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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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winds and ruler of a floating island
Perfect! Does that suggest we're Aeolian Harpies?
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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I do seem to meet a disproportionately high number of young New Zealanders travelling in the UK, especially in Edinburgh. Talking to them, it seems that a long European tour is something that they plan for and look forward to as an important part of growing up in the same way that the "Grand Tour" was undertaken by young men of privilege in earlier times.
There's another regionalism for you - the trek you describe is referred to as "OE" - "I'm off on my OE", "she's gone to do her OE" Overseas Experience.
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Carpal Tunnel
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OP
Carpal Tunnel
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Maverick asks: "Does that suggest we're Aeolian Harpies?"
Aeolian Harpies is a very serious medical condition, common in the regions of Thessaly and Boeotia, caused by the virus Harpies Zoster.
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Joined: Mar 2000
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old hand
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old hand
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... haven't got anywhere - so am hoping that you, o tsuwm the magnificent, can help:
What is the word used to describe the wedding of two vowels as in Phoebus, encyclopaedia and other words? Or, in different words, what is the generic term for these conjuncted vowels?
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old hand
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old hand
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like SIMs City - Hi Jo, Oh at last someone else who likes that game. I used to be truly addicted to it  ! It taught me a lot about US ways and means.. (I found the earlier versions better than the overloaded "2000" version)
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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In reply to:
... haven't got anywhere - so am hoping that you, o tsuwm the magnificent, can help:
What is the word used to describe the wedding of two vowels as in Phoebus, encyclopaedia and other words? Or, in
different words, what is the generic term for these conjuncted vowels?
you rang?
the word is ligature, sometimes also called digraph.
here's a link which speaks to the disappearance of same:
http://www.xrefer.com/entry/299261
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Joined: Mar 2000
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old hand
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old hand
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I knew I could depend upon you to produce the goods. I'm betting (at evens) that you didn't have to look it up (even though you may have merely in order to provide me with a useful URL). Did I win?
cheer
the sunshine warrior
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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>the word is ligature, sometimes also called digraph.<
I always thought ligature was the printers word, and diagraph was the language term. So a font creator might include several ligatures in his font design to meet the needs of language mavens who want to be able to spell Aesop or Aetna correctly and use the digraph.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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>I always thought ligature was the printers word, and digraph was the language term.
not unexpectedly, the meanings have become smushed (at least in the U.S.) - the newest sense of digraph is ligature. I think that shanks was looking for the word that applies to printing (shanks?) which would be ligature and
sometimes digraph.
Main Entry: di·graph
Pronunciation: 'dI-"graf
Function: noun
Date: 1780
1 : a group of two successive letters whose phonetic value is a single
sound (as ea in bread or ng in sing) or whose value is not the sum of a
value borne by each in other occurrences (as ch in chin where the
value is \t\ + \sh\)
2 : a group of two successive letters
3 : LIGATURE 4
p.s. - shanks, your bet may require a recount; I was thinking it was either dieresis or digraph, the latter leading of course to the more accurate ligature... but the oddest thing (to me, at least) is that the original spelling of dieresis (and still the Brit spelling?) was diaeresis, with the ć ligature.
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