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Carpal Tunnel
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Who knows what a "sorel" is? I found out, see if you can.
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Carpal Tunnel
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one thing it *could be is a variant of sorrel, a reddish-brown color used of horses and hair (and deer).
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Carpal Tunnel
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Well, I couldn't find sorel, but sorrel is a plant used in salads and folk medicines. It's in the dockweed family, and looks a bit like spinach.
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Carpal Tunnel
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I found it by accident. In a quotation from Shakespeare, in one of those oddball dictionaries.
L in Print and Proverb
1. (in literature) The preyful Princess pierc'd and prick'd a pretty
pleasing pricket; Some say a sore, but not a sore, till now made
sore with shooting. The dogs did yell: put L to sore, then sorel jumps
from thicket, or pricket sore, or else sorel; the people fall a-hooting.
If sore be sore, then L to sore makes fifty sores o'sorel: Of one sore I
an hundred make by adding but one more L. --William Shakespeare, Love's
Labor's Lost, IV.ii.56-61. Wordplay here involves sorel, a deer of the third year;
sore, a deer of the fourth year; L, the Roman numeral fifty.
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old hand
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old hand
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In Camus' The Plague one of the main characters is struggling over the first line of his book. This is the line:
"One fine morning in the month of May an elegant young horsewoman might have been seen riding a handsome sorrel mare along the flowery avenues of the Bois de Boulogne"
I think at some point he changes it to "brown, sorrel mare" and he dismisses it as redundant. This fits tsuwm's suggestion, unless sorel and sorrel are different words.
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Carpal Tunnel
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they're (it's) the same word:
sorrel, n. and adj.
("sQr@l) Forms: (arch.) sorel, sorelle, sowrell, sorell, soril; sorrell, -ill, sorrel. [a. OF. sorel (soreal, -eaul, -iel), f. sore sore
adj. Of a bright chestnut colour; reddish brown: a. Of horses (or other animals).
b. Of hair or persons.
c. Of colour or hue.
d. Comb., as sorrel-coloured adj.; sorrel-top colloq. (orig. U.S.), a red-haired person.
n.
1. a. A horse of a bright chestnut or reddish brown colour; also as the name of a horse. (So OF. Sorel.)
b. In allusive use
2. A buck in its third year. Now Obs. or arch.
1486 Bk. St. Albans, Hunting eiv, And ye speke of the Bucke, the fyrst yere he is A fawne,+The secunde yere a preket, the iii. yere a sowrell. 1588 Shakes. L.L.L. iv. ii. 60 The Dogges did yell,+then Sorell iumps from thicket.
3. A sorrel or reddish-brown colour. Freq. with reference to horses.
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addict
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addict
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I'm sure I've come across "sorel metal", and I have an inkling that it's some kind of manufactured metal alloy... but I am rather vague on this one. If it is, it seems to have a rather tenuous connection with the main meanings that tsuwm has provided, doesn't it? Unless the final metal product is in some way reddish. 
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old hand
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old hand
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It's a brand name of winter boot. "Hang on, let me get my Sorels."
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Carpal Tunnel
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Wordplay here involves sorel, a deer of the third year;
sore, a deer of the fourth year; L, the Roman numeral fifty
... and of course also much scabrous wordplay on defloration of a virgin (pierc'd and prick'd a pretty pleasing pricket...Some say a sore, but not a sore, till now made sore with shooting which uses the allusion to the difference between a 3 and 4 year old deer as a metaphor for sexual knowledge. Good ol Will!
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