented on the word endocarp
Inner fish.
June 8, 2009
mollusque commented on the word asperge
It has overtones of purge. And spurge (see euphorbia).
June 8, 2009
mollusque commented on the word wanter
Prosaic, not bodacious: it's referring to a want ad for a typist. But prosaic in a Nabokovian way.
June 8, 2009
mollusque commented on the word :)))
Ascii trilobite.
June 7, 2009
mollusque commented on the word doze
Twelve winks?
June 7, 2009
mollusque commented on the word incarnadine
He kept furtively directing at me the electric torch through his incarnadined fingers to see if I was not about to faint.
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins!
June 7, 2009
mollusque commented on the word noctambule
She knew, hey-hey (Russian chuckle), that I was a noctambule, so perhaps I might like to stroll over to the Boyan Bookshop sans tarder, without retardment, vile term. I might, indeed.
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 88
June 7, 2009
mollusque commented on the word wanter
To insert the same wanter in the same paper would have been foolhardy: what if it were to bring back Lyuba, flushed with renewed hope, and rewind that damned cycle all over again?
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 87
June 7, 2009
mollusque commented on the word inamorata
I slept fitfully, and only in the small hours glided into a deeper spell (illustrated for no reason at all with the image of my first little inamorata in the grass of an orchard) . . . .
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 46
June 7, 2009
mollusque commented on the word homily
Sounds like ad homilem reasoning to me.
June 7, 2009
mollusque commented on the word ( )
Bilby ears.
June 7, 2009
mollusque commented on the word gaufrette
She would retire for a minute, closing one door after another with a really unearthly gentleness, to the humble toilettes across the corridor, and would reappear, just as silently, with a repowdered nose and a repainted smile, and I would have ready for her a glass of vin ordinaire and a pink gaufrette.
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 82
June 7, 2009
mollusque commented on the word scriggle
A first draft, made in pencil, filled several blue cahiers of the kind used in schools, and upon reaching the saturation point of revision presented a chaos of smudges and scriggles.
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 80
June 7, 2009
mollusque commented on the word fair copy
Another and final deception would come with the Fair Copy in which, for a short while, calligraphy, vellum paper, and India ink beautified a dead doggerel. And to think that for almost five years I kept trying and kept getting caught—until I fired that painted, pregnant, meek, miserable little assistant!
—Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 44
June 7, 2009
mollusque commented on the word forefeel
The forefeel of fame was as heady as the old wines of nostalgia.
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 23
June 7, 2009
mollusque commented on the word hemangioma
Strawberry mark.
June 7, 2009
mollusque commented on the word fail
Epic.
June 6, 2009
mollusque commented on the word slow down
You move too fast
June 6, 2009
mollusque commented on the word kickapoo
Joy juice.
June 6, 2009
mollusque commented on the word ( )
Retracted penguin.
June 6, 2009
mollusque commented on the word ( )
Skate's egg case.
June 6, 2009
mollusque commented on the word google squared
I tried "Wordie" in Google Squared and discovered the Wordie Ice Shelf in Antarctica, which has disappeared!
June 5, 2009
mollusque commented on the word taggage
Oops, fixed.
June 5, 2009
mollusque commented on the word happy-face spider
Hawaii also has no-eyed big-eyed spiders.
June 5, 2009
mollusque commented on the word taggage
See comments on or else.
June 5, 2009
mollusque commented on the word espy
Where's Willard?
June 4, 2009
mollusque commented on the word mycocleptism
They were referring to ambrosia beetles, but I think the term could be generalized. For example, Frodo Baggins practiced mycocleptism in his youth.
June 3, 2009
mollusque commented on the word defenestrate
If you through sionnach out a window are you defennecstrating?
June 3, 2009
mollusque commented on the word defenestrate
Yes, as opposed to undefenestrated, as discussed at unfenestrated.
June 3, 2009
mollusque commented on the word mycocleptism
The two taxonomists had identified a completely new ecological phenomenon that they dubbed "mycocleptism," or fungi-stealing.
--Bob Grant, 2009, The Scientist 23(6): 32
June 3, 2009
mollusque commented on the user reesetee
Reese who? (Welcome back!)
June 3, 2009
mollusque commented on the word defenestrate
Excellent observation, bilby! There are also 2 for defenestrated. I don't suppose we can count unfenestrated.
June 3, 2009
mollusque commented on the list alist
Thanks, qroqqa. I original set out to create a list that would have included those, but then decided to restrict the list to terms that might be considered descriptive of the list itself. The exception is removalist, which was the inspiration for the list to begin. I'll move it to a new list. : )
June 3, 2009
mollusque commented on the word alkaret
Do you mean alkanet?
June 2, 2009
mollusque commented on the word removalist
One who performs listectomy.
June 1, 2009
mollusque commented on the word bugs
It only appears when you edit a comment. It used to be there when a comment was started, but John removed that feature a year ago.
June 1, 2009
mollusque commented on the list phr33k-s-list
Hi phr33k! Welcome to Wordie! I think you mean stoichiometric.
June 1, 2009
mollusque commented on the list lexical-labrynth
I think the bandersnatch stole something from the labyrinth.
June 1, 2009
mollusque commented on the list amber-words
Scaredy?
May 31, 2009
mollusque commented on the word features
John, how about marking open lists in the list of lists on the right hand side of word pages? Maybe with •
Agile Methologies, by ggasp
bootload's Words, by bootload
Meta, by VanishedOne
Conversations for the Ages, by chained_bear
TBH meta, by TheBigHenry
♦ Mia's invisible list ♦, by MiaLuthien
• Wordie for dummies! (open list!), by Prolagus
• Knuckle tattoos (open list!), by Prolagus
May 31, 2009
mollusque commented on the word litförótt
Seasonal changes in the shade of roaning lead to the Icelandic term for roan (litförótt), which is
translated as "always changing color."
--D. Phillip Sponenberg, 203, Equine Color Genetics, 2nd edition, p. 66
May 31, 2009
mollusque commented on the list pelage
For the first time, Google Ads has suggested words I needed for a list:
"Equine Coat Color Testing
Red Factor, Agouti, Tobiano, Overo Sabino, Silver, Champagne, Grey".
May 31, 2009
mollusque commented on the word u-ie
Also "bang a u-ie".
May 31, 2009
mollusque commented on the word insundry
Various?
May 31, 2009
mollusque commented on the word irishizing
: )
May 31, 2009
mollusque commented on the word laurenzio
I have some proper nouns on the polyglot list, bilby, usually if the spelling differs by language (laurenzio vs. laurencio).
May 31, 2009
mollusque commented on the word unwelcome
Should have realized that. I'd thought it was another example of the Kat phenomenon.
May 31, 2009
mollusque commented on the word megaflicks
I wonder if they have "My Friend Flicka".
May 31, 2009
mollusque commented on the word vexilum
See vexillum.
May 31, 2009
mollusque commented on the word reverbed
As he peeped through a vestibule window and watched him emerge from his car, no clarion of repute, no scream of glamour reverbed through his nervous system, which was wholly occupied with the bare-thighed girl in the sun-shot train.
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1972, Transparent Things, p. 29
May 30, 2009
mollusque commented on the word unwelcome
So how is that you're the first lister, VO?
May 30, 2009
mollusque commented on the word mnemoptical
A dreadful building of gray stone and brown wood, it sported cherry-red shutters (not all of them shut) which by some mnemoptical trick he remembered as apple green.
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1972, Transparent Things, p. 3
May 30, 2009
mollusque commented on the word tralatition
Strangely enough, I also encountered this word for the first time yesterday, in reading said work!
May 30, 2009
mollusque commented on the word vacation!
Weren't you going to use it, bilby?
May 30, 2009
mollusque commented on the word ad hocracy
See adhocracy.
May 27, 2009
mollusque commented on the word paup
phylogenetic analysis using parsimony
May 27, 2009
mollusque commented on the word jackrabbit
Dagnabbit
May 23, 2009
mollusque commented on the list words-i-needed-at-the-time
And there's the tag madeupical, though not all those words were invented by Wordies.
May 23, 2009
mollusque commented on the word owl
òó
May 23, 2009
mollusque commented on the word grey
Grey is grayer than gray, leaning to fey rather than gay.
May 23, 2009
mollusque commented on the word monogorod
Yes, Monovocalic Proper. Thanks, c_b.
May 22, 2009
mollusque commented on the word contrarian
Bilby is.
May 20, 2009
mollusque commented on the word contrarian
Am not.
May 20, 2009
mollusque commented on the word fangkse
For the mummeries?
May 19, 2009
mollusque commented on the word oxford comma
The style of the Oxford comma being English Tutor.
May 19, 2009
mollusque commented on the word turdy
Not to be confused with turdiform.
May 18, 2009
mollusque commented on the word oxford comma
Rolig, that's my point. Because there is no consistency in the use of serial commas, most people read things the same way with or without them. This shows that they rarely have any purpose, so might as well use them only when they do have purpose, as in the example you give, which shows that Martin groups with Mary Jo, not Bart.
A writer who used serial commas only occasionally can use them not only to avoid ambiguity but to indicate emphasis or cadence. Using them all the time to avoid rare instances of ambiguity puts consistency ahead of expressiveness.
To me, the mandatory Oxford comma (as distinct from the optional serial comma), is similar to the American convention of always putting the closing quotation mark outside a comma or a period. Instead, I follow the British convention of put the quotation mark where logic dictates.
May 18, 2009
mollusque commented on the word oxford comma
I generally don't use the serial comma, except when ambiguity might arise. Looking over my list of Triads, I see some where I should have included the comma for cadence, but many others I consider to be so closely associated that the comma is unnecessary.
In "bacon, lettuce and tomato" or "Tom, Dick and Harry", a serial comma would interrupt the flow; "stop, look, and listen" is spoken more slowly, so the serial comma fits. The serial comma can also put more emphasis on the last item: "love, honor, and cherish". Indiscriminate use of the serial comma prevents such subtleties from being recognized.
May 17, 2009
mollusque commented on the word pomona
On the slopes above his path the trunks of the ashes and sycamores, a honey gold in the oblique sunlight, erected their dewy green vaults of young leaves; there was somthing mysteriously religious about them, but of a religion before religion; a druid balm, a green sweetness over all . . . and such an infinite of greens, some almost black in the further recesses of the foliage; from the most intense emerald to the palest pomona.
--John Fowles, 1969, The French Lieutenant's Woman
May 17, 2009
mollusque commented on the word dollymop
Sam first fell for her because she was a summer's day after the drab dollymops and gays who had constituted his past sexual experience.
--John Fowles, 1969, The French Lieutenant's Woman
"Drab", "dollymop" and "gay" were all words for "prostitute" in the 1860s, when this book is set.
May 17, 2009
mollusque commented on the word obstacular
. . . it was supposed that Charles would live permanently at Winsyatt as soon as the obstacular uncle did his duty . . .
--John Fowles, 1969, The French Lieutenant's Woman
May 17, 2009
mollusque commented on the word seagull
If a seagull flies over the sea, what flies over the bay?
May 17, 2009
mollusque commented on the word ¥
A long standing problem: see Å.
May 17, 2009
mollusque commented on the word solipism
Tag it, nuxiy!
May 17, 2009
mollusque commented on the word multiplicity
Superlative of duplicity.
May 16, 2009
mollusque commented on the word splitter
See lumper.
May 16, 2009
mollusque commented on the word lumper
I'm more on the splitter side, bilby. In my experience if a splitter is wrong, it's still possible to tell what was meant. If a lumper is wrong, it's hard to tell what was meant.
For example, let's suppose you think there are three species of snails, A, B, C, in a genus, but a splitter decides there are five, A, B, C, D, E. You can map the splitter's concepts to your own: perhaps A = A, B|D = B, C|E = C. If a lumper says there is only one species A, you don't know if only A was present, or also B and C.
DNA sequencing techniques have shown that splitters are right more often than lumpers.
May 16, 2009
mollusque commented on the word formulative
We may define a formulative hypothesis as follows : A structure, the essential parts of which are assumed facts or connections of facts more or less inconsistent with known facts, used in formulating other known facts. It achieves this by virtue of certain logical and formal correspondences which exist between its abstract qualities and those of the facts it is employed to explain. The verification of the assumed facts is not in question, since their inverity is one of the premises, but that of the relations between the ascertained facts which emerge, is the step to which the making of the hypothesis was only a preliminary. This sort of hypothesis, therefore, is a sort of formula, or has the properties of a formula.
--Alexander Smith, 1907, Introduction to General Inorganic Chemistry, p. 142
May 10, 2009
mollusque commented on the word mobile
Just went mobile, with a G1. It works pretty well with regular Wordie because I can line it up on a column and scroll down. The thing I miss is being able to search within a page.
May 10, 2009
mollusque commented on the word <<<<<<<<<<<<
About time you reattached it.
May 10, 2009
mollusque commented on the list vince12-s-list
The leprechaun does.
May 9, 2009
mollusque commented on the word urbaniore
Yarb, I prescribe adding urbaniores to Panvocalic polyglot.
May 9, 2009
mollusque commented on the word promissary
One to whom a promise is made (OED2).
May 7, 2009
mollusque commented on the list monovocalics
Thanks, madmouth! I put Mahabharatha on Monovocalic Proper. The wye knocks out natyashastra (I know, it's not used as a vowel there, but that's my rule).
Go ahead and start that phonetic monovocalics list if you'd like. Or does someone already have one?
May 7, 2009
mollusque commented on the list panvocalics
With a citation!
May 6, 2009
mollusque commented on the word breech aversion
*surprised that the porch has cubicles*
May 6, 2009
mollusque commented on the word breech aversion
*hopes somebody finds his pants*
May 4, 2009
mollusque commented on the word snorkle
The inverse of chortle.
May 3, 2009
mollusque commented on the word ll
In a handbasket?
May 3, 2009
mollusque commented on the word ℮
See th℮y.
May 3, 2009
mollusque commented on the word breech aversion
*Wonders why he was silly enough to assume c_b took her pants off in her own cubicle*
May 3, 2009
mollusque commented on the word breech aversion
Or it's safer to wait for Saturday to take your pants off in your cubicle.
May 3, 2009
mollusque commented on the word breech aversion
It's not Friday anymore c_b. Why are you still at work?
May 3, 2009
mollusque commented on the word instigate
Umm, it was your turn.
Has anyone seen bilby?
May 2, 2009
mollusque commented on the list yo-yo-words
You just did it yarb: strike up a conversation.
May 2, 2009
mollusque commented on the word hyperbowl
Probably not, considering the other items Brookdale_chick has listed.
May 2, 2009
mollusque commented on the word anyonics
Here's an instance from 1993.
May 1, 2009
mollusque commented on the word bugs
A quantum bug: the comments about quant visible under bkerr's comments don't show at quant.
April 30, 2009
mollusque commented on the word roller
The juvenile shell of the pink or queen conch, Strombus gigas, before it develops the flared outer lip.
April 29, 2009
mollusque commented on the list words-that-end-in-id
There's fertile ground in scientific names for animal families. The -idae ending can always be anglicized to -id: hominid, tyrannosaurid . . .
April 29, 2009
mollusque commented on the word tarmac
If Tarmac wed Tartish would they have a tar baby?
April 29, 2009
mollusque commented on the user chained_bear
Yippee! You're in league with reesetee now.
April 29, 2009
mollusque commented on the word instigate
So that's how bilby keeps escaping.
April 28, 2009
mollusque commented on the user fbharjo
Congratulations on reaching 10,000 words, fbharjo!
April 28, 2009
mollusque commented on the list chromonyms-3
Thanks, madmouth. I can't find anthracite defined as a color noun, but CDC1 has it as a color adjective, "coal-blank".
April 27, 2009
mollusque commented on the word features
Hi gangerh, there's an alternative to waiting: have more than one Wordie window open at a time. Use one for reading comments, the other for adding words, or whatever else you want to be doing.
April 27, 2009
mollusque commented on the word tystie
Black guillemot.
April 26, 2009
mollusque commented on the word linsey-wolsey
See linsey-woolsey.
April 26, 2009
mollusque commented on the list •open-list-oh-you-beautiful-moll
(Wonders if this is replayment for Reesetee reset.)
April 25, 2009
mollusque commented on the word wednesday
Wordies list "Wednesday" more than other days.
Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday
April 24, 2009
mollusque commented on the word procrastination
Isn't May next week? Or did someone postpone it?
April 24, 2009
mollusque commented on the word procrastination
Bilby, weren't you going to list this?
April 24, 2009
mollusque commented on the list •open-list-oh-you-beautiful-moll
I'm flandered reesetee!
(Wonders if this is revenge for Reesetee reset.)
April 24, 2009
mollusque commented on the word astasia
She's not unable to stand. ("Anastasia" refers to resurrection).
April 23, 2009
mollusque commented on the word astasia
Just noticed that Anastasia is litotic.
April 23, 2009
mollusque commented on the word mou
Memorandum of understanding.
April 23, 2009
mollusque commented on the list australian-megafauna
"Don't forget zygomaturines," he said contrasuggestibly.
April 23, 2009
mollusque commented on the word tsipor
Hebrew for bird.
April 23, 2009
mollusque commented on the word shtarker
No, gangster was one of the meanings of "shtarker" before Chabon. For example.
April 22, 2009
mollusque commented on the word chubutisaurus
She can't? Djibouti is in Argentina?
April 21, 2009
mollusque commented on the word gono
Goingo, goingo . . .
April 21, 2009
mollusque commented on the word edfrock
Any relation to edfrag?
April 21, 2009
mollusque commented on the word get up and go
Gone.
April 20, 2009
mollusque commented on the word dimble
Does Jack have a cold?
April 20, 2009
mollusque commented on the list its-all-free
No partridge?
April 20, 2009
mollusque commented on the word cquer
Unconquered?
April 20, 2009
mollusque commented on the word depillatory
Missed one.
April 18, 2009
mollusque commented on the word bebed
abed, bebed, seabed . . .
April 17, 2009
mollusque commented on the word ⌂
Even more like a Monopoly hotel from the side.
April 17, 2009
mollusque commented on the word cross
. . . he gave it as his opinion that the dog was a cross between a wolf, a Shetland pony, and hyena. It was about that time that Fluff had to be chained.
--Ellis Parker Butler, 1908, That Pup, p. 11
April 16, 2009
mollusque commented on the word presuppositionologist
Tags to classify morphological errors? A whole 'nother realm for OCSJTS!
The error here is epenthesis.
April 16, 2009
mollusque commented on the list schwa-free
You ain't seen nothing yet. How about twelve syllables? Pronunciation available here.
April 16, 2009
mollusque commented on the word ☃
Strange--I see the snowman but not the hat.
April 15, 2009
mollusque commented on the list an-odd-menagerie
Thanks, yarb and madmouth!
April 15, 2009
mollusque commented on the list schwa-free
How about radioassaying? I put the stress on the first syllable of assaying, so there's no schwa.
April 15, 2009
mollusque commented on the word bugs
C_b, your link works for me. Maybe you just have to refresh after editing?
April 15, 2009
mollusque commented on the word geezer
Around here (Philadelphia area), geezers are old and male. They drive under the speed limit, hitch their pants up above the navel, and are less likely than codgers to be feisty.
April 15, 2009
mollusque commented on the list schwa-free
I'd say /dɪsɪn'hɪbɪɾɪŋ/, not that I've used it in conversation. OED gives all the i's in disinhibit the same value.
April 14, 2009
mollusque commented on the word 13 bottles
Putting an end to a four month dry spell!
April 14, 2009
mollusque commented on the list schwa-free
Sionnach apparently finds these challenges to be disinhibiting.
April 14, 2009
mollusque commented on the word twelve
Worth twelve points in Scrabble.
April 13, 2009
mollusque commented on the word butterfish
So is someone who noodles for catfish a ichthydactylist (ichthyodactylist?) or an piscidigitalist?
April 13, 2009
mollusque commented on the word depupation
Here is the transition from the egg to the live offspring; from the pupation to the painful death, from depupation to the painful birth.
--Adelma Vay, 1948, Spirit, Power, and Matter, p. 86
April 13, 2009
mollusque commented on the word refurcation
The tegmina are broad, nearly as broad as long, and rounded apically; the radial vein is joined to a refurcation of the median by a slight, transverse vein . . . .
--R. C. L. Perkins, 1906, Report of Work of the Experiment Station of the Hawaiian Sugar Planters' Association, Bulletin 1: 451
April 13, 2009
mollusque commented on the word apheresis
OED spells it aphæresis.
April 13, 2009
mollusque commented on the word nailed down by his own ribs
Greenapple's lists contain only 84 out of a supposed total of 226 words. There are similar discrepancies with a lot of the early Wordies, but I don't know why. (See my comment at the tag kat for another example.)
April 13, 2009
mollusque commented on the word noob
Compare newb.
April 13, 2009
mollusque commented on the word humanoidness
The supporting data are, first, the degree of "humanity" or "humanoidness" of the individual creatures as reported or alleged; second, the over-all extent to their bodies are human; third, the degree in which their footprints approach those of man; and fourth, to some extent, how they are said to behave.
--Ivan T. Sanderson , 2006, Abominable Snowmen, p. 356
April 12, 2009
mollusque commented on the word mint chocolate chip
And it can be combined with another perfect sweet tooth fairy: mint chocolate chip ice cream soda.
April 12, 2009
mollusque commented on the list sweet-tooth-fairy
Have you been keeping track of "perfect" ones, gangerh? I found mint chocolate chip today.
April 12, 2009
mollusque commented on the word relubricator
The proper use of such relubricators is recommended by many manufacturers, and has resulted in improved control bearing lubrication when used in aircraft servicing.
--Space/aeronautics 6: 25 (1946)
April 12, 2009
mollusque commented on the word precultivator
Corn and potatoes, two crops that must be cultivated, in precultivator days received scant cultivation from crude shovel plows.
--Alexander C. Flick, 1933, History of the State of New York, p. 93
April 12, 2009
mollusque commented on the word coaguline
Soon after obtaining additions to my own collection of eggs, some of which required mending, I was attracted by the wonderful adhesive force of coaguline in cementing shells together.
--Ernest Ingersoll, 1882, Birds'-nesting: A Handbook of Instruction in Gathering and Preserving the Nest and Eggs of Birds for the Purposes of Study, p. 58
April 12, 2009
mollusque commented on the word presuppositionologist
The linguistic term is also presuppositionalist. See, for example, Pragmatics by Levinson (1983).
Seems you had good reason not to respect said textbook.
April 12, 2009
mollusque commented on the word subsensation
A few TENS units are designed to be used at subsensation levels; that is, when a sensation is felt, the stimulator is turned down to just below sensation level.
--Margo McCaffery, 1979, Nursing Management of the Patient with Pain, p. 126
April 11, 2009
mollusque commented on the word subscenario
Scientific constructivism is the thesis that there's an Sx for every scientific fact x We also need the concept of a subscenario. Sy is a subscenario of Sx if the occurrence of Sx logically entails the occurrence of Sy.
--André Kukla, 2000, Social Constructivism and the Philosophy of Science, p. 53
April 11, 2009
mollusque commented on the word unretraction
"My reaction to Baltimore's [unretraction] is probably unpublishable," says Nobel laureate Walter Gilbert, a Harvard molecular biologist.
--Science 257: 318 (1992)
April 11, 2009
mollusque commented on the word gadarene
And here I thought it was only lemmings.
April 11, 2009
mollusque commented on the word unmethylation
Epsilon-globin gene switching (from on to off) and gamma-globin gene switching (from off to on and off again) correlate well with methylation (off) and unmethylation (on) of sites within and surrounding the genes . . . .
--Craig A. Cooney & E. Morton Bradbury, 1990, Chapter 34, The Eukaryotic Nucleus: Molecular Biochemistry and Macromolecular Assemblies 2: 820
April 11, 2009
mollusque commented on the word subcreation
In subcreation, by telling stories or inventing worlds the artist effectively imitates the "Primary Creator."
--Michael D. C. Drout, 2006, J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia, p. 176
April 11, 2009
mollusque commented on the word waterspouting
A circa 1911 fountain at Jersey City's Lincoln Park, designed by French sculptor Pierre Cheron, combines the period's fascination with fountains and animal sculpture in a composition that includes bronze, waterspouting frogs and allegorical figures.
--Meredith Arms Bzdak, 1999, Public sculpture in New Jersey: Monuments to Collective Identity, p. 11
April 11, 2009
mollusque commented on the word blabbermouthing
Sylvia became wary. For the first time, she seemed to realize that she was blabbermouthing to a cop. She pursed her lips.
--Ralph M. McInerny, 2007, The Widow's Mate, p. 253
April 11, 2009
mollusque commented on the word afterthoughtish
The short biography and prefatory account . . . tell us much concerning the life and character of Professor Field but, unfortunately, do not adequately reveal why he became so intensely interested in population problems at a time when these problems called for but superficial and afterthoughtish treatment by most American economists.
--Review of Essays on Population and Other Papers, in Ethics: an international journal of social, political, and legal philosophy 42: 486 (1932).
April 11, 2009
mollusque commented on the word unvaledictory
Oh, and the almost lovers,
with their unvaledictory smiles!--
their destiny setting and rising above them,
constellational,
night-enraptured.
--Ranier Maria Rilke, 1913
April 10, 2009
mollusque commented on the word subparhelion
The known subhalos that appear at their usual azimuths but below the horizon are the subsun, subpillar, subparhelic circle, and the subparhelion.
--David K. Lynch & William Charles Livingston, 2001, Color and Light in Nature, p. 184
April 10, 2009
mollusque commented on the word sublamellicorn
. . . Trichentoma of Mr. G. R. Gray, of which four species are now recorded, is heteromerous, and is even sublamellicorn in its antennae . . . .
--Adam White, 1854, Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London 2: 294
April 10, 2009
mollusque commented on the word siagonology
Samson was a siagonologist.
April 10, 2009
mollusque commented on the word ploth
Short for plight one's troth.
April 10, 2009
mollusque commented on the word fixture
and when it's dry and Jedi....
April 10, 2009
mollusque commented on the list panvocalics
Thanks, yarb!
April 7, 2009
mollusque commented on the word fire swamp
But where are the rodents of unusual size?
April 6, 2009
mollusque commented on the word randem
Found with random word.
April 6, 2009
mollusque commented on the list the-solitary-vice-against-reading
Psst, bibliolatry.
April 6, 2009
mollusque commented on the word neobrutalism
With the retreat from the smooth glass cube comes not only the reintroduction of massive projections and recessions in order to create strong light and shade, but in absolute contrast to the sleek glass material, a forming and pouring of concrete to bring out rugose tactile qualities of the outer skin. In some quarters the name given to this ferocity in concrete is neobrutalism.
--William Snaith, 1964, The Irresponsible Arts, p. 111
April 6, 2009
mollusque commented on the word ungrandiose
Too many recent non-communities have sprung fully shaped from the architects' and planners' drawing boards. Given the neo-brutalism of some of them, one is tempted to say "fully armed." The hallmarks of good design are now seen to lie with the ungrandiose and the unimposed.
--Barbara Ward, 1976, The home of man, p. 128
April 6, 2009
mollusque commented on the word dorking
Kipling alert, sionnach!
April 5, 2009
mollusque commented on the word features
John, thanks for taking up my active open lists suggestion. Even though it's not sorting the way you want, it's doing what I'd hoped: bringing old favorites to mind. Apparently you're excluding the recent list from the active list to avoid duplication, which is a neat trick. Glad to see the recent tags list too.
April 5, 2009
mollusque commented on the word sprigtail
Ruddy duck.
April 5, 2009
mollusque commented on the list end-in-kin
Spillikin?
April 5, 2009
mollusque commented on the list in-the-family
Well, okay, but it's a bit irregular. You aren't listed with the Adoption Agency.
April 5, 2009
mollusque commented on the word snurp
Yrivel?
April 5, 2009
mollusque commented on the word sky green
Skye terriers.
April 5, 2009
mollusque commented on the word snurp
Shrivel.
April 5, 2009
mollusque commented on the word shellacking
: (
April 5, 2009
mollusque commented on the word furbelow
Furbelow, furabove, furaway . . .
April 5, 2009
mollusque commented on the word a otro perro con queso
On on the mountain.
April 4, 2009
mollusque commented on the word shpilkes
High anxiety.
April 4, 2009
mollusque commented on the word schpilkes
See shpilkes.
April 4, 2009
mollusque commented on the word zooid
Zooego
April 4, 2009
mollusque commented on the word 42
You could get red-brown butt rot.
April 4, 2009
mollusque commented on the word corruptable
Case in point.
April 4, 2009
mollusque commented on the word dorking
Do you do domestic bird wirds, reesetee?
April 4, 2009
mollusque commented on the word whill
Whon't
April 4, 2009
mollusque commented on the word rype
Ptarmigan.
April 4, 2009
mollusque commented on the word red-brown butt rot
A disease of some conifers caused by the velvet top fungus Phaeolus schweinitzii.
April 4, 2009
mollusque commented on the word über nerd vs alpha geek
Which would you invite to dinner?
April 4, 2009
mollusque commented on the word über nerd vs alpha geek
Who would win?
April 4, 2009
mollusque commented on the word its
'tisn't
April 4, 2009
mollusque commented on the list bird-wirds-nicknames
Is that a quakerbird around your neck?
April 4, 2009
mollusque commented on the word has large and powerful hind limbs
I thought the large and powerful hind limbs enabled the reesetee to sit for long periods of time.
April 4, 2009
mollusque commented on the word subcalceiform
Lip with a short, ligular basal claw, apparently articulated with the column foot, the central portion or mesochile inflated, subcalceiform, waxy yellow, 8-12 mm. long, the apex broadly obtuse, with a short or elongate, erect, linear-lanceolate, acuminate projection 6—10 mm.
--Paul H. Allen, 1949, Flora of Panama III(4): 62
April 4, 2009
mollusque commented on the word girlishness
Or churlishness.
April 3, 2009
mollusque commented on the word disgruntled employee benefits
*grice*
April 3, 2009
mollusque commented on the word para
Seven independent derivations in English:
1) Turkish coin (from Persian pãra)
2) short for Para rubber (from Pará, Brazil)
3) a large tropical evergreen fern, Marattia fraxinea (Maori, para)
4) the hog deer, Axis porcinus (native name in India)
5) short for paragraph (from Greek para-)
6) short for paratrooper (from Latin parare)
7) a woman who has given birth to a given number of children (from Latin parus).
April 1, 2009
mollusque commented on the word epoptic
Based on epopt, a seer.
March 30, 2009
mollusque commented on the word reading the oed (ammon shea)
I read this book last week, sionnach, and I was rather disappointed. Ammon Shea proved to be a curmudgeon who emphasized words with negative connotations. Many of them were interesting, but only a few were delightful.
March 30, 2009
mollusque commented on the word features
John, how about showing the most active open lists in the home page instead of the most recent?
March 30, 2009
mollusque commented on the list cripple-in-a-café-in-paris
Especially if the reference is made by an acousmetre.
March 30, 2009
mollusque commented on the word twelfth
See the conversation at texts.
March 30, 2009
mollusque commented on the word presuppositionologist
Presumably an error for presuppositionalist.
March 29, 2009
mollusque commented on the word subadvection
A similar terminology is applied to anomalous advection, with ζ < 1 (ζ > 1) corresponding to anomalous subadvection (superadvection).
--Günter Radons, Rainer Klages, Igor M. Sokolov, 2008, Anomalous Transport: Foundations and Applications, p. 168
March 29, 2009
mollusque commented on the word subaccretion
. . . the minimum in effective pressure may migrate downward in the subducted layer . . . . This leads to subaccretion with downward migration of the decollement.
--X. L. Pichon, P. Henry, and S. Lallemant, 1993, "Accretion and Erosion in Subduction Zones: The Role of Fluids", Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences 21: 307-331
March 29, 2009
mollusque commented on the word subaccession
An accession number is assigned to each photograph within a classification letter. In addition, subaccession numbers are assigned to photographs in the following circumstances . . .
--Library resources and technical services, 1979, p. 170
March 29, 2009
mollusque commented on the word repromulgating
The author explains that the exercise of repealing an ordinance and repromulgating it amounts to colourable legislation and thus a fraud on the Constitution and makes an appeal to the Supreme Court to make an authoritative pronouncement on the point.
--Indian Association for Cultural Freedom, 1984, New Quest, p. 313
March 29, 2009
mollusque commented on the word wastewater
Those sly wastrels.
March 29, 2009
mollusque commented on the word elk
When I was younger so much younger than today . . .
March 29, 2009
mollusque commented on the word saltine
saline, saltine, saltines, saltiness
March 29, 2009
mollusque commented on the word oq
Looks more like a lorgnette.
March 29, 2009
mollusque commented on the word maomao
It's not just any critter, reesetee.
March 29, 2009
mollusque commented on the word reese teehovah
Is he related to Beeteehovahn?
March 28, 2009
mollusque commented on the word upright bass
Honest fish.
March 28, 2009
mollusque commented on the word elk
Elk, I need somebody's elk
March 28, 2009
mollusque commented on the list animal-identity-crisis
Thanks, bilby. It didn't quite fit in my Odd Menagerie.
March 27, 2009
mollusque commented on the list animal-identity-crisis
No snapdragons allowed : (
March 27, 2009
mollusque commented on the word backpack
Nobody is listing scroat. Why don't you?
March 26, 2009
mollusque commented on the word leep
To wash with cow-dung and water. (See bodewash for another use of dung.)
March 25, 2009
mollusque commented on the word overlaughing
. . . there are some among them who never try to fool me by overlaughing at my jokes, by too readily agreeing with my orders.
--Eugenia Price, 1996, Bright Captivity, p. 159
March 25, 2009
mollusque commented on the word flamingo flamenco
Try Fantasia 2000.
March 25, 2009
mollusque commented on the word mirable dictu
But not so wonderful to type?
March 25, 2009
mollusque commented on the word sem
scanning electron microscope
March 25, 2009
mollusque commented on the list chromonyms-3
Thanks, myth. I haven't paid much attention to the color articles on Wikipedia yet. I'm still wading through MW3 and OED2, since my criterion for listing is that the color name must appear in a dictionary.
(By the way, there are instructions for making external hyperlinks in the fine print immediately above the comment box.)
March 23, 2009
mollusque commented on the list out-to-sea
Gaydiang and gayyou!
March 23, 2009
mollusque commented on the word features
That's an intriguing idea, myth: context-dependent comments. For each word one added to a list, there'd be an option to add a comment (then or later) specific to the listing. If this were to be implemented, one question would be if such comments should be displayed on the home page, or revealed only in list-view.
March 23, 2009
mollusque commented on the list animal-ines-cheat-sheet
Hi myth! You might consider putting your list of definitions and related lists in the list description instead of the comments.
March 23, 2009
mollusque commented on the list compounds-that-look-freakish
Forestomach.
March 21, 2009
mollusque commented on the word flinthead
Wood ibis.
March 21, 2009
mollusque commented on the word subduct
I usually think of it as meaning "bury", as if by geological action. (The papers are subducted on my desk.)
March 21, 2009
mollusque commented on the word scorper
Citation at spitsticker.
March 21, 2009
mollusque commented on the word spitsticker
He was a traditional craftsman, full of enthusiasms, a man who worked in a timber studio in his Cotswold garden, ideally with Radio 4 and a nice chunk of English boxwood to be engraved with spitstickers and scorpers.
--Simon Garfield, 2009, The Error World: An Affair with Stamps, p. 150-151
March 21, 2009
mollusque commented on the word nerdery
"Stamps were made for computers . . . they look beautiful when scanned and enlarged, it's so easy to catalogue and trade them, and the nerdery of stamps and the early nerdery of computers were made for each other."
--Simon Garfield, 2009, The Error World: An Affair with Stamps, p. 121
March 21, 2009
mollusque commented on the word appenzeller
Breeds of what, Weirdnet?
March 21, 2009
mollusque commented on the word nans
Not mine.
March 21, 2009
mollusque commented on the list to-nounen-and-adjectiven
Oops, I saw adjectiven in the list title and didn't read the fine print.
March 19, 2009
mollusque commented on the word innoxiousness
Uh . . . good luck with that test.
March 19, 2009
mollusque commented on the list to-nounen-and-adjectiven
Bedridden, beholden, browbeaten, crestfallen, downtrodden, forbidden, ghostwritten, godforsaken, heartbroken, interwoven, misbegotten, outspoken . . .
March 19, 2009
mollusque commented on the list panvocalics
Hi, yarb. I include hyphenated words with Panvocalic phrases. I list noninstrumental and other "non-" words without the hyphen, assuming I've found an example in print.
March 18, 2009
mollusque commented on the word flatly
"I collect stamps", said Tom flatly.
March 18, 2009
mollusque commented on the word Բ
Thanks, bilby!
March 18, 2009
mollusque commented on the word 85 bottles
Rediscovered, 17 March 2009.
March 17, 2009
mollusque commented on the word insomnia
I've joined the club, 4:39 am.
March 14, 2009
mollusque commented on the word comeupance
See comeuppance.
March 14, 2009
mollusque commented on the word hershey
Take fiend, you that!
March 14, 2009
mollusque commented on the word irreversible
elbisreverri.
March 13, 2009
mollusque commented on the word bezzant
See bezant.
March 13, 2009
mollusque commented on the word lyre
Lyre, lyre, pants on fyre.
March 13, 2009
mollusque commented on the word vinegarroon
Bilby apparently has a Pavlovian response to either spelling. (See vinegaroon).
March 12, 2009
mollusque commented on the user reesetee
Congratulations reesetee! What was the lucky word?
March 12, 2009
mollusque commented on the word compliancy
Qroqqa, you need to search for "+compliancy -compliance". The minus sign fixes the problem, showing 765,000 ghits; the plus sign strips out about 6000 more.
March 12, 2009
mollusque commented on the word yellowbill
Also, a scoter.
March 9, 2009
mollusque commented on the word euxenite
A xenodochial mineral!
March 9, 2009
mollusque commented on the word titlark
No, reesetee, it's a listit!
March 8, 2009
mollusque commented on the list etymological-curiosities
How about tang? A tool, a seaweed, a sound, and a dynasty.
March 8, 2009
mollusque commented on the user sionnach
When you're done with the cows, how about grading the quiz?
March 8, 2009
mollusque commented on the word babycentric
They looked down on Willis Woodford the bank-clerk, and his anxious babycentric wife, the silent Lyman Casses, the slangy traveling man, and the rest of Mrs. Gurrey's unenlightened guests.
--Sinclair Lewis, 1920, Main Street
March 7, 2009
mollusque commented on the word pebbledash
They surveyed the small eccentric bungalows with pergolas, the houses of pebbledash and tapestry brick with sleeping-porches above sun-parlors, and one vast incredible château fronting the Lake of the Isles.
--Sinclair Lewis, 1920, Main Street
March 7, 2009
mollusque commented on the user frogapplause
Thanks, frogapplause! The tapir and I are honored!
March 7, 2009
mollusque commented on the word sherramoor
Tumult, turmoil.
March 6, 2009
mollusque commented on the list quiz-time-8-special-groundhog-edition
1. Phelps hangout : swimming pool :: burglar’s crowbar : jemmying tool
14. U.S. : groundhog day :: U.K. : Candlemas Day
March 5, 2009
mollusque commented on the word wonderpus photogenicus
See wunderpus photogenicus.
March 5, 2009
mollusque commented on the list quiz-time-8-special-groundhog-edition
Hi sionnach, I was out of the country when you posted the quiz.
2. Christian : Roxanne :: Miles : Priscilla
8. span: nail :: barrel : drop
12. wood: shavings :: diamonds: bort
13. Lord’s prayer : our father :: type of elevator : paternoster
19. dove: coo :: linnet : chuckle
March 5, 2009
mollusque commented on the word slap bang
Spang.
March 4, 2009
mollusque commented on the word clamjamphrie
Variant of clamjamfry.
March 4, 2009
mollusque commented on the word olecranon
Funny bone.
March 2, 2009
mollusque commented on the list bird-wirds-nicknames
Picucule and woodhewer.
March 2, 2009
mollusque commented on the word paronomasia
No mas.
March 1, 2009
mollusque commented on the word nerves
I know a song that gets on everybody's nerves,
everybody's nerves, everybody's nerves,
I know a song that gets on everybody's nerves,
And this is how it goes . . .
March 1, 2009
mollusque commented on the word febuary
I think I can, I think I can, I think I can, I think I can.
March 1, 2009
mollusque commented on the word paon
Peacock blue.
March 1, 2009
mollusque commented on the word autotomaton
Something that commits autotomy.
February 28, 2009
mollusque commented on the user mollusque
Hi bilby! The phenomenon is called autotomy, but I'm not aware of a blanket name for animals capable of it. I thought it might be autotomizer, but that turns out to be the name of the muscle that contracts to cause the self-amputation. How about autotomaton?
February 28, 2009
mollusque commented on the word rigamarole
37 wordies list rigmarole.
February 28, 2009
mollusque commented on the word stertuation
Do you mean sternutation?
February 27, 2009
mollusque commented on the word anthozoa
See citation at bryozoa.
February 27, 2009
mollusque commented on the word bryozoa
A similar discovery was also made about the same time by Ehrenberg, independent of that of Edwards, and was taken by him as the basis of his classification of the Polypes, dividing these animals into two principle group, Anthozoa and Bryozoa, according as the alimentary canal has one or two external openings . . .
--Arthur Farre, 1837, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, p. 389
Antedating from OED2 citation from 1847 from Bryozoa, and 1851 for Anthozoa.
February 27, 2009
mollusque commented on the list antedatings
In an email exchange with an editor at the Oxford English Dictionary today, I learned that while they use Google Books for research, they do not use it to seek antedatings (at least for entries that have already been edited in the current cycle). Wordies might have fun seeking such antedatings. (Warning: the dates given in Google Books are unreliable, so verify the date of publication by checking the image of the title page.)
February 27, 2009
mollusque commented on the word mollusk
. . . the rich and interesting delineations of the zoophytes and mollusks are very new and striking.
--J. Pinkerton, 1811, Petralogy. A Treatise on Rocks vol. I, p. 453.
Antedates OED entry from 1832.
February 27, 2009
mollusque commented on the word dirty
Interesting article, but it implies that there are words that are the similar enough in modern Indo-European languages as to be intelligible across languages. No examples of such are given.
February 26, 2009
mollusque commented on the word mosshead
Hooded merganser.
February 24, 2009
mollusque commented on the word pumpkinification
See apocolocyntosis (divi Claudii).
February 24, 2009
mollusque commented on the word white trash bags
I wrote this on my shopping list today, then realized it was a perfect sweet tooth fairy.
February 23, 2009
mollusque commented on the word unpigeonholeable
A derivative of the zombie-producing undeadtoxin.
February 22, 2009
mollusque commented on the word unpigeonholeable
So your bread is unbreadboxable?
February 22, 2009
mollusque commented on the list bird-wirds-nicknames
How about leadback, a kind of sandpiper.
February 22, 2009
mollusque commented on the word unpigeonholeable
It would fit into a breadbox, but maybe not into a pigeonhole.
February 22, 2009
mollusque commented on the word jacutinga
There's a better reason, reesetee.
February 22, 2009
mollusque commented on the list still-more-bird-wirds
How about irrisor?
February 22, 2009
mollusque commented on the word guardian
How about ward?
February 22, 2009
mollusque commented on the word lime-juicer
Also applied to British ships.
February 22, 2009
mollusque commented on the word rufkm
Hi loosecannon, you have to upgrade to WordiePRO to copyright or trademark words on Wordie. Several users have already taken advantage of this feature. Here's a list of the words copyrighted so far.
February 21, 2009
mollusque commented on the list out-to-sea
How about lime-juicer?
February 21, 2009
mollusque commented on the word fulk
To jerk or advance the hand instead of keeping it steady when shooting a marble.
February 21, 2009
mollusque commented on the word fuchsine
Also spelled fuchsin.
February 21, 2009
mollusque commented on the word embergoose
The common loon.
February 21, 2009
mollusque commented on the word embergeese
Do embergeese eat ambergris?
February 21, 2009
mollusque commented on the list bird-wirds-nicknames
Embergoose!
February 21, 2009
mollusque commented on the word pseudovum
Useful when vum is in short supply.
February 21, 2009
mollusque commented on the word queueing systems
Just back from two weeks in the Philippines, reesetee.
February 16, 2009
mollusque commented on the word samarang
Also a ship, H.M.S. Samarang, used in surveying the Malay Archipelago, 1843-1846.
February 16, 2009
mollusque commented on the word barangay
Yes, bilby. The smallest political unit in the Philippines, equivalent to a town or village.
February 16, 2009
mollusque commented on the word dumbfounded
Why is that one can be dumbfounded, dumbstruck or thunderstruck, but not thunderfounded?
February 15, 2009
mollusque commented on the word sansrival
I had this Philippine dessert in Manila today: four layers of cashew meringue wafers in buttercream icing.
February 1, 2009
mollusque commented on the word spaceout
See tag.
January 28, 2009
mollusque commented on the user kat
Hi kat! What's the story with the stealth color names? I've hit half a dozen where you were the first to list the color, but it doesn't show on one of your lists, e.g., royal purple.
January 27, 2009
mollusque commented on the word bunker
Short for mossbunker.
January 26, 2009
mollusque commented on the list chromonyms-2
Thanks, reesetee! I finally started tagging my Chromonyms by color, which provided the impetus. That tagging, of course, raises all sorts of questions. Should I tag just as, for example, "blue" and "green", or as "blue", "greenish blue", "bluish green", and "green".
January 26, 2009
mollusque commented on the word skidaddle
Variant of skedaddle.
January 26, 2009
mollusque commented on the word bugs
Plethora, even when you're logged on, displayed times don't update unless you refresh the page.
January 23, 2009
mollusque commented on the list odd-anagrams
Thanks for the contributions, herneshier and sionnach!
January 23, 2009
mollusque commented on the list the-cheese-connoisseur-s-list-of
Hi hernesheir. Your comments are exactly what I expect on Wordie. You're not just cutting and pasting from other online sources (which gets old fast), but extracting the essence. "Singularly peculiar Galician teat-shaped" (tetilla) and "45% fat content and a grassy-mushroomy flavor" (cooleney) don't occur elsewhere online.
I don't use the private notes feature. I use tags if I want to record something about a word without giving a full-fledged definition.
January 20, 2009
mollusque commented on the word limerance
The title of Tennov's book is "Love and Limerence", not "Love and Limerance".
January 20, 2009
mollusque commented on the list liminal-words
Estuary? strand?
January 20, 2009
mollusque commented on the word attrite
Psst, hernesheir, it's an adjective.
January 18, 2009
mollusque commented on the user etaoinsrdlu
Hi etaoinsrdlu, welcome to Wordie. I like your madeupical words. They'll get more exposure if you put the definition as a comment rather than as part of the word.
January 17, 2009
mollusque commented on the word lese majesté
See lèse-majesté.
January 17, 2009
mollusque commented on the word bellusaurus
From Belarus?
January 17, 2009
mollusque commented on the list panvocalic-phrases
I just discovered the Facebook group Supervocalics. They actually do have a section for headlines!
January 17, 2009
mollusque commented on the word web2.0
Some of us are at web 2.0.
January 17, 2009
mollusque commented on the word laphroaig
Theories come and go. Laphroaig remains.
January 17, 2009
mollusque commented on the list writerricks-list
Along.
January 17, 2009
mollusque commented on the word ficus
Also a genus of mollusks corresponding to fig shells.
January 17, 2009
mollusque commented on the word callathump
Also see callithumpian.
January 17, 2009
mollusque commented on the word tam o'shanter
See tam o’ shanter and tam-o'-shanter.
January 16, 2009
mollusque commented on the word guitar hero
Suddenly I see the light . . .
January 16, 2009
mollusque commented on the user vanishedone
It's easy to undo: reenter the tag window for a word and delete the tags.
January 16, 2009
mollusque commented on the list panvocalic-phrases
They are a fun collection. They sound like hypothetical panvocalic headlines. Maybe you could recycle them for your own list.
January 16, 2009
mollusque commented on the list panvocalic-phrases
Hi hernesheir, thanks for all the suggestions, but none of them are quite what I collect on this list. I look for phrases that are or might be defined in a dictionary, having special or idiomatic meaning beyond what knowing the meanings of the component words would suggest. (Outreaching is on my Panvocalics list.)
January 16, 2009
mollusque commented on the word umlout
See tag.
January 14, 2009
mollusque commented on the word nekkidity
I prefer naketivity.
January 14, 2009
mollusque commented on the word undertagged
Staggering!
January 14, 2009
mollusque commented on the word no waterproof lining though
I've been string them together with the tag ghost phrase. Accidental profundity shows up there too, as the phrases are concatenated.
January 14, 2009
mollusque commented on the word blint-
Indeed!
January 14, 2009
mollusque commented on the word malm
Citation at quoinage.
January 13, 2009
mollusque commented on the word quoinage
. . . but to those persons who take interest in the social habits, the architecture of the Romans in Britain, and their commercial resources, in may be worth knowing, that besides the great profusion of brick, which they may be supposed to manufacture near at hand, they used at Bignor the limestone rock (locally called malm) dug on the spot, for their walls, some of the Pulborough sandstone, very probably for quoinage, and, for their columniation, the Bath or Oxford oolite.
--Peter J. Martin, 1859, Sussex Archaeological Collections 11: 136
January 13, 2009
mollusque commented on the word blint-
Blinter, Scottish: to shine feebly; to squint; to rush.
January 13, 2009
mollusque commented on the word abstreuse
Don't let it color your thinking.
January 12, 2009
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