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In a connotative sense and not in a denotative one, I think of elderly people as being spry. I can't imagine referring to someone youthful as being spry.
Is my connotative sense of 'spry' too tight-fisted?
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Is my connotative sense of 'spry' too tight-fisted?
It is interesting how some adjectives come to be associated witha certain noun or set of semantically related nouns. In Latin terra was originally an adjective meaning dry, but the phrase terra X (where X is the lost word for earth) was soon reduced to just plain terra. Also happened with mundus for world. Mundus as an adjective meant something more like 'ritually clean, pure'. Funny thing language.
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that would be my take, too, WW. and always in a good way.
formerly known as etaoin...
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>I can't imagine referring to someone youthful as being spry.
but they usually are. the *attributes actually assigned to spry (Lively, active, and brisk; vigorous [AHD]) are so often thought to be youthful that the word drifts into those usages you think of. It wasn't always thus, and modern dictionaries don't mention that parameter (M-W has it as synonymous with 'nimble' and 'agile').
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(Lively, active, and brisk; vigorous [AHD])
That's why discribing an old person as spry has more metaphorical oomph than describing a spry sprat as that.
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>M-W has it as synonymous with 'nimble' and 'agile'.
here's where shadings come in: you'd be far more likely to refer to a young gymnast as being nimble.
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I understand your meaning above, jheem. I readily think of certain youths as being lively, nimble, brisk, and agile, but others as being anything but. However, I wouldn't describe an agile youth as being a spry one simply because my association of spryness with old age is firmly cemented for causes you suggested in your first post way above.
So, tsuwm, with reference to MW, we could legally get away with saying that Jack was a spry young man or Jet was a spry colt. Interesting. Denotatively, that is.
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A few qutoations I googled up with spry + etext from public domain works on the web.
"I come from a modern country, where we have everything that money can buy; and with all our spry young fellows painting the Old World red, and carrying off your best actors and prima-donnas, I reckon that if there were such a thing as a ghost in Europe, we'd have it at home in a very short time in one of our public museums, or on the road as a show."
Oscar Wilde. The Canterville Ghost.
"A dog is of great use on a farm, and that is the reason a boy likes him. He is good to bite peddlers and small children, and run out and yelp at wagons that pass by, and to howl all night when the moon shines. And yet, if I were a boy again, the first thing I would have should be a dog; for dogs are great companions, and as active and spry as a boy at doing nothing. They are also good to bark at woodchuck-holes."
C. D. Warner. Being a Boy. 1877.
"Matthew is getting up in years, you know—he's sixty—and he isn't so spry as he once was. His heart troubles him a good deal."
Lucy Maud Montgomery. Anne of Green Gables.
The last quotation seems to imply that Matthew once was spry, but when? At ten or fifty?
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>we could legally get away with saying...  surely we've gotten past legalities here by now!
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tsuwm ed. It's a sunny day. Thanks, jheem, for the quotes. Canterville Ghost was a favorite of mine as a child--and haunting to my impressionable imagination of some poor soul having been bricked up behind a wall.
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since jheem's quotes are all relatively old, has the usage changed somewhat?
and the lost word for earth? do tell more!
formerly known as etaoin...
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The Lost Word for Earth
...sounds like an exciting new novel.
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>has the usage changed somewhat?
that's what Ww and you seem to be attesting to; let's see what others think...
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Earth in the sense of soil or land ... more later ...
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how some adjectives come to be associated witha certain noun
The mob will do things like that.
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The mob will do things like that.
Mob hath such an history, doth it not? Short for vulgus mobile 'the fickle multitude' or should that be 'the nimble crowd'?
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Here's what your Wordiq has, WW:
From WordNet 2.0 :
Spry : adj : moving quickly and lightly; "sleek and agile as a gymnast"; "as nimble as a deer"; "nimble fingers"; "quick of foot"; "the old dog was so spry it was halfway up the stairs before we could stop it" [syn: agile, nimble, quick] I too have it in my mind as something I would say about an older person.
jheem--looking forward to your tales of the lost words.
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old hand
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has the usage changed somewhat? - IMHO, what has changed is what we expect of old people - excuse me, senior citizens..
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old people - excuse me, senior citizens..
In *this household, the politically correct term is geezers. This may not translate so well into commonwealth English.
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In *this household, the politically correct term is geezers.
But, but...don't you feminize it when referring to your wife? <eg> [scampering hastily out of Anna's reach e] Psst--Anna, I can say that, 'cause I'm older than you!
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"C'mere, Jackie, I've got something for you." 
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The feminine form of "geezer" is crone .. or so I have been told by less-than-politically-correct persons.
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interesting..
geezer <> crone
gaffer <> gammer (from grandfather, grandmother)
old f@rt <> ??
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old f@rt <> of-a-certain-age glow
~~~~
Actually, F. Steve, "crone" is very much in use among politically correct women of the wiccan bent.
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[scampering hastily out of Anna's reach e] Don't you mean "scampering spryly," Jackie? Since you're older than Anna, that is?
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When I was a young-pup priestling, I would occasionally say something sufficiently curmudgeonly to sound as if it ought come out of the mouth of someone with many more years. Father Paul Langpaap, the retired Canon to the Ordinary of the Diocese of Olympia, would chide me: "You're not old enough to belong to the OFC." This was Paul's abbreviation for "Old Farts Club" and he reserved its usage to those retired priests who had earned the right to be critical of modern policies and modern leaders. I think it was a term of veneration, at least in the archdeacon's lexicon.
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"C'mere, Jackie, I've got something for you." Ohhhhh, ha, ha, HAAAAAAAAA!  And, no, nancy, I haven't been spry for some time now.
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spry
Likewise callow tends to occur often in the phrase callow youth. Can you not say callow senectitude?
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callow senectitude
Old age lacking in adult experience?
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Ha! Good one, Faldage! Now please define 'adult experience'!
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Old age lacking in adult experience?
I run across it all the time.
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