xiaolongnu has adopted no words, looked up 0 words, created 0 lists, listed 0 words, written 2 comments, added 0 tags, and loved 0 words.
xiaolongnu has adopted no words, looked up 0 words, created 0 lists, listed 0 words, written 2 comments, added 0 tags, and loved 0 words.
Comments by xiaolongnu
xiaolongnu commented on the word planch
The Canadian folk-rock group Great Big Sea has a song called "Lukey's Boat" which has the lyric "Lukey's boat's got high-top sails, and she was planched with copper nails."
March 9, 2010
xiaolongnu commented on the word culch
Sense 3 is often used in rural Maine (where I grew up in the 1970s) in the phrase "culch drawer," used to refer to that drawer in the kitchen where useful things like string, rubber bands, nails, wrapping paper and so on are collected. "Rubbish" doesn't seem to quite capture the sense of it - culch isn't stuff you throw out, it's stuff you keep because it might come in handy.
I think this sense must have a different etymology from the word which refers to an oyster-bed. I always believed it to come from "cullage," i.e., that which is held out and kept for some purpose; but I don't have any evidence to support it other than the observation that the -age construction (stumpage, yardage, etc.) was in common use.
June 25, 2009