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A lot of my colleagues have been giving birth lately, and the announcements always talk about the arrival of a bouncing baby boy or girl. I could understand squirming. And I really doubt they throw the baby down to test for bounceability. So what's up with that?
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stranger
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Maybe it's a concise way of putting - "A baby that makes us bounce with happiness"
On a lexical note, bouncing means healthy and lively. "A bouncing baby" could be a cliche but goes well with babies anyway. Any other word simply lacks the bounce.
That makes me wonder if there is a word for foetal movements inside the womb...
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I'd agree with raju on the bouncing = healthy and lively. It's like when you say you have a bounce in your step.
Foetal movements...reminds me of when I was pregnant, watching the baby move inside my (very big) belly reminded me of when a snake eats a mouse. I thought it was funny so I mentioned that to my then-husband, who was so disgusted, he never touched me again.
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is it maybe just alliterative? better than say, bumbling? or blasting? or... 
formerly known as etaoin...
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A newborn feels like a rubber doll that would (absit omen)
bounce if dropped.
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That makes me wonder if there is a word for foetal movements inside the womb...
Treading water?
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reminded me of when a snake eats a mouse Ohmigawd, bel, only you could come up with that!  I do see what you mean, though--the movements can be rather sinuous. I don't know if there is a name for movements specific to a fetus, but having had 2 babies, I can attest that one was a roller (girl) and the other a puncher (boy). Good question, Boronia; oh, and don't drink the water! (Unless you're ready to have a kid, of course.)
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Etymology of muscle is "little mouse".
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old hand
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is it maybe just alliterative? In evidence of this hypothesis: I know of no corresponding epithet (translating as "bouncing") in German or French.
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The OED, 1st print ed., gives the following for bouncing: "That bounces; in various senses of the verb relating alike to loudness, brag, and vigorous or ungainly movement. Often also (like thumping, whacking, whopping, strapping, and other words meaning vigorous, striking) used with the sense of big rather than elegant or graceful." A couple of few citations use the adjective with some wenches. a priest, and a puppy. Here's: "His mother ... lay down her burthen at Elmeby, where this bouncing babe Bonner was born." 1662. Thomas Jefferson is quoted in re a bouncing letter. I'll admit that "bouncing baby (boy)" has a nice alliterative effect to it, too. But I think it was applied to babies at a time in the past when healthy a robust indicated a better chance of survival. There was also animated short about a baby Gerald McBoing-Boing in the early '50s for the rubber baby buggy bumper kinda bounce.
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rubber baby buggy bumper kinda bounce.
What???? [confused-e]
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rubber baby buggy bumper kinda bounce.
What???? [confused-e]
It's a tongue twister. I think I first heard it in a Warner Brother's cartoon or a Rocky and Bullwinkle episode. It's a good example of the ambiguity of compunds: e.g., "ancient history teacher" is it the teacher that is ancient or the history? I assume the compound breaks down as
[rubber [[baby buggy] bumpers]]
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Hyphens almost always resolve the ambiguity.
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Hyphens almost always resolve the ambiguity.But that would be wrong. Ancient History, the noun and discipline, is not hyphenated, not even when it qualifies another noun. You might argue that you should use a comma in the less flattering case: the ancient, history teacher. And you could always arrange the constituent words differently, e.g., the rubber bumpers on that baby buggy, but that ruins the effect. And besides, when speaking nobody can hear your hyphens. You could use pauses. Less commas than ellipses.  But seriously, ambiguity of this kind runs rampant throughout language. If it's not obvious from the context, restatement and rearrangement usually fix things.
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"Carelessness, or perhaps a laudable desire to economize in hyphens, sometimes leads to the omission of one where it is manifestly a case of all or none. ... Some pretty problems in hyphening are set by the unpleasant modern habit of forgetting the existence of prepositions and using a long string of words as a sort of adjectival sea serpent... Those who like writing in this way can be left to solve their problems for themselves. Indeed, many of our difficulties with hyphens are of our own making; we can avoid them by remembering prepositions ..."
H.W. Fowler, Modern English Usage, 2d ed., Oxford University Press, 1965, p. 257.
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Oy, where would you stick a hyphen in either of the two phrases I used in this thread to illustrate ambiguity? For your convenience, here they are again:
rubber baby buggy bumpers
ancient history teacher
I say only a misguided hyperhyphenated prescriptivist would insist on hyphens in either of these two noun phrases. And he would be wrong, too. BTW, one of the prhases is from Saroyan's Human Comedy and the other is a near-folk saying.
And if you're going to quote Fowler's chapter and verse, at least be kind enough to use the first & preferred edition.
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rubber baby-buggy bumpers ancient-history teacher but Ancient History teacher See AHD usage panel on compound adjectives: http://www.bartleby.com/64/84.html
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But AnnaStrophic, what does "rubber baby-buggy bumpers" mean? a rubber bumper on a baby buggy or the bumper of a rubber baby buggy made And neither of your ancient history teacher phrases means a history teacher who is ancient. 
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When I read it, "rubber baby-buggy bumpers" very clearly means the bumpers on the baby bugger are made of rubber.
Ancient-history teacher means a teacher of ancient history.
Now if you want to say the teacher is ancient, well, yer up a crick without a padle if you write it that way. You'll have to change your phrase around. Or use "aged"
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When I read it, "rubber baby-buggy bumpers" very clearly means the bumpers on the baby bugger are made of rubber.
Ah, but it's not how the phrase is put together, but what (you assume) it means. In my original, unhyphenated phrase, there's also the meaning that the bumpers are for a buggy made for rubber babies. It's not the structure or the semantics, but some other kind of real-world knowledge (about babies, buggies, and bumpers) that clues you in on the meaning.
How about "the book on the table under the lamp"? I could mean that the book (which I want to draw your attention to) is on the table under the lamp, as opposed to the table under the skylight. Or that the book is the one of the ones on the table, but particularly the book under the lamp, and not the one next to the jar of marmalade. No hyphen or comma or what-have-you will help you there.
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No argument there, jheem. I'm beginning to think we're talking about two different things, but I'm not quite sure what to call them. 
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I was just trying to demonstrate that things which many take to be simple open and shut cases vis-a-vis language, are usually more difficult once one looks more carefully at the evidence. I, for one, use hyphens and punctuate my sentences, but occasionally somebody says something that send me off down the garden path, which, BTW, is what sentences like "The horse raced by the barn fell" are called in the literature. viz. http://www.site.uottawa.ca/~kbarker/garden-path.html
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I would say "rubber baby-buggy bumpers" but that is only me.
I would say "teacher of Ancient history" because I tend to listen to Fowler.
I have been listening to Sir Ernest Gowers' revised edition of Fowler (not the first edition) since I was graduated from high school ... and I ain't changing editions, no matter what anybody "prefers".
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I have been listening to Sir Ernest Gowers' revised edition of Fowler (not the first edition) since I was graduated from high school ... and I ain't changing editions, no matter what anybody "prefers".Bravo. Good for you! Never trust any kind of grammarian or grammar. Now, I've usually had to read books, but I'm glad they speak to you. And it's entirely up to you whether you listen or not. But here's my deal: just don't tell me what's right by quoting Fowler-Gowers ipse dixit, ad verecundiam, or any way else, and I won't tell you when not to use "ain't" or how many iotas there are in homo(i)ousios. There are some who pooh-pooh both Fowler's first and Gower's second editions. "The chaos prevailing among writers or printers or both regarding the use of hyphens is discreditable to English education. Since it sufficiently proves by its existence that neither the importance of proper hyphenating nor the way to act about it is commonly known." H W Fowler Modern English Usage, 1st edition, 1926.
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simple open and shut casesI would write "open-and-shut cases" Alas, jheem, I'm all too familiar with garden-path sentences. They're the bane of headline writers.
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I would write "open-and-shut cases" Yes, it should've been hyphenated if both of us were getting paid to post here. You have brought up and excellent example though. The hyphens do nothing in your version. Not a thing! They're just there to fulfill some silly rule. The hyphen in "rubber baby-buggy bumper" does help slightly. But since both phrases are pretty much frozen, I don't think that the hyphen(s) would do much. And if you haven't seen this quiz yet, take it ... http://quizilla.com/users/BaalObsidian/quizzes/How grammatically sound are you?/
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"The horse raced by the barn fell"
What are you saying here?
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What are you saying here?
There was a horse, sombody raced it by the barn, and as it did so it fell. As AnnaStrophic said earlier it's the bane of headline writers. They've also given us the comma qua conjunction: "Smith, Jones Attack Each Other". You can see many more examples of garden path sentences at the URL I cited earlier in this thread.
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AnnaStrophic wrote: "Hyphens almost always resolve the ambiguity."
jheem responded: "But that would be wrong."
I quoted Fowler, albeit the disparaged second edition.
jheem responded: "...just don't tell me what's right ..."
There remain several bits of the new rule which are unresolved. I understand that jheem may say what is wrong and that I may not say what is right, but may jheem say what is right and am I still free to say what is wrong?
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You are free to say anything you like F.S. This is a place for open discussion. People don't always agree, but we have to be able to speak up.
Everybody quotes from their own personal base of knowledge. When it comes down to quoting one reference book against another, then who is to say what is right or wrong. It is then up to each person to decide which one they will follow.
But again, each one of us has a right to voice his opinion.
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Sure, Padre, you can say what is right and what is wrong, but I don't have to believe you or heed you. I, too, am free to say what is right and what is wrong, and you, too, are free to ignore me. Got that? Good.
I said that hyphens would not resolve the ambiguity which I pointed out earlier in this thread. They won't you know and quoting me out of context doesn't help your case. Quoting Fowler didn't help either. But let me repeat myself: hyphens will not resolve any of the ambiguities I pointed out in the two phrases earlier in this thread. Capisce? Bene.
I own both the first and the second editions of Fowlers. I like the first one better on account of its style. You like the second better because that's what you were exposed to at high school. Many disparage the second for reasons other than its style. I am not one of those critics. In another thread on AWADtalk, ipse dixit and argumentum ad verecundiam were brought up, and I thought I'd just take a little verbal jab at you and Fowler being hyphen authorities to be heeded. Sorry it went awry. I apologize to you and everybody here for any bruised feelings that I may have caused.
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But let me repeat myself: hyphens will not resolve any of the ambiguities I pointed out in the two phrases earlier in this thread.
Why not though?
Say you add a hyphen between baby and buggy in rubber baby-buggy bumpers does not "baby-buggy" then become the modifier of bumpers.
I'm not sure if modifier is the right term, there are those much more knowledgeable than I in terminology, but it is like when you say, an "all-out war", a second-hand book, a drawn-out speech...the hyphenated words elaborate on the final noun.
Wouldn’t that clear up the ambiguity? What am I not understanding?
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It's not enough for me, but then that's my problem. So, compare the following:
1a. rubber baby-buggy bumpers
1b. adj - noun - noun - noun
2a. American rock star shenanigans
2b. adj - noun - noun - noun
In (1a) rubber modifies bumpers, but in (2a) American modifies rock star. Why? How? Will hyphens help? I think the use or abuse of hypens is as idiomatic as nominal compounds.
Let's just drop it, and agree to disagree.
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Why does American modify rock star? I read it as modifying shenanigans, i.e., the shenanigans in America of one or more rock stars of unspecified nationality.
Bingley
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a word for foetal movements inside the womb...
>>gestaculation?
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gestaculation raju, come here a minute--I have something for you... jheem, I think you're right in saying hyphenating is idiomatic. I tend to have my own system (though it seems more like a non-system!) of doing it. In your second example, it would never have occurred to me that American might modify shenanigans. I think, in the case of these garden-path sentences (and, thank you--I like that term), that we're just going to have to take them on a case-by-case status, dealing with some "as is". The rewrite above sounded okay, but others would be bordering into the ridiculousness of that statement by Churchill: the Something, up with which I will not put.
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I feel we are in danger of slopping the definition of garden path sentences over into areas where it doesn't belong. Things like my fave, 'British Left Waffles on Falklands' are not garden path sentences, just sentences that can be humorously, if sometimes torturously, misinterpreted. A garden path sentence is one that you think you are following quite nicely until you get toward the end and find it suddenly seems to mean nothing at all. This, as in the case of the horse raced past the barn, is generally because you have been given a perfectly reasonable and grammatical structure that just doesn't happen to fit the final sentence. Usually this is to be resolved by restructuring the sentence, a luxury not always available to deadline threatened headline writers.
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Churchill: the Something, up with which I will not put.
A quote from a cable Churchill sent to his publisher when the publisher admonished the Great Man about his ending sentences with prepositions. The Churchill answer was "That is a pedantry up with which I will not put." The cable, I was told, was framed and hung in the publisher's office.
Hyphens : The A.P. Stylebook, which aims at making English clear and precise, says: "Hyphens are joiners. Use them to avoid ambiguity or to form a single idea from two or more words. Use a hyphen whenever ambiguity would result if it were omitted. The president will speak to small-businessmen. (Businessmen is normally one word But the president will speak to small businessmen) is unclear."
The A.P. goes on for 8 1/2, single-spaced inches regarding the use of hyphens in : compound modifiers, two-thought compounds, compound proper names and adjectives, prefixes and suffixes, avoid duplicated vowels and triple consonants, with numerals and (finally) suspensive hyphenation, which I shall spare you.
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