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Carpal Tunnel
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elucidate for the uninitiated please

By glove maker's son I meant Shaksper. But not the Shakespeare of the Stratfordians, but the one of the Oxfordians. But I think my memory has been playing tricks on me, and the Oxfordians call him the malt merchant or the actor. Be that as it may. Anywho. I picked the words mole and set pretty much at random. They are words that have a whole bunch of meanings. Drive, I picked because a member of this board has it as his hobby horse of persiflage. On the whole, a weak but ambiguous post on my part. I'd delete it, but it's already drawn attention, and I am too weary to push the buttons to make it so ...


Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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 Originally Posted By: CRBW
When sales clerks or supermarket checkers ask me how I am, I generally say "vibrant," and sometimes also "radiant." They typically pay no notice, of course, even though these descriptors might seem out of character for a 70-year-old man. I've tried using "ebullient" too, which just brings blank stares. I have yet to try the military version, "e-f***in'-bullient," but I have my doubts if that would do any better.



LOL! I do enjoy a well-placed infix. Welcome, CRBW.

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old hand
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 Originally Posted By: AnnaStrophic
 Originally Posted By: CRBW
I have yet to try the military version, "e-f***in'-bullient," but I have my doubts if that would do any better.

LOL! I do enjoy a well-placed infix. Welcome, CRBW.

There's a name for inserting an expletive between syllables of a word, but I forget what it is. No doubt zthingy will come up with it. The practice is very common in Aussie slang.

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one (rhetorical) term is tmesis.

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tmesis

Tmesis as a grammatical term refers to what are called separable prefixes in German grammar (link). It means literally 'cutting' and is cognate with entomos 'insect' (as in entomology, and which is a calque in Latin) and atom.


Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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Carpal Tunnel
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yes, and from the same link

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yes

Yes, I meant in addition to its use as a rhetorical term and a modern one.


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A relative of mine, long deceased, would often answer the how-are-you question with “medinary.” Family members have guessed that he combined part of medium and part of ordinary on his own to form the word. I did a quick Google search for it. Among the results I found one and only one non-medical instance of medinary used in the same way, in a 1955 Earl Tucker editorial in the Thomasville (AL) Times. Here's part of the passage containing it:
 Quote:
During the day lots of people asked me how I was feeling and I said fine how are you feeling and they were feeling fine too. Now I’m pretty sure not one of the thirty or more who asked me really cared whether I was fine, poorly, medinary or had a splitting headache.

The theory that our relative coined the word I now doubt.

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Today's word has this as part of its etymology: [From Latin ... diminutive of pullus
(young of an animal) ...]

Is this why small chickens are called pullets?

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Young bulls bullets?
Pusillanimous, think you are going to use it, Jackie?
I think I'll just go on calling myself a coward.

Hey, wasn't there someone called Titus Pullus?

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