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When my children were little, their maternal grandfather, an engineer, could not resist taking their new toys apart on Christmas Day to see how they worked. While the children resisted this endeavour then, some of it apparently rubbed off on them, as they are prone, as young adults, to "mess" with any new item: flipping switches, turning knobs, removing hatch covers and generally toying around with the novel object. My son and heir coined a neologism to describe this behaviour; he says he is "tinkersome" ... and so he is.
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enthusiast
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Welcome back, Father Steve. Tinkersome sounds enough like a real word that I needed to look it up and make sure. It wasn't there, but there was, besides tinker, tinker's damn, and tinkertoy.
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tinker's damn
In my understanding, it is a tinker's dam, not damn. Meaning a small piece of material placed to dam the flow of liquid (melted) solder, confining the liquied to place desired. For this purpose one would use a disposable, insignificant bit of material, a useless bit of no other worth; hence, "not worth a tinker's dam".
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old hand
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Gosh, the things we learn when wordsmiths tinker with words! Now, who's gonna do potters and coopers and fletchers? Oh, yeah - the ape with clay: Hairy Potter 
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Hi, Father Steve! [ear-to-ear grin e] What a lovely word! It has me trying to think of others. How about saying, for people who like to do a myriad of small tasks, that they are puttersome? And that butterflies are fluttersome...hmm, I think I've had too much from that cask. 
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Re: In my understanding, it is a tinker's dam, not damn. Meaning a small piece of material placed to dam the flow of liquid (melted) solder, confining the liquied to place desired. For this purpose one would use a disposable, insignificant bit of material, a useless bit of no other worth; hence, "not worth a tinker's dam".
a tinker, of course being the person who mended the pots and pails, usually an ititerant worker. there is a bawdy ballard about they hansome young tinker who hammers away in m'lady's chamber.. setting thing right..
but the word tinker does mean to take apart, and put back together and make minor repairs.. a jack of all trades..
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Your son's maternal grandfather was an engineer so he wanted to see how things worked, Father Steve. Or maybe he just wanted to see if he could put them back together again ... in which case he is more than "Tinkersome". He's an "afixionado". 
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"afixionado": cool, Plu! And, congrats on the .
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yeahrt, but.
yeahbut®
talkin' of sue'em, I got prior (y)art registration in this case!
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tsuwm says, yeahrt, but, citing this board's discussion a while ago.
Proving once again the maxim that, as each new generation must learn, "There's nothing new under the tsuwn."
However erudite one may be, tsuwm was di(c)ting ere you. Still (Father Steve's image coming smilingly to mind), it's fun for us young'uns to tinker with the same toys our revered elders enjoyed in their youth!
Post-edit: The above paragraph has been correctively edited. It's third word had been "you", the referant of which was ambiguous and could have been taken to be "tsuwm", entirely changing the meaning from the compliment intended.
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Sorry, mav, but twusm has tinkered somewhat with your version, and as the son of a patent lawyer I can tell you that your registration of "yeahbut®" -- a fine term indeed -- would not cover "yeahrt, but". You should have gotten a better copyright lawyer to file that registration for you! 
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...nicely evading the issue; I guess you just don't give a tinker's curse. oh well, I don't care two tinker's straws -- I'll just retreat to tinkerdom and my usual tinkery with words.
(or to quote a really old proverb: Even as the Bell tinketh whatsoever the foole thinketh.)
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When I read what Plutarch wrote -- Your son's maternal grandfather was an engineer so he wanted to see how things worked, Father Steve. Or maybe he just wanted to see if he could put them back together again ... in which case he is more than "Tinkersome". He's an "afixionado". -- I passed out on the floor next to my computer.
When I awoke, a fire department medic with an Hispanic accent was looking over me. His partner asked, "Did Father Steve have a heart attack?" "No," the first fireman replied, "he was just asphyxianado."
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But did you know that you should never try to get a tinker to become a monk? Would you ever(s) lead tinkers to chants???
TEd
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c'mon teD!! that's not cricket.
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that's not cricket.
And a good thing, too.
Is it possible to get a double play in cricket?
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Would you ever(s) lead tinkers to chants??? "These were the saddest of possible words..." 
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>>Is it possible to get a double play in cricket?
>It is. It is very rare, and difficult....
well, that sounds just like a triple play then.
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>...requires only the presence of mind to exploit a freakishly rare set of circumstances.
sounds more and more like a triple play.
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Ohmigawd! I've started a sports subthread.
Good puns can and do come back to haunt one!
TEd
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>Good puns can and do come back to haunt one!
I do love a good pun. where is it?
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and not just any sports thread, TEd, a sports thread that is about both cricket and baseball.. a lethal combiniation.. there is only one cure..
FOOD FIGHT
we will just interlace a food reference for every sports one..
In last season "Reality Show" Fear Factor, the contestants had to eat crickets.. 2 or 3 or some such number.. and they were warned, not to try to swallow them whole, since the crickets would crawl back up their throats.. any once else have experience eating crickets? Is this true? personally, i don't mind raw foods, but very few live ones.. and insects most definately need to be cooked before eating..
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Mice is nice, but insects is best
TEd
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Pssshhhh, those Fear Factor and Survivor contestants are weenies. There, I've said it. It's out in the open.
Seriously, I was in the air cadets and we ate worse things during survival camp. If someone is starving you'd think he'd get over his qualms and just eat the darn rat or worm. Protein, protein, protein.
And they are always in these hot places. Just let them be plopped down in the middle of a forest in the middle of a Canadian winter and see how many are left after the what, eight weeks.
I have trouble watching those shows because they frustrate me. I didn't watch more than one show of the first two and the first episode of this current one. In this first episode a group was trying to carry mounds of stuff on a stretcher and had to stop every 50 feet or so to pick up something that fell off. Well, how can you not think they are dingbats when they have a rope hanging from the side of the stretcher and a net in their packs. Um, tie up your load folks.
As to the crickets crawling back up your throat: the acid in your stomach can dissolve metal. I would think it would make short order of a cricket. I think they were just trying to make it look more disgusting.
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I would think that if you had some particularly spry crickets in your throat, they might at least try climbing back out. One word. WINE. If you get them woozy, they would just slide down, wouldn't they? Enigma suggests Worcester instead of woozy. And why not.
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Good puns can and do come back to haunt one!
I do love a good pun. where is it?
I'd let it slide, tsuwm.
And *I was the one who introduced the subtle reference to Pogo and what did it get *me?
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Good puns, like crickets, can unexpectedly return in surprising and undesirable ways.
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cricket chirping = stridulation
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