#73523 - 06/25/02 12:42 PM
Re: surprise
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Pooh-Bah
Registered: 03/06/02
Posts: 1692
Loc: UK
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the older form was bodge
Dear wwh,
I believe bodgers were originally itinerant country folk who made crude furniture from sticks and branches that they found in the woods. It did not last as the pieces were not robust. Certainly I have heard my father use the term in what seemed that sense. I shall inquire further.
dxb
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#73524 - 06/25/02 12:48 PM
Re: surprise
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Carpal Tunnel
Registered: 01/18/01
Posts: 13858
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Dear dxb: A girl in my grammar school was named Bodge. I doubt very much
if the family had any idea of the origin of the name.
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#73525 - 06/25/02 12:54 PM
Re: surprise
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Pooh-Bah
Registered: 03/06/02
Posts: 1692
Loc: UK
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Boustrophedon
Dear wwh,
As a matter of interest, I have a letter written by a Victorian lady in the nineteenth century where she has written normally and then overwritten at, I think (I haven't looked at it for some years), a 45 degree slope, and then overwritten again on the opposite 45 degree slope. The handwriting is beautiful and the whole letter can still be read, albeit with some difficulty. This may have been done to save weight in the package or to save paper or just to show how clever she was - we shall never know, because she doesn't refer to it in the letter!
dxb
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#73526 - 06/25/02 01:00 PM
Re: surprise
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Pooh-Bah
Registered: 03/06/02
Posts: 1692
Loc: UK
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I feel like a lone puppy baying at the moon
Dear wwh,
Well, I find this thread fascinating. I came back from a business trip to Alexandria and Cairo at the end of last week and just got around to catching up. I must stop now and go home, I don't think I shall have time to log on there now! Do puppies bay?
dxb
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#73527 - 06/25/02 01:06 PM
Re: surprise
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Carpal Tunnel
Registered: 01/18/01
Posts: 13858
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Cambrian Series (in geology). The earliest fossiliferous rocks in North Wales. So named by Professor
Sedgwick
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#73528 - 06/25/02 01:41 PM
Re: surprise
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Carpal Tunnel
Registered: 01/18/01
Posts: 13858
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Canard A hoax. Cornelissen, to try the gullibility of the public, reported in the papers that he had twenty
ducks, one of which he cut up and threw to the nineteen, who devoured it greedily. He then cut up
another, then a third, and so on till nineteen were cut up; and as the nineteenth was gobbled up by the
surviving duck, it followed that this one duck actually ate nineteen ducks - a wonderful proof of duck
voracity. This tale had the run of all the papers, and gave a new word to the language. (French, cane, a
duck.) (Quetelet.)
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#73529 - 06/25/02 02:01 PM
Re: surprise
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Carpal Tunnel
Registered: 01/18/01
Posts: 13858
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Canopy properly means a gnat curtain. Herodotus tells us (ii. 95) that the fishermen of the Nile used to
lift their nets on a pole, and form thereby a rude sort of tent under which they slept securely, as gnats will
not pass through the meshes of a net. Subsequently the tester of a bed was so called, and lastly the
canopy borne over kings. (Greek, kwuwy, a gnat; kwiwpeiou, a gnat-curtain; Latin, conopeum, a
gnatcurtain.)
The gnats and midges in New England can fly through quite fine mesh screening. In formation!
I hated the ones called "no-see-ums" that attacked me when I had my outboard motor in one
hand and my fishing gear in the other.
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#73530 - 06/25/02 02:23 PM
Re: surprise
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Carpal Tunnel
Registered: 01/18/01
Posts: 13858
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Carat of Gold So called from the carat bean, or seed of the locust tree, formerly employed in weighing
gold and silver. Hence the expressions “22 carats fine,” “18 carats fine,” etc., meaning that out of 24
parts, 22 or 18 are gold, and the rest alloy.
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#73531 - 06/25/02 02:48 PM
Re: surprise
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Carpal Tunnel
Registered: 09/30/01
Posts: 6296
Loc: Piedmont Region of Virginia, U...
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I'll never catch up. I'll spend the rest of the week trying to figure out how one rings a bell backwards.
Now, were your reference, wwh, to a bell ringer's bell, then I suppose ringing a bell backwards could be causing the clanger to hit against the bell as you pulled it in toward your chest. Perhaps this is a special effect sometimes used.
But a bell in a belltower? Oh, dear. This makes no sense at all--and even it the bell ringer could somehow pull that great bell in a different direction, how would the sound be altered?
I guess could go google campanology techniques...
...but then there are all these words ringing up there in your thread!
[You and I know what's coming:]
Bell regards and Behemoth Ones, too,
WordWinger
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#73532 - 06/25/02 03:36 PM
Re: surprise
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Carpal Tunnel
Registered: 01/18/01
Posts: 13858
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Caraway Latin, carum, from Caria in Asia Minor, whence the seeds were imported.
My father would not have bread with caraway seed in it in the house. I never quite
dared ask him if he had once taken a bite of it, and discovered that what looked
like caraway seeds were actually mouse droppings.
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