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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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(pan-tuh-groo-EL-ee-uhn) adjective
1. Enormous.
2. Displaying extravagant and coarse humor.
A type-3 where the -1 is big and the -2 might be gargantuan or prodigious
But I would have thought it means "apt to spill one's oatmeal onto his lap"
dalehileman
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old hand
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old hand
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:0) I thought it might be "one who eats porridge all over the world"
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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two: Touche, I like yours better
dalehileman
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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> " one who eats porridge all over the world" You mean this one?  the one Pantagruelian, that's a mouthful of word.
Last edited by BranShea; 05/07/08 12:32 PM.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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-2 might be gargantuan
You realize that Gargantua was Pantagruel's father. I, myself, have a different numbering system. Each word in the dictionary (pick anyone) gets a number. Then rather than referring to the word itself, one can use its number as a pointer and an abbreviation.
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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enthusiast
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enthusiast
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-2 might be gargantuan
You realize that Gargantua was Pantagruel's father. I, myself, have a different numbering system. Each word in the dictionary (pick anyone) gets a number. Then rather than referring to the word itself, one can use its number as a pointer and an abbreviation. If you start from "a", then the the number for "zero" would not be much of an abbreviation, possibly? 
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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re: If you start from "a", then the the number for "zero" would not be much of an abbreviation, possibly?
well it would depend on your numbering system wouldn't it?
in base 10, yes, you could end with a string of 6 or 7 or more symbols, (7,896,544)(to represent the word zero)
but there are other numbering systems. start with base 60--(since we are sort of familiar with that.. (clock, longitude, etc) and you could likely represent almost every word in the largest dictionary with 4 symbols..
thought it might be better to stay with a system that is more computer friendly, base 64 say..
Start teaching kids ASCII along with their ABC's, and the whole alphabet, (and dypthongs) could all be represented in the "singles" column --(in base 10, there are 10 symbols for the singles (aka Ones) column-- (0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9--but in base 64, there are 64 symbols in the 'singles' column.
this would make numbering words child's play.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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You could make the numbers pronounceable by assigning the powers of the base to certain vowels and the consonants to the factors. I don't have time to work out the scheme, and leave it as an exercise to the reader (now that Fermat's Last Theorem has been solved). Leibniz and Dalgarno both played around with such a priori conlangs.
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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I would have thought it means "apt to spill one's oatmeal onto his lap"
Interesting, how our experiences (and lack thereof) affect our understanding, isn't it? Having taken quite a few French classes, I recognized the name Pantagruel, and so never thought of the porridge angle. Let me hasten to say, however, that there are many more things here that I have no frame of reference for.
I will post again (it having been a long time since) that it fascinates me, how we immediately try to fit new experiences in with what we already know. I guess it started when we took our son to the zoo when he was just beginning to talk: the first animals we happened to come to were the goats; every new animal he saw thereafter, he'd yell "goat".
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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An etymology of Pantagruel is 'the all-thirsting one': from Greek παντ- (pant-) 'all' + αγρευω (agreuo) 'to hunt, chase after; thirst for'. Not cognate with gruel, but no doubt Rabelais had it punningly in mind and to hand.
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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