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tsuwm Offline OP
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miscellaneous words

hey, I can do this one!
I'm guessing tomorrow's word will be execrable.
abominable, detestable, execrable, hateful

oh wait, those are all synonyms for odious; that would make it a theme, of sorts.
never mind..




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What if...just what if...tomorrow's word is miscellaneous?!


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I believe the British say the word "miscellany" with the accent on the "cell" syllable. (miss-SELL-uh-knee) Sounds much better.


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miss-SELL-uh-knee --that's the way I've always said it. Never knew there was any other way to say it until a couple of people here said MISS-uhl-ay-nee.


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Here is a good use of miscellany in one of Frost's poems, which I heard sung once as a choral work:

A Girl's Garden



A neighbor of mine in the village

Likes to tell how one spring

When she was a girl on the farm, she did

A childlike thing.



One day she asked her father

To give her a garden plot

To plant and tend and reap herself,

And he said, "Why not?"



In casting about for a corner

He thought of an idle bit

Of walled-off ground where a shop had stood,

And he said, "Just it."



And he said, "That ought to make you

An ideal one-girl farm,

And give you a chance to put some strength

On your slim-jim arm."



It was not enough of a garden,

Her father said, to plow;

So she had to work it all by hand,

But she don't mind now.



She wheeled the dung in the wheelbarrow

Along a stretch of road;

But she always ran away and left

Her not-nice load,



And hid from anyone passing.

And then she begged the seed.

She says she thinks she planted one

Of all things but weed.



A hill each of potatoes,

Radishes, lettuce, peas,

Tomatoes, beats, beans, pumpkins, corn,

And even fruit trees.



And yes, she has long mistrusted

That a cider-apple tree

In bearing there today is hers,

Or at least may be.



Her crop was a miscellany

When all was said and done,

A little bit of everything,

A great deal of none.



Now when she sees in the village

How village things go,

Just when it seems to come in right,

She says, "I know!



"It's as when I was a farmer. . . ."

Oh, never by way of advice!

And she never sins by telling the tale

To the same person twice.



Robert Frost





#137357 01/20/05 12:06 AM
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tsuwm Offline OP
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#137358 01/20/05 12:34 AM
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There lives a poor soon-to-be wife
Whose husband sees marriage as strife.
Upon wedding, his name...
Well it sure won't be plain:
Quoth his girl, Miss Alainey, "That's life!"


#137359 01/20/05 01:05 AM
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you and Mav are rockin' the house, Ani!!



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#137360 01/20/05 02:23 AM
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not me Did you LEARN it that way??? That is, is this a regional thang, or what? Nobody here says it that way. I honestly cannot imagine actually saying MISSuhlaney. Have I been doing it wrong all my life?



#137361 01/20/05 06:37 AM
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tsuwm Offline OP
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listen more closer, Mz. J.

MISS uh LANE ee

I'd only heard it in my head and assumed it that way, reading; until I heard it and thought naught of it since I'd been right all along. :-)


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