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I've just tonight caught an actual citation for gong-farmer. "Harry King's men took away everything. You saw their carts everywhere. Every rag-and-bone man and rubbish picker, every dunnikin diver, every gongfermor, every scrap-metal merchant ... you worked for Harry King, they said, because a broken leg was bad for business, and Harry King was all about business." - Terry Pratchett, Making Money (2007)
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Carpal Tunnel
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that's the way Pratchett and others spell it. James Murray also found fyrmar, fermer, and fermourer. - joe (farmer-farmer) friday
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Yeahbut© does that make it farmer? How do you know it isn't gongformer or gongfirmer?
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Carpal Tunnel
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>>James Murray also found fyrmar, fermer, and fermourer.
>How do you know it isn't gongformer or gongfirmer?
what do I know?! it was Murray who listed them under..
farmer[1]
Obs. One who cleanses or purifies. In comb. gong-farmer. Obs.
c1440 Promp. Parv. 203 Goonge fyrmar [v.r. gonge~fowar], cloacarius. c1515 Cocke Lorell's B. (Percy Soc.) 3 Than came a gonge fermourer, Other wyse called a masser scourer. Ibid. 11 Stynkynge gonge fermers.
-joe (we don' need no stynkynge gonge fermers) friday
p.s. - what's your point, Faldo? are you suggesting it's not the same term as our hogwash word??
Last edited by tsuwm; 03/30/2008 5:50 PM.
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Carpal Tunnel
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I ain't saying it ain't. I was just asking if it was.
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Oh, Jackie - you never did reveal which of the 2005-Hogwash daffyinitions of gong-farmer had a secret!
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>I was just asking if it was.
this isn't the first time we've seen evidence of Murray "standardizing" spelling, without him showing any citations to back it up.
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Now somebody finally asks? Nearly 2½ years later?! I did go back and re-read all the PM'ed definitions I got, and for some reason I'm thinking it might have been Connie, but after all this time I really don't remember!
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I suppose you've forgotten the secret, too.
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Yes--that's what I meant. At the time, I figured I'd wait till somebody showed interest* before "the reveal"; but my memory didn't last this long!
*That is, after the real def. was declared--t'would have given away whichever one as a fake, before then. I just figured that once the game was over, everybody must have felt it was time to move on.
BTW, tsuwm, thank you for this citation! :-) It bugged me not to have a "real" one.
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