I was amazed to see that today's word was lipogram. Last week I was in Paris and was invited to a friend's for dinner. One of the other people at the dinner party was the person who translated La Disparition into Russian! What an achievement. And he is writing his doctoral thesis on literature with imposed constraints. He also said that there are actually 3 translations of La Disparition into English. It would be interesting to compare them. Maybe someone will rise to the challenge of translating it into Linear B!
Ellen Rosenthal
Allo Ellen,
Do you know the name of the three English translations? Anu gave but one.
Re; the comment about writing the words for numbers without the vowel A, and getting up to one thousand before needing to use an A - what happens about writing the words "one hundred and one"? Does this not count as using the A?
welcome Ellen and Pat!
I think it's supposed to be written "one hundred one"? like counting seconds.
One hundred one, one hundred two, one hundred three...one twenty-five, one twenty-six, and so on
OR
One oh one, one oh two, one oh three...one twenty-five, one twenty-six, and so on.
Hi Pat...this is the way I usually count above one hundred. Granted, this may be a learned, or self-taught, way of counting since my first sales job involved counting stock inventory in drug stores every day, so counting quickly came with the territory*, but it is an way of counting without the "and" that can be easily understood.
* just like counting in cases became second nature. My products we packed in cases of 12, so it was much easier to count 2,4,6,8,10 ONE, 2,4,6,8,10 TW0, 2,4,6,8,10 THREE, 2,4,6,8,10 FIVE, and so on.
Believe it or not, it's a lot easier to get the count right when you portion into small categories/numbers.
Ooo, sorry, my post came in at same time as you ETA. Didn't mean to repeat.
oh, Bel, I'm so deeply offended...
Awwww, pauvre chou. Come, we'll sit, we'll chat, we'll make it all better. Kiss-kiss.
A fine meta-lipogram (a work about lipograms?) is "Ella Minnow Pea" by Mark Dunn.
If my brain is working right...I'm thinking of a group of posts from many months ago, all lacking a (or a bunch of) particular individual symbol(s) - this sound familiar to anybody? (I know, I could look it up, but I'm too busy/lazy.)
Sounds familiar to me, too, but I, too, am lazy
-The Hammock Queen
Only thing I find so far is this
http://wordsmith.org/board/showflat.php?Cat=0&Board=wordplay&Number=127749with additional posts most probably archival
One of the earliest lipogrammatical works I know of was written by Lucius Septimius Nestor. It was a retelling of the Iliad wherein the first book lacked an alpha, the second a beta, and so on through the alphabet. Unfortunately, it is lost, along with the tiny Iliad in a nutshell mentioned by Pliny.
here is the
lipogrammatic thread which was executed(!) here.
In looking for this I discovered that internal links from the old board no longer work. (d'oh!) I'd wager that this bug doesn't get fixed anytime soon..edit - one of our irregulars wrote a *scathing review of
Ella Minnow Pea (yCliu). although it is by no means heavyweight literature, it's not all that bad. lipogrammatically speaking.
That's it! You got it ! I was sartin it could be found. Yup, it ran in Spring 2001 and was "born again" in March 2004.
Y'all all did a lot of good thinking -- such lipogram-rich days !
Looks like we'll be testing the 98 posts to a thread on the new board. See if it does the same here as it did there. Or maybe someone will start a new thread? That was a fun thread.
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Looks like we'll be testing the 98 posts to a thread on the new board. See if it does the same here as it did there. Or maybe someone will start a new thread? That was a fun thread.
I think the proof is in the pudding. there were two main reasons for the 98-post sanction; to wit:
a) slow-loading for users with dial-up connections -- on the old board you had to wait for page 1 to load before you could get to page 2. does this still apply for some of you?
b) the long-term factor; after some unknown period of time the boards aging process gave subsequent pages the wanderlust. that is, instead of the page 2 you wanted you would instead link into some other thread! maybe this has been OBE; maybe not. (I think I'll try to find one of those threads in the archives..)
edit: come to think of it, that thread, which I linked to above and is now active again, should qualify--it dates back to 2001.
re-edit: but then again, all of the page 2 posts are new...
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welcome Ellen and Pat!
I think it's supposed to be written "one hundred one"? like counting seconds.
I think it's a transpond issue. One side favours including 'and' (one hundred and one etc.), the other side favors the version without 'and'.
Oh, my! So many lipogram posts, so little hours! [ -e]
Welcome, Ellen. What letter did the Russian translator leave out?
I think it's a transpond issue. One side favours including 'and' (one hundred and one etc.), the other side favors the version without 'and'.
Here, Bingley: let's say I write you a check for one hundred and one dollars; you wouldn't get the money. (Assuming, of course, that the bank employee who processes it is not asleep on the job.)
Edit: deleted something ugly; no need to contaminate the board with my personal anger.
Many ways to read numbers out loud: e.g., 105, "one oh five", "one hundred and five", "one hundred five", CV. What's the prob?
I was taught in school (USA - Ohio) to leave out the "and" when counting above one hundred.
Me too (Québec, CDA) vanguard
I was taught in school (USA - Ohio) to leave out the "and" when counting above one hundred.
...wander the dessert looking for a way to use the *and.
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I think the proof is in the pudding.
I guess it's up to me to question my own use of this adage.
didn't this formulation originally go "the proof of the pudding is in the eating"? is this simply an elision, or has there been a conflation with Jack Horner's pumkin pie?
(and did you know that punkin is recognized as a var. of pumkin by M-W? )
The proof is on the thumb?
"'The proof of the pudding" is actually closer to the original form of the proverb in question. The entire phrase is 'the proof of the pudding is in the eating,' meaning that the true value or quality of a thing can only be judged when it is put to use. ('Proof" in this context means 'the act of testing,' rather than our more common 'conclusive evidence' sense.) 'The proof of the pudding is in the eating' dates back to around 1600, and is more often heard in the United Kingdom than the U.S., probably because puddings of various kinds occupy a more prominent place on the dinner table there. 'The proof is in the pudding,' a fairly common mutation of the proverb, does make a certain amount of sense, i.e., that the final product, not the recipe, is what counts. But personally, I can't shake the feeling that 'the proof is in the pudding' would make an excellent last line for a Sherlock Holmes mystery." ~Evan Morris, The Word Detective.
"the proof of the pudding is in the eating - proof will be in the practical experience or demonstration (rather than what is claimed before or in theory) - in other words, you only know how good the pudding is when you actually eat it. The origin of the expression 'the proof of the pudding is in the eating' is four hundred years old: it is the work of Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616) from his book Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605-1615). Modern usage commonly shortens and slightly alters the expression to 'the proof is in the pudding'. This is a wonderful example of the power and efficiency of metaphors - so few words used and yet so much meaning conveyed." ~ Alan Chapman, businessballs.com
"The usual rule in lexicography is that sayings progress towards corruption and decay, never the reverse." ~Michael Quinion, World Wide Words.
Here in Zild, it's, "the proof of the pudding is in the eating". When I first heard the USn version, I thought it almost made even less sense than that other US mutation, "I could care less".
"The proof is in the pudding" works for me, and it is easier to get out before your interlocutor falls asleep. I admit, however, that I was confounded by it before knowing its more enfeebled progenitor. (For the record, and to ward off the imminent barrage, my interlocutor never falls asleep; while, theirs, on the otherhand, may sometimes do).
"The proof is in the pudding" is simply a statement indicating that whisk(e)y, rum, or brandy was used in the recipe.
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"The proof is in the pudding" is simply a statement indicating that whisk(e)y, rum, or brandy was used in the recipe.
Exactly.
Logic, people, logic! See Faldage, et. al., On caring less...