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Joined: Jan 2001
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Carpal Tunnel
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OP
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858 |
ceraunograph = instrument for recording thunder and lightning
Would you believe there are half a dozen sites combining pornography
with that word?
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 618
addict
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addict
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 618 |
ceraunograph = instrument for recording thunder and lightning.
Would you believe there are half a dozen sites combining pornography with that word?
Nothing to see here. Move along please. Especially if you are the gutter police.
Depends on the shape of the instrument
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Joined: Sep 2001
Posts: 6,296
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Sep 2001
Posts: 6,296 |
Ceraunograph...
Etymology, please.
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858
Carpal Tunnel
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OP
Carpal Tunnel
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Posts: 13,858 |
None of the definitions I could find gave any clue as to etymology. Dammit.
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 1,773 |
Hmmm. I keep finding a seemingly related word, "keraunograph", which is a figure or picture impressed by lightening, with this etymology: Gr. &?; thunderbolt + graph.
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Joined: Dec 2000
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 13,803 |
ceraunograph/keraunograph
When the Romans got a hold of a Greek word with a K (kappa) in it they generally replaced it with a C (which was always hard in the Classical days). The C became softened before an e or an i to, variously, a ch, s or ts sound, depending on the language. Keraunograph is just the more Greek spelling of ceraunograph.
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Joined: Sep 2001
Posts: 6,296
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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And, Sparteye, I've heard of these keraunographs, although I hadn't heard this word before. But I have heard of people standing before a glass window where a bolt of lightning has caused an image to be left there on the glass.
However, there are myths about impressions of trees left on people's skin. What is actually left on the skin of people hit by lightning is apparently a tracing of the moisture on their skin into a tree-like pattern.
I do wish someone could find the etymology of ceraunograph...
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Joined: Feb 2005
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stranger
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stranger
Joined: Feb 2005
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The word is from keraunos, Gr. for "thunderbolt" (+ graph, to draw, of course).
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Welcome, ambly. Sounds like there should be an etymology for that name too?!
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Apr 2000
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>Would you believe there are half a dozen sites combining pornography with that word?
had I been paying more attention "below the fold" when wwh was doing this, I would have pointed out that one of the tricks that webmasters use to generate search hits is to take a word list and make all the words therein into keywords, so that any search for any of those words will generate a hit for that site.
one result of this sort of thing is hits that look like this: ...cerambycidae ceramiaceous ceramography ceratitoidea ceratocystis ceratopsidae ceratopteris ceratosaurus ceratothecal ceraunograph ceraunomancy ceraunophone...
this one happens to come from a list of 12-letter words that turns up when you search for ceraunograph. but if you go to the end of the hits generated for this word and take the link, you may indeed be surprised, and you can search in vain for your word -- because it's embedded in the HTML.
nefarious, eh? but, you never see this with most words because the search algorithms end up sticking those sites at the end of the "hit list". : )
many an obscure word ends up obviousizing this tecnique; i.e., I've seen it a lot researching potential wwftds!
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