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Onelook is a powerful tool - thanks for pointing it out.
Good news: I heard from Melissa and here's the scoop:[edited by SweetBilly and to use tinyurl for the link] [Anybody have that book & can look it up? - ha!]
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Melissa Date: Wed, 17 Nov 2004 13:39:22 -0600 Subject: RE: PUIST
Hi SweetBilly,
I found this word in a book called "Mrs. Byrne's Dictionary of Unusual, Obscure, and Preposterous Words." Every entry in this lexicon has been accepted as a formal or legitimate English word by at least one major dictionary. According to this dictionary, puist (puust) is an adjective meaning "in comfortable circumstances." ..., here's a link with details about the book ... http://tinyurl.com/6rdwo
Hope this helps! Melissa
Live in a Steady Joy -Will
Live in a Steady Joy -Will
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Greetings and welcome, Billy! You'll soon hear a lot about Mrs. Byrne here, I do believe.
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well, not to put too fine a point on it, we've discovered that not everything Mrs. Byrne has to offer has been thoroughly researched!
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Thought I'd add what Dr. Bill kindly sent me about taking a gander--I had wondered fleetingly about it as I posted but was too lazy to LIU (thanks, Bill); from Quinion: A quick, er, gander at the word’s history is illuminating. It seems the verb to gander in this sense is actually American in origin, something I find more than a little surprising, because it sounds English to me. A little more delving, however, shows that the roots of the expression are indeed from this side of the pond. A work of 1887, The Folk-Speech of South Cheshire, says, “Gonder, to stretch the neck like a gander, to stand at gaze”. The next known example is from the Cincinnati Enquirer of 9 May 1903: “Gander, to stretch or rubber your neck”. It is claimed that it comes from thieves’ slang. There’s your source. Think of a gaggle of farmyard geese, wandering about in their typically aimless and stupid way, poking their noses in everywhere and twisting their necks to stare at anything that might be interesting. Geese are the archetypal rubberneckers. No doubt to gander became the term because to goose had already been borrowed; this was taken from the way that the birds were known to put their beaks embarrassingly—and sometimes painfully—into one’s more private places. The form you quote, to take a gander, is recorded from the USA around 1914; here, gander is a noun in the sense of a inquisitive look. In the century since, that form has become much more common while the verb has lost ground. http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-gan2.htm
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veteran
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“Gander, to stretch or rubber your neck”. It is claimed that it comes from thieves’ slang.Those were the days when they hung horse thieves from the nearest tree. You could say "gander" was gallows humor.
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"Bart, Bart, we thought you was hung."
"I am."
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Without doubt, a Puist is a person who studies the works of A.A. Milne in the original Latin, e.g. Winnie ille Pu.
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the original Latin, e.g. Winnie ille Pu
E.g.? There are other versions of the original Latin?
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There are other versions of the original Latin?
Sort of. There's also Winnie Ille Pu Semper Ludet
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