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Ah-HA!!! For some reason when I first saw - in a Christmas story set in England - the word "panto" I thought it was a children's pantomime.
Last night, clarification of the term came in a Public Television program about the old days of vaudeville in USA. Panto in England is the same as the old vaudeville shows in US ! In fact, much of vaudeville's traditions were taken from the English panto. The program had some wonderful clips of really great old time performers in both US and English Music Halls - I recommend the hour to anyone with an interest in theater - if and when it shows up on your local PBS station.
Now, I did do a search for "panto" but so much stuff came up I just didn't have the heart to plow through all of the panto-listings sooooo, this is for general info and the two or three people out of the thousands registered who may have (fleetingly) wondered.


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Aha! So a pantomath is someone who wears funny clothes and makes bad jokes using mathematical reasoning. I apologize to NicholasW for my insinuation that he was... Well, whatever it was that I was insinuating.


#46257 10/29/01 07:17 PM
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But panto is short for pantomime, which, as I'm sure we've discussed before, is a dramatic presentation of a traditional story (e.g., Aladdin, Puss in Boots) with lots of cross-dressing, slapstick, and audience participation.

Bingley


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But panto is short for pantomime,

But, but! (hands waving wildly in air) what about the "mime" part...I thought mime had to do with "silent"

Wait! Wait! The OED says pantomime is a performance of ludicrous representations of familiar characters, then it goes on about mime as conveying words using only gestures and movement.
Oh, well!
So much for a shared language!
And "clarifications."


#46260 10/30/01 05:59 PM
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>... pantomath, whatever that is.

dear windy, I thought that we had deduced that the writer had meant that the subject was learn-ed in *everything. I still think that it is a nonce-word (as opposed to a non-word), but I promise to remember to LIU in OED2 (it ain't in W3).


#46262 10/30/01 07:04 PM
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w- in the other thread, I posted that the -math in poly~ came from manthanein, math-, to learn;
I'd assumed you'd seen it... sorry.


#46264 10/31/01 05:25 PM
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Nay, 'twould be Pantomath Clippers.

That's all, there isn't any mower.

Remember: don't shoot the guy in the black jumpsuit. After all, a mime is a terrible thing to waste.



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