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is anyone familiar with this word? google comes up empty. it sounds like it's an architectural feature of some kind hi, Sparteye!; i found it in a novel, in this context: "He stood, fumbling with a cigarette, blinking and pale... viewing the looming gables and mad cheminations of Pawtaw with unconcealed mistrust"
TIA
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I think it refers to a gothic proliferation of chimneys on the roof line..?
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proliferation of chimneys
Or chimeneys.
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old hand
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>>Chimneys
>Or chimeneys.
I've even heard the malapropism chimleys before too :-)
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chimleys
and also chimbleys!
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chimleys
and also chimbleys!
Perfectly normal examples of a standard linguistic process (I forget the name*); the same one that produced the Spanish hombre from the Latin homine.
*Would this be more credible if I knew the name? ICLIU.
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a standard linguistic process...Mumbling? 
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otoh, cheminate (which spelling did the original have?) argggh  i messed up the subject line (it's now been edited). the original was indeed cheminations; i suspect my error was because i, too, thought first of chimneys. tsuwm checked the OED and said it wasn't listed.... odd.
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Mumbling?
No, no, that's not it. Something more high-flautin'.
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How can it be mumbling if you end up with more phonemes than you started with?
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Thanks, F, that's a new one for my list! Very useful. But, consarn it, aintcha nevrmumbledsumtinsokinaaindistictllylikeyoulosetrackerjesshowmannyotheyslipprylilphonthingyneemsthereareanall?
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If yez mummlin yd say shmmy
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coalescent/reciprocal assimilation
Now *that's high falutin!
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Kin ah git lssons, misser mumlemasser? 
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Yugn neem fyugn caw tschimbeley mmmln
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Looks suspiciously like sumpin spat out by Babelfish
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"Looks suspiciously like sumpin spat out by Babelfish "
And what Babelfish won't swallow is really gross.
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The Old Spanish change homne > homre is dissimilation. When two nasal consonants came together the second lost its nasality. The next stage is epenthesis of a homorganic stop, as a strengthening of the abrupt transition from one place of articulation (bilabial /m/) to another (apical /r/). Interestingly the whole sequence of changes is paralleled:
homine > homne > homre > hombre (and losing the /h/ somewhere in there, probably at the omine stage but I won't swear to it)
cheminée > chemney (> chimney) > chimley > chimbley
The word 'chemination' looks badly formed. The Latin was caminus, Greek kaminos 'furnace'. I don't know how the sense of 'way, road' arose (camino, chemin). So the Latin should give 'camination', and the French should give perhaps cheminage.
I suspect 'chemination' might be a made-up word by someone who wasn't too fussy about mixing languages. Perhaps they had in mind an admixture of 'chemistry' (which is of course unrelated).
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a made-up word by someone who wasn't too fussy about mixing languagesSounds likely. So, caradea, perhaps not so much an architectual feature as an architected one
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No "cheminations" or "chimenations" in the architectural dictionaries I could lay my hands on. I did find "chemin du ronde" -- which is a walkway behind a rampart, providing communication along a fortified wall (you know, where Robin Hood and the like are fond of having their duels with the evil Sherrif/King/Baron when they're not on a spiral staircase) and I was reminded of "chemin de fer" -- which is the French for railroad (lit. road of iron). Maybe there is some connection there? Perhaps it refers to the layout of streets or something?
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old hand
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>>a standard linguistic process...
>.. by someone who wasn't too fussy about mixing languages
It my be a standard linguistic process and all, but it's also mighty dangerous. In England I watched an elderly lady lean over to the waiter; her request went so:
'May I have a tooth prick, please?'
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I love the thought of the look on that waiter's face, BY!
the layout of streets
I think you have it exactly there, Flats. It does indeed sound very much like chemin + ~ation from analogy with other English formations. I suppose all borrowings from other languages must start somewhere - perhaps Caradea has just found one. So in plain English the phrase might have been referring to the layout of buildings and roads.
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(and losing the /h/ somewhere in there, probably at the omine stage but I won't swear to it)
That excellent slim volume Vox Latina, you know, the one that asks, and answers those burning questions How the [bleep] do we know? and Who gives a furry rat's [bleep]? suggests that pronunciation of the intial h in classical Latin was a shibboleth that marked your social standing.
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Oh I do swear by Vox Latina, a thoroughly invaluable slim volume. The one problem I have is the apparent preservation of H in French: after all, virtually all H-initial borrowings from Norman French have a pronounced H in Modern English. (Very few exceptions: 'honour', 'heir', 'hour', and dialectally 'herb'.) The simplest explanation for this is that Latin H stayed pronounced in Gaul until past the Conquest, and then disappeared in France but not in England. However, all the other evidence suggests that H disappeared very early, even as Vox Latina says, within the Classical period.
Now a handful of spelling H's could be turned into pronounced ones by scholarly influence, but the whole lot? So Middle English azard, Ector, eritage, ermit, ideous, omage, Omer, orizon, oroscope, ospital, ost, uman, umble, ydraulic, Ymen, ypolydian, and a great many more all of which could have occurred in Chaucer, were spelt with a silent H (in most cases: Ector, eremite, umble survive without), and at some point the spelling influenced the pronunciation and caused the insertion of an H? It sounds so unlikely -- yet I suppose that's what must have happened.
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We should also remember that the Romance languages, as a rule, derived not from Classical Latin but rather from Vulgar Latin.
A good book along these lines is From Latin to Portuguese which has a section on Vulgar Latin. It apparently had departed from many of the Classical Latin structures well before the spread of Latin into the hinterlands.
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Well, now you've all got me wondering... so i emailed the author this morning (michael chabon; the book was _The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay_, which has been woven into a few other recent threads) and simply asked him what he meant. i don't honestly expect a response, but it was kinda fun writing to someone who made me even more cold-fingered than tsuwm or max EDIT: Oh, and BTW... as for Mav's suggestion that perhaps this is evidence of architecting, this is the same author who gave us the "aetataureate delusions of grandeur" thread a couple of months ago.. remember that one?
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In a amazing departure from that which one would expect (or even dare hope) from a Pulitzer-winning author, Mr. Chabon graced me ( and from all appearances *personally* graced me, not through a publicist) with a timely and informative response, which i quote in part as follows:
"As far as I can recall, I coined 'cheminations' on the model of
'fenestration.' It refers to the way a house is furnished with chimneys. I
suppose 'caminations' would have been more correct, coming from Latin, but
sounded less like what I wanted it to mean, not possessing the h of chimney.
There are a few other nonce words in there... aetataureate... and a couple
more besides that I can't now recall."
So, it appears that Mav was correct (gee, there's a surprise), and Nicholas was on the same wavelength as the author (i can't think of better company, from either perspective)...
thanks for the responses =)
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Ah, now that's my kind of author. I must make a note of the name.
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