"… take the word 'giggling'. A one-word harvest of play's superfluity, its liquid, lovely over-indulgence, it has g's to spare, (g, the funniest consonant. You want proof? Gnu. Gneed I say more?) and it fills the gaps with 'i' -- the quickest, wittiest, lickspittiest, trippiest and lightesthearted of all the vowels."
"… Living languages are self-propagating, spawning seed syllables, stretching ambiguously, syntactically tactile, diffuse and suggestive as sex itself, abundant, panglossolalic, profligate, vocative, evocative and provocative. Now slippery with fictive fascination; now stiff with austere truth; now tickled with trenchant absurdity; language luxuriates in a careless, splendid, inefficient uproar I AM ALIVE."
The above excerpts are from "Pip pip: a sideways look at time" by Jay Griffiths (Flamingo 1999). A wonderful read!
K- at least it is akording to Krusty the Klown.. in one episode of The Simpsons he laments that he doesn't have enough words K -Koo Koo idea i am sure.
You want funny? Guaranteed funny in the improv world is monkeys. Anyone jumps out as a monkey, that's laughs-a-plenty, I'll tell you from experience. Monkeys. Take my word.
And as for GNUs, I'd say it pretty funny (albeit geeky funny) that GNU stands for "GNU's Not UNIX".
Yeah, and if geese have the laughs, then it's a gaggle of giggles! But why would you want to gag a giggle? On the other hand, a gag can make you giggle. Aw, now I'm all confused and giggly-gaggly!
Obviously missing from your wide array of talents, ledasdottir, is synesthesia."
Dear Faldage: Unfair that you should accuse of troy of ignorance of synesthesia. She ; introduced the word to the Board:
kinesthesia reminds me of synestesia-- a somewhat rare condition where people experience things with unexpected senses (ie, food has visual appeal, and aromatic appeal, and can be taste sweet, bitter, salt or sour-- and hot or cold-- but for most of us, it doesn't taste square, or pointed, or rounded, or yellow or purple or like a ringing bell, or a clap of thunder! but for people with synestesia -- it can!
googling synestesia will bring up a host of sites.. there is also a book- The Man Who Tasted Shapes.(author ??) about an inquiry into the subject...
people with the condition are said to have enriched our language-- and defined aged, flavorful cheese as "Sharp"-- cucumbers at "green" and other mixed sensation.
thank, Dr. bill.. by the way.. The Man Who Tasted Shapes.(author ??) about an inquiry into the subject... is by Richard E Cytowic, MD I am home today.. and it is hand on my shelf. Facinating book.
The phrase "it doesn't smell the same" is part of our household lexicon, thanks to my autistic son, who uses the phrase to explain *why* he doesn't like a particular food. We aren't sure whether the issue is actually smell at all, but since he applies it sometimes to some fairly familiar foods, we don't think that it is meant to describe his adversions to things unfamiliar. The phrase might also relate to textures which he finds unpleasant.
Whatever - the phrase is in use now in our house to express an unwillingness to perform a task or try a new experience. If the usage catches on, in 50 years the etymolgists will be completely stymied trying to conjure how it developed. [eg]
tsuwm, in a world were all we can expect is 15 minutes of fame, a dictionary, a book we (well everyone here!) all hold near and dear, is a more lasting tribute.
Look how we turn to the OED.. it is an authority! if any of us, could become a member of this authority..(and weren't we all thrilled when falaged did!) it a hope beyond most of us! we could aspire to worse things than being names as citation in the OED!
and as for me, no olympic gold medals, no rhodes scholarships, no likelihood of a nobel prize, never miss america, so many things, outside my reach.. but i can hope, that some useage of mine, would be, could be, cited, as the prime example of usage..
we could aspire to worse things than being names as citation in the OED!
but that's just it, troy. it doesn't work that way and the chances of your name being associated with a word are just about nonexistant, even if you did coin it! you have to get it used, in an article or a book... multiple uses in a variety of sources and geographically diverse places -- and those are what get cited.
Dear tsuwm: Your word "ludicrosity" sent me to Internet. There I found several sites that use the word, and a URL that has a picture of Osama bin Laden taken when he was a student at Oxford!
Dear Faldage: In the old country schools, if a pupil needed to void, he held up one finger to indicate he needed to leave the room for the little house out back. If he held up two fingers, that meant he would need to be gone a bit longer. The teacher knew number one was yellow, and number two was brown, but was glad she did not have to smell them The jocks still use the old terminology when they announce their intention to "do a number" on their opponents.
Got synaesthesia in the OED when I tried synesthesia.
wow, we all know how those Brits enjoy their extra vowels and extra syllables.
Anyway, to add to the list: there's a new book out on synesthesia called Blue Cats and Chartreuse Kittens by Patricia Duffy, a language instructor at the United Nations. I read the blurb and learned that among famous synesthetes were Nabokov and Rimbaud.
I also learned, a long time ago, that many children are born with synesthetic abilities but have it 'categorized' out of them by puberty. I can remember numbers, days and months having specific colors when I was a child, but it no longer happens.
Anyway, seems that some take this ability to be a disability. Here's a self-help site I stumbled upon, FWIW:
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