Grandiloquence is a word that sounds like what it is. Just like the word pungent and some obscenities - the sound the word makes evokes the definition. What is the word that describes this effect? Sounds-like-what-it-is is a little unwieldly.

are you looking for something other than onomatopoeia?


and welcome to you, Maurice!

From Dictionarty of Difficult words:

euonymous

a. appropriately named. euonymy, n.

Which is itself eponymous, havinmg been named for the friar who first came up with the concept:

euonymous monk

Whose brother was a musician called Felonious Monk.

a musician called Felonious Monk.

A musician? How 'bout a thief?

a musician called Felonious Monk.

A musician? How 'bout a thief?

No, no, not a thief, a murderer...his music just slayed you. People were dying to hear it... It was the absolute end!

As in : The annoucer had a mellifluous voice.

Thelonius!

Many challenge themselves to play the late
Monk's music as he would envision it, but most
jazz musicians admit that this is near impossible.

Then there was the man - the man most have
called eccentric. But eccentric only begins to
describe the myth that was Thelonius Monk.
Once asked where he would live besides Los
Angeles and New York, he simply and
sincerely replied, "The moon."

There are stories of his arrogance, his solitude,
his mono-syllabic conversations, his prolonged
pensiveness, his eloquent speeches. The fact
remains that very few people ever were able to
get a firm grasp on the character that was
Thelonius Monk.

Welcome to you, 'Maurice'. You have one of the most interesting bios ever.

The annoucer had a mellifluous voice

mellifluous = sweet, like honey

And speaking of euonymnous = appropriately named, what makes the plant family Euonymous (perhaps most famously known for its Burning Bush member, flaming red leaves in the Fall) "appropriately named"?

From its etymology "mellifuous" ought to mean slow as spilled honey. Honey flows faster than
cold molasses, but still slowly.

Honey flows faster than cold molasses, but still slowly

...but you can speed it up if you destroy the viscosity by microwaving it briefly
([Technical note alert] breaks the sulfur/sulfur cross-links, I think [/technical note alert].
Although somehow it never tastes as yummy if it isn't rich and luxurious and thick.

... but then it loses its antibiotic properties, so you don't really want to nuke it.

Dear AS: I wonder about the alleged antibiotic properties. A big part of the fact that fungi
do not attack honey is that the bees leave so little water in it. Same reason why jellies are
not very susceptible to mold. I haven't been reading up about honey lately, will go do so now.
I used to keep bees, until I tried to remove a frame, only to have it stuck to frame below by
propolis, and being unable to replace it without crushing a lot of bees and getting the bejeesus
stung out of me. Before I could resolve problem, I had onset of severe back pain,and just put
the cover back on, and called another beekeeper to come take all six hives away. I'd had
enough. The whole thing was a crazy idea of my wife's for a 4H project for our oldes daughter,
sho was scared to death of the bees and never even went near them. So I took many hundreds
of stings for nothing. And the kids didn't even like the honey - hardly ever used it. Being a good
father can be painful at times. Bill

I wonder about the alleged antibiotic properties

It's well known in brewing circles that mead is harder to make than other beverages of equal alcoholic content. This is normally blamed on the tendency of the honey, which *has been severely watered down, to kill the yeast.

Whatever there is about the honey that inhibits the yeast, it isn't an antibiotic in the
pharmaceutical sense. Antibiotics that have been added to control bee diseases are
frequently found but no others. There has been a lot of interest in peptides, proteins
that can kill bacteria, and possibly something of that sort could be in honey, but
assuredly has been sought but not found. Let us not get stung by the honey bee.

Which reminds me of a locution I have not heard for a long time: "Don't let's get stung."

an antibiotic in the pharmaceutical sense

I seem to recall that, by definition, an "antibiotic" is a substance that inhibits the growth of bacteria, and which is derived from or elaborated by another biological organism. Just killing germs isn't enough.

That makes penicillin (from the Penicillium notatum bread mold) and streptomycin (from Stretomyces species) antibiotics, but all the Sulfa drugs (sulfanilamide, etc. - nothing to to with the element sulfur, really), being derived from the chemist's lab rather than the plant kingdom, aren't. Germicides, yes; useful, certainly; "antibiotics", strictly speaking, no.

Comment?

Atomica agrees with you, wofa, but look what a medical dictionary has to say:
Antibiotic: A drug used to treat bacterial infections.

The original definition of an antibiotic was a substance produced by one microorganism that selectively inhibits the growth of another microorganism. However, wholly synthetic antibiotics (usually chemically related to natural antibiotics) have since been produced that accomplish comparable tasks.
http://www.medterms.com/script/main/Art.asp?li=MNI&ArticleKey=8121
Interesting: bio more or less means life, doesn't it, or alive? I guess the above usage is a transference, like using Kleenex as the word to mean any brand of facial tissue, or Xerox for any copied piece of paper.

...a transference, like using Kleenex as the word to mean any brand of facial tissue, or Xerox for any copied piece of paper

The same thing happened to "inoculation" and "vaccination," all examples of extending the meaning from specific to general (or at least broader).

The same thing happened to "inoculation" and "vaccination," all examples of extending the meaning from specific to general (or at least broader).
How so, please?

The same thing happened to "inoculation" and "vaccination," all examples of extending the meaning from specific to general (or at least broader).
How so, please?

vaccination, is a word formed from vaccine, which is from vaccinus(latin =cows vacca, cow, and actually goes back to sanscrit for cow..)

the first vaccine and vaccinations were treatment that infected you with cow pox-- a disease very similar to small box, but not nearly so deadly.. and not so deforming.
small pox is charactorized by blisters all over the face and upper body. these then swell, fill with fluid, crust, and fall off and leave raw skin.. very ugly. but cow pox? a fever, and pain, and usually only the one blister where you got the infections (for people as old as we are jackie, that is usually the upper arm or thigh) (small pox also creates lesions internally, and these can break down the surface of your lungs, and the internal blisters break down, leading to pnuemonia if you are lucky, or cadio-pulmanary failure if you are unlucky. )

so a vaccination was a treatment to prevent small pox by giving you cowpox--exclusively.. now its used to describe any any treatment that involves creating a mild infection with dead or weakened bacteria, in order to stimulate an immune responce.. and we get vaccinated for polio, and measles, and all sorts of diseases..

inoculate.. carries the word oculus-- or eye! No it wasn't from things being put in the eye, but eye as in eye of needle or eye as a bud.. and the term was used by gardeners when the grafted an eye (bud) of one plant onto an other..

so an inoculation was a process of putting one organism onto another.. and then by extention, implanting something onto another..

its still used in the plant sense, in mexico, corn is inoculated with corn smut, (which has a much nicer and prettier name in spanish). Corn smut is a fungus that produces a kind of black mushroom that the mexican consider a delight, and most american corn farmers consider a blight!

when you have your kids inoculated, you are grafting into them, bacteria.. they don't grown corn smut, but anti bodies.. and so be come immune to what ever has been introduced!
(i have been reading about these words just this week... )

The etymology of inoculation is mildly interesing. It doesn't mean something is put in your eye.
But in grafting plants, usually a bud is included, and the root is the same as for eye.

inoculate.. carries the word oculus-- or eye! No it wasn't from things being put in the eye

Actually I thought it was _exactly_ that. The first "inoculations" against smallpox were supposed to have been performed by dropping the fluid from cowpox lesions into the lower sac/eyelid of the recipient.

Could be I'm mistaken, though, and it wouldn't be the first time....
{See http://wordsmith.org/board/showthreaded.pl?Cat=&Board=wordplay&Number=51489.)
At least I'm consistent :-)

Dear Wofahulicodoc: I just looked up site about Lady Montague and her making cut and
putting material from smallpox case into it, ditto for her son. The damned site was copy
protected. Putting the material in the eye might have dextroyed it. Below is URL:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/education/medicine/nonint/indust/dt/indtbi1.shtml

So "inoculation" was originally done with smallpox-based material, and "vaccination" used the equally effective but much less dangerous cowpox-derived stuff. And if your source is accurate the eyeball had nothing at all to do with anything in the process...

Whatever there is about the honey that inhibits the yeast, it isn't an antibiotic in the
pharmaceutical sense.

If it quacks like a duck...

http://www.nature.com/nsu/021118/021118-1.html

Dear Faldage: The trouble with herbals and folk remedies is that they seem to work sometimes,
but not consistently enough that they are abandoned.Here is a URL to botanicals used at
Guy's Hospital in London in1731. If they had worked consistently, they would still be used
in hospitals.
http://www.thegarret.org.uk/herbsatguys.htm

Take the bark of two willow trees and see me in the morning.

Dear Doctor Faldage: Should the bark be from the north side, or the south side of the trunk?

from the north side, or the south side of the trunk?

Dunno, is the production of acetylsalicylic acid promoted or deterred by direct sunlight?

That depends on which hemisphere you reside in. But it is crucially important.
Also it should be gathered only in light of full moon.


Here is URL about white willow bark. Says it was used by English clergyman about 1750, hoping
it could replace cinchona bark in treatment of malaria.
http://www.kundalini-tantra.com/whitewillownl.html

depends on which hemisphere

Are endo- and exo-isomers affected differently by CW and CCW Coriolis forces? I mean if acetylsalicylic acid had L- or D-isomers I could understand but.

And the full moon bit should be obvious. You need to do it at night so the owner of the trees won't catch you and the full moon is to make it easiest for you to see.

Dear Faldage: Actually I was remembering Botany lab in 1935, when plant hormones called
auxins were discovered. They flow preferntially on side away from sun, and cause plant
axis to bend toward the sun.
I don't doubt that the willow bark has active agent. The problem is having no way of knowing
what the therapeutic dose is, or of avoiding overdose. For a long time digitalis preparations had
same problem, and it took very smart chemists with statistical sophistication to provide a safe
and effective medication. That's why botanicals are so undependable that I can't help making fun
of them.