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And Bill, you said One of the consolations of my deafness is that I am not missing much,
considering that ninety percent of the music available isn't worth listening to, and
the remaining ten percent is hard to find.
Not arguing with you, but, um, how do you know? Just askin' ...
So if a song plays in a forest of deaf ears is it still music?
gender bender
So we say, for instance, a paramecium is asexual, not gender-free. [not-a-joke-e]
crwth
A noun in Welsh meaning crowd. (I know 'cause this is one of my favorite Scrabble secret weapons!)
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Dear wwh:
You wrote, And while we're at it, I have never except in jest heard "aunt" pronounced like the appellation of a member of the family Formicidae.
You've been from east coast to west and you've never heard people say, "My Ant Jean," "My Ant Connie"? Every aunt I ever had on my Daddy's side was an ant; and on Mama's, they were aunts. It's all tied up in your bloodlines.
Best regards,
An aunt, who's just called Theresa
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Unfortunately, dictionaries are sadly lacking. Here's what I googled up this morning about crwth, after having come up with nada in any of the OneLook references, including the illustrious Mr. Fischer's: Crwth is a generic term denoting several small lyres that flourished in western Britain from the eleventh through early nineteenth centuries. Neither crwth nor its many cognates, partial-cognates, and synonyms necessarily indicate any one particular instrument. Specific denotation depended on time, exact locale, and, in some instances, specific individual. Hence written references to performance must be evaluated with care.
The modern crwth was one of the last of the European bowed yoke lyres. Rather than evolving along a single line in the manner of the viol and violin,, the bowed yoke lyre repeatedly split into varied designs, due in great measure to its having been subjected to much experimentation, structural variance, and disparity of playing technique.http://home.earthlink.net/~llywarch/cth03.htmlBrings whole new meaning and depth (crwth as instrument and also as crowd) to that ol' dark fiddler's novel, Far From the Maddening Crwth, huh? Best regards, DiddleDub, whose gray matter insisted she was correct!
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Interesting. I heard this quote attributed to H L Gold (editor of GALAXY Science Fiction) back in the late Fifties, in response to a cranky reader who complained that "Ninety percent of science fiction is crap." Sic transit gloria mundi! Though I'm never sure that my source should be considered more correct than any other...
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attributed to H L Gold
Irregardless, it's widely known in science fiction circles as Sturgeon's Law. Theodore Sturgeon, the science fiction writer. The cranky fan remains the instigator of the answer but the venue changes to a science fiction convention.
Sic transit gloria tusdi
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So we say a paramecium is asexual, not gender-free.
Well, Duh!. It's neuter. Paramecium. Hello?
crwth
A noun in Welsh meaning crowd
And for extra credit, crowd (in this context) means?
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Faldage writes:
crwth
A noun in Welsh meaning crowd...
and, I iterate, it also means a blooming stringed instrument of many variations. Sheesh! Didn't you see the quote and the link????????
Cranky,
DubDub
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So we say a paramecium is asexual, not gender-free.
Well, Duh!. It's neuter. Paramecium. Hello?
Hello? As I read his post, it seemed to me that he was emphasizing how we describe it, and not trying to say what it IS.
Also cranky,
J
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he was emphasizing how we describe it, and not trying to say what it IS.
We describe it as asexual because it IS asexual; we don't describe it as gender-free because it ISn't gender-free. Its gender IS neuter.
QED
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it also means a blooming stringed instrument of many variations
I knew that, I was just wondering if Whitman did.
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