#72291
06/11/2002 12:15 PM
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Joined: Oct 2000
Posts: 5,400
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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I have moved this up from Aanimal Safari, where is was getting ignored.
its a pretty free wheeling bit of thread, from animals, to sugar, to building, to fabirc to textiles and text, words, and
back to animals..
there are ideas and words that came up.. and could be explored further.. there are some more interesting sugar words,
for example(i can think of at least one.. which extends the meaning of sugar into chemisty!)-- and i wonder if skree,
a loose mountain gravel is related to sarkar.. or kroke.. (the greek) and and shingle. and faber/fabricate/fabric/forge...has possiblities, as does, text,/textile/technic/technical... and we can always continue with gators in Animal Safari.
To compact it a bit header were edited, Of Troy is Blue, Wordwind is Green, and Consuelo is Red --it's easy than it sounds, since WordWind often has a signature (and i never do) also note some bold/italicis in original, have not been restored.
Re: Croc of His and Hers / /Posted on Fri Jun 7 17:22:39 2002
the word crocodile, curiously, is, at it's root, is related to the root word for sugar!
crocodile comes to english, from ME, and L. The ME cocodrille, is from MF, cocodrillus, an alteration of the latin crocodulus, which came from the Greek, krokodilos, (lizard/crocodile) from the greek roots of kroke (shingle, pebble) + drilos, worm.
the kroke of the greek is related to the sanskrit sarkara which also mean pebble(pebbles)
by an other route, sarkara moved to persian as shakar, and then to arabic as sukkar, and then dispersed throught italian and french (it still is surce in french)and into english as sugar!
the pebble meaning has to do with sugar's gritty quality, (very evident if you have ever spilled some!)and the same root shows up again in seersucker, (one of Anu's words with interesting etymologies) seersucker fabic comes from the persian, meaning milk and sugar.
who would have thought, sugar, seersucker, and crocodile, all related words at the root meaning? and are there other words with as much grit!
Re: Croc of His and Hers / /Posted on Sat Jun 8 12:19:17 2002
Seersucker...milk and sugar...what a lovely thought! Now I'll look at those old white-haired Southern gentlemen in their seersucker suits and will think, "You're milk and sugar, old men in seersucker, sitting there nodding your heads in your pews on Sunday mornings...milk and sugar..."
Do you think the crocs were called so because of the bumpy texture of their skin? Gritty?
Thanks, of troy, for this information!
DubDub
Re: Croc of His and Hers / /Posted on Sat Jun 8 13:38:08 2002
Do you think the crocs were called so because of the bumpy texture of their skin? Gritty?
yes, the greek kroke is defined in my M-W10th as meaning shingle or pebble.
but, i never use the word shingle to mean a gravelly stretch of beach, particularly the sea coast. (but i'm sure many from the UK would say "then what ever do you call it?" i know the word (PD James "holy orders" (is it?) but the East coast has sandy beached (except way up in maine) so we just don't have to many shingles! here a shingle is something on your roof, unless your have a wood (shakes) or tiles, or tin (and no one has a tin roof, its always a standing seam tin roof, or a flat seamed tin roof, or some other modifier-- plain old tin roofs just don't exist! whoops, this is going off topic, maybe i'll copy it to misc, and we can discuss building parts!
but getting back to shingle as gravel, or a strip of gravel on a beach, yes, i feel sure that the bumby texture of the the croco's skin is the reason it is a kroke dilas!
and i think it the texure of the wrinkles in seersucker, (a gravelly texture) that it behind the name of the fabric.
Re: Fabirc, of troy's last word / /Posted on Sat Jun 8 15:26:03 2002
of troy, it is MEANT to be that this discussion is going on between you and me!! And who knows who else may have a word with which to wash this fabric.
Fabric. Your last word. There you are talking about shingles and roofs and tin and all that, and you move back to seersucker...
And, well, you're just not going to believe what I'm about to tell you, but it's true!! I was sitting at the Hungry Bear this morning waiting for my daughter, the cook there, to bring me breakfast, just reading the condensed OED at the bar, as word nerds are wont to do at breakfast bars, right? Anyway, I read the definition for fabric--big deal, huh?--until my eye caught sight of the second definition, which I never realized till this morning at the Hungry Bear:
fabric: walls, roof, and floor of a building
Now, have you at least, of troy, ever heard anybody, in real life, internet, or detective fiction, refer to the structure of the building, in earnest, as "fabric."
"I examined its fabric, and discovered, to my dismay, a leak in the attic."
I would have thought fabric was being used poetically, honest to goodness, but here I discover this morning in the unaffected fabric of the Hungry Bear that fabric is a bona fide word for the built structure itself.
Live and Learn,
Wordwind
Re: Fabirc, of troy's last word / /Posted on Sat Jun 8 18:49:27 2002
Well, i vaguely knew fabric meant more than cloth.
the old meaning of build up a structure is seen in the idiom 'a fabric of lies', or the fabrication.. the whole of Enron business plan was a fabrication..
Forge is a close cousin of a word from the same root---*dhabh meaning to fit together.. the current word came to english from the french in about 1483, (fabrique) meaning building. but the latin faber, was a term for an artisan who worked with hard materials, ie, a carpenter or smith.
so a carpenter, a kind of faber, fabricated buildings.. and in the 18th C., the sense of manufactured materials, gave rise to textiles, which were being made in fabricated buildings not at home, but in building specially fabricated for the manufacture of cloth!
the smith side of fabrication lead to the word forge-- meaning to make! and a forger is someone who makes something up, like iron works, or like lies, or fake money! interesting how both sides of the word have a meaning of lies/dishonesty isn't it?
Subject Re: Fabirc, of troy's last word / / Posted on Sat Jun 8 21:22:06 2002
Thanks, of troy, for the etymology. Made me think of one of our previous discussions on lead and plumbs and plumbers and Pb and Rome.
Fabricate, fabrications, yes, those were more than good friends--but fabric as the physical structure of a building--specifically its roof, walls, and floors--that was brand new. Your tie-in to the manufacturing of textiles in a fabric--and then on to fabric being called so because it was fabricated, well, very interesting.
Care to expound upon textile or structure? (Hint, hint...)
Animal Safari, indeed. 'Tis the work of the human animal here today, at least.
Best regards,
WWorsted
Subject Re: Fabirc, of troy's last word / / Posted on Sat Jun 8 21:44:05 2002
text-- (words) and textiles (cloth) are of course, related.
text (from the latin, <textus, fabric, stucture, text)> pp. of texere, to weave, and related to technic) is the actual structure of words
(i like the idea that text is weaving words together to form ideas!)
technic goes to the IE root of *tekth, to weave, to build, to join and gives rise to technical and technique. and the second meaning of the word, is: the study or principles of technology, an art, or the arts.
Subject Re: Fabirc, of troy's last word / / Posted on Sun Jun 9 11:08:41 2002
Alright, who let the Wordies loose in the zoo?!
ROTFLMAO
In Spanish, crocodile is cocodrilo (latin-crocodilus) and alligator is caimán(no etymology cited but I suspect it is an indigenous word).
Subject Re: Fabirc, of troy's last word / / Posted on Sun Jun 9 11:28:02 2002
i think caiman, like the caiman isles, is a carib (what was the name of the language awak....?) word.. and while alligators and crocodiles are in the same family of animals, they are different looking (croc's have pointier snouts, and gators have rounder ones.. ..
and i am not sure of distribution new world (americas)vs. old world..
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#72292
06/11/2002 12:43 PM
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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sugar
n.
5ME sucre < OFr < OSp az@car or OIt zucchero, both < Ar sukkar < Pers takar < Sans ?;rkarG, akin to ?arkaraS, pebble6
1 any of a class of sweet, soluble, crystalline carbohydrates, as the disaccharides and the monosaccharides
2 sucrose, esp. when prepared as a crystalline or powdered substance used as a food and sweetening agent
3 a sugar bowl, specif. as forming a set with a creamer
4 flattery; honeyed words
5 short for SUGAR DIABETES
6 [Colloq.] darling; sweetheart
7 [Slang] money
vt.
1 to mix, cover, sprinkle, or sweeten with sugar
2 short for SUGARCOAT
vi.
>1 to form sugar
>2 to boil down maple syrup to form maple sugar: usually with off
sug$ar[like#
adj.
A bit of trivia about sugar. Sugar is the purest organic compound made in more tons
than any other. Starting with molasses, it is crystallized and re-crystalized until the
brown color is gone. The liquid with the crystals is spun in huge centrifuges to get
rid of the water. I knew a guy in the Army, who claimed that there had been
accidents with guys falling into the centrifuges and just leaving a red ring. Quite
possibly he was repeating an urban legend. The tast traces of color are removed
before crystallization by special charcoal, of which tons are needed. My informant
claimed that guys taking shortcuts through the charcoal storage areas had fallen
through manholes hidden by the charcoal, and never got out alive. They just got
turned into more charcoal. What a way to go.
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#72293
06/11/2002 12:56 PM
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Joined: Oct 2000
Posts: 5,400
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Posts: 5,400 |
re: A bit of trivia about sugar. Sugar is the purest organic compound made in more tons
than any other.
What about Salt? there is more sugar that salt? i can understand food quality/ but a lot of salt is used in industry.
it would be good to hear more about the inventions that changed sugar from a something that was a solid block, into some thing that is manufactored as a crystal.. (and factor as in manufactored--is it related to faber/fabric? or some other root..--factor as in a piece/component (as it is use in math(s)?)
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#72294
06/11/2002 1:02 PM
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Joined: Sep 2001
Posts: 6,296
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Posts: 6,296 |
Well, all this makes sense: sugar is pebbles and salt is grains, only I've forgotten the etymology of salt--we may have discussed it because there has been a lot of discussion here and there on AWAD about salt.
I heard, when a very small child, that caimans were a completely different species from alligators. The reason I remember this is someone brought me what I believed was an alligator purse, even with the head attached! I went nuts! (I was about 9 years old.) I shouted, "Don't you know it's against the LAW to kill alligators!!! I've got an illegal purse and I'm going to go to jail!!!!" But then my dad told me not to worry--that it was made of a caiman.
Beast regards,
AWiggatorWestler
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#72295
06/11/2002 1:12 PM
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Dear of troy: Organic compounds are those containining carbon and hydrogen. Originally it was thought that the coumpounds in living matter were special, and could not be made synthetically. Salt, having no carbon, is not an organic compound. And anyway we eat far more sugar than salt. Of course the tons of salt used for non-food purposes might outweigh the sugar consumed.
Dear WW: I remember seeing in the salt thread that it was named after a place somewhere in Asia Minor.
Too much work to tempt me to look it up.
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#72296
06/11/2002 1:21 PM
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Joined: Oct 2000
Posts: 5,400
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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the word salt has no relationship to sugar, it was quibbling with Dr Bill about "organic compound made in more tons than any other"--- but reading it again, i see the modifer clearly, sugar, a hydo-carbon is part of organic chemistry, and salt (sodium chloride, NaCl) is not organic chemistry, just plain old chemisty.. (is chemistry still treated as organic/non organic? i learned about half my chemistry from Isaac Asimov's World of Carbon and World of Nitrogen.
my word dictionary only takes the word salt, back to 12C. greek, Hal meaning sea/salt. and we touched on the idea that the gauls, as people, were named for Hal (salt).How about you Dr bill, what do you have on salt?
Halite-- hangs on in english as rock salt.
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#72297
06/11/2002 3:15 PM
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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I have often wondered how ancients discovered gunpowder. I stumbled on a site
describing early methods of improving tinder for starting fires, by mixing poor tinder
with urine, feces, and ashes from woodfires. Potassium nitrate would be formed,
and maybe even some cellulose nitrate. In any event they learned how to make
a much improved tinder. There are many places near volcanoes where pure sulfur
can be obtained. The ancients might well have seen sulfur burn, and tried adding
it to their tinder, and suddenly get a surprisingly vicious ignition.
"Besides selecting their raw materials carefully, the ancients learned to
improve on nature by saturating the tinder with blood and urine ,mixed
with potash-rich ashes. Later, this slow biological action was speeded
up in 'nitre beds' - the waste and plant ashes were heaped up together,
exposed to the air and watered at intervals. Eventually after the piles had
been turned many times, this manure produced saltpetre. "
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#72298
06/11/2002 3:24 PM
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Joined: Apr 2002
Posts: 170
member
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member
Joined: Apr 2002
Posts: 170 |
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#72299
06/11/2002 3:33 PM
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Joined: Oct 2000
Posts: 5,400
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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not according to my dictionary, halitosis goes back to a french word halare, to breathe, and shows up again in english in exhale..(inhale) -- so bad breath is breath in french or french breath, an other case of franco bashing by the english, maybe.
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#72300
06/11/2002 3:42 PM
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Posts: 13,858 |
Dear SilkMuse: Bless you, you gave me something to look for. Here's what I found:
Does anyone know whether the word 'halitosis' was indeed coined by the
Listerine folks back in the 20s, as I seem to remember reading in an
essay about marketing and advertising some years ago, or is this the
linguistic equivalent of an urban legend (that perhaps only I am aware of)?
Joseph Pentheroudakis
Microsoft NLP
PS Yes, I do know the word is a neologism derived from Latin
'halitus', "breath".
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#72301
06/11/2002 3:57 PM
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Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 3,439
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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All I recall offhand about crocodiles is from the song in Disney's movie "Peter Pan" (I think)
"Never smile at a crocodile,
Don't be taken in by his friendly grin...."
....sung by Captain Hook who had his hand bitten off by a croc. The hand, at the time, held a clock so that now Captain can hear the approach of the croc by the ticking!
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#72302
06/11/2002 4:18 PM
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Joined: Oct 2000
Posts: 5,400
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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for those trying to keep track, we are now of to physiology.. some retiles and other primitive animals lack cheeks and lips! or at best, have very small lips.
cheeks and lips help hold food in the mouth.. lips also protect your teeth. lips are skin, but not the same skin as on most of your body.. they don't sweat, and they don't have oil glands (or at least they don't have as many, that's why your lips chap much more easily than other skin, and why lack of vit. C shows up first there.)
Inside your mouth, (and at other body openings) you have a special skin, a mucos membrane.. this wet skin has special glands (salivia glands) that keep it wet. (ear wax has a similar function, as do tear, etc) .. some where in the back of your mouth, (and in your nose, and under you eyelids, and in your ear canal, the skin gives way to? viscera? (for want of a better name)i think there is a clear demarcation, just as your lips are clearly different in texture from your skin, but, i'll let on of the doctors correct all the details, (since what i know is, close to right, but.. i wouldn't get an A on the anatomy test..)
in any case, what we think of as a grin is a big smile, lips pulled back, and lots of teeth showing..
but reptiles don't have lips or cheeks.. and croc's mouths have an natural upturn, so they always are showing teeth, and the shape of their jaw, is such, they always seem to be smiling.
dogs have lips, and squirrels have lips and cheeks.. most (all?) mammals have lips and cheeks.. (or at least all primated do.. maybe not all mammals.. ) I am not sure--do we have a comparative biologiest here? who else has watched 1000 hours of NATURE and read enough to know.. i only have a good idea.)
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#72303
06/11/2002 4:35 PM
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Joined: Feb 2002
Posts: 833
old hand
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old hand
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Almost all I know about crocs, I learned in Australia.....where there are two kinds (forgive me if this has been said before, I didn't have time to read allllll of this thread!): saltwater, or "salties," and freshwater, or "freshies." The freshies are only dangerous if provoked, supposedly, and certainly are not lethal except under extraordinary circumstances - their jaws aren't large enough and they don't want to eat people - they want smaller prey. But salties will attack/eat anything, including each other, and they are VERY dangerous. Reminds me of a sign I saw in the Perth Zoo: "Nature asks two questions: Can I eat it? Can it eat me?" With salties, the answer to the first question would always be a resounding YES!
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#72304
06/11/2002 4:43 PM
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Dear MG: Fresh water crocs may not be dangerous in Australia, but I saw many TV shows about the crocs in central Africa drowning large animals. They just wait for beginning decomposition to tenderize the flesh.
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#72305
06/11/2002 5:17 PM
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Joined: Sep 2001
Posts: 6,296
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Fresh water crocs not being dangerous?
I don't think this is true because of a news story I read a few years back about some touring group in which at least one woman had been devoured by a fresh water crocodile in Austrailia. It appears that tourists had regularly been warned about bathing in waters in the part of Austrailia through which their tour went. It's been a long time back that I read the story, but I believe there was mention of a waterfall in it.
I'd stay away from crocodiles in general, if I were you, unless you're a Crocodile Dundee type person.
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#72307
06/11/2002 5:33 PM
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Joined: Feb 2002
Posts: 833
old hand
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old hand
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WW, are you sure it was a freshwater croc? Saltwater, or estuarine, crocodiles, are found sometimes quite far inland. I've only ever heard of one person being attacked by freshies - it's a far rarer occurrence. People are more likely to be attacked/devoured by salties.
There are signs posted at places where salties are found, warning people - I remember seeing them at Jim-Jim Falls and Twin Falls in Kakadu National Park - but I've never seen a sign warning about freshies. Our guide assured us it was safe to swim at Twin Falls, so we all did - somewhat reluctantly, but the peer pressure was strong (foolish, eh?!). We saw a freshie sacked out on a rock in the river as we set off. It stayed there the whole time we were up at the Falls, so a couple of us had our pictures taken "with" it (very much in the background!) on the way back. Swimming was the only way to get to Twin Falls, and "everybody was doing it"!
I have only ever once heard of someone being attacked, unprovoked, by a freshie, and the theory about that was that the croc had just seen a shadow above it, and thought, "Lunch!" - attacked, then realized it had quite literally attempted to bite off more than it could chew, so left without finishing the attack.
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#72308
06/11/2002 5:40 PM
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Joined: Oct 2000
Posts: 5,400
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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re:the crocs in central Africa drowning large animals. They just wait for beginning decomposition to tenderize the flesh.
Yes, along with not haveing lips, most reptiles can't gnash their teeth.. they chomp down, and then twist their whole body to rip off bite sized chunks of flesh.. the can't use their jaw to rip meat of the bone.. and they have no molar like teeth.. (for grinding up food in their mouths-- and no cheeks to keep food in their mouth.)
their jaws only move up and down, not side to side. and the muscles for opening the jaw are weak (but for closing ! oh my, they can exert hundreds of pounds of pressure)
so croc hunters tricks always include, getting on the animals back or neck and clamping the mouth shut! 10 or 15 pounds of pressure will keep it closed..
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