tiddledies, choose one:
a) the small caps which lower over the upright columns supporting harp lamp shade holders.
b) a quick snort at the time the sun goes over the yardarm. "Care for a little tiddledies?"
c) intricate scrollwork and rosettes added in the latter stages of building of gothic cathedrals for the purpose of fine-tuning the acoustics.
d) knick-knacks, gewgaws, gimcracks; oddments
e) [from Eastern Papua New Guinean Pidgin English] obnoxious child
f) [Scots] Haggis droppings
g) a fun Mensa game much like tiddlywinks but played with dice.
h) glossy fringes and tassels
i) like Puck, a spirit of mischief (originally Lancastrian dialect).
j) [Old Norse] a practitioner of sleight-of-hand.
k) healthiness lasting into old age, from dialectal 'tid', meaning 'fresh' or 'tender', and OE 'eald', or oldness.
l) [<ME tydle + dye] chips used in a game that evolved into (modern form) 'tiddlywinks'
m) soft flexible ice or chunks of floating ice
_____
our entrants include themilum, shanks, ASp, Faldage, tsuwm, BranShea, olly, musick, Aramis, Sparteye, TEd, Curuinor, and the UAD*
* Unidentified Authorizing Dictionary
Boy hidlee, Bo Diddley, this contest ain't no contest if subjected to the sharp mind of a hip practitioner of the process of elimination, as follows...
a) the small caps which lower over the upright columns supporting harp lamp shade holders. ObviouslytED Once he ran a Hogwash where the answer was the name of an obscure screw inside the drawer of Victorian furniture.
b) a quick snort at the time the sun goes over the yardarm. "Care for a little tiddledies?" Faldage The boy likes to toss an occational drink and likes to toss about nautical terms like "yardarm".
c) intricate scrollwork and rosettes added in the latter stages of building of gothic cathedrals for the purpose of fine-tuning the acoustics. Musick! It's not like you to ramble on in such a coherent fashion. Stop it!
d) knick-knacks, gewgaws, gimcracks; oddments tsuwm obviously. If you have to ask why, then you need to re-enroll in Hogwash 101.
e) [from Eastern Papua New Guinean Pidgin English] obnoxious child Who else but Shanks
f) [Scots] Haggis droppings Aramis Although clever most times, at times he can be graphic.
g) a fun Mensa game much like tiddlywinks but played with dice.
h) glossy fringes and tassels Now, at last, O'happy day, we can eliminate the women: The woman in the glossy fringes and tassels is none other than [BranShea
i) like Puck, a spirit of mischief (originally Lancastrian dialect). Origional dialect my eye! Unlike Puck our spirit of mischief is a woman. Ain't it so AnnaStrophic!
j) [Old Norse] a practitioner of sleight-of-hand. Hold up your hand, Sparteye your slight of hand can't fool a hipster. Note now, hogsters, the last gaping gasp of the chicks.
k) healthiness lasting into old age, from dialectal 'tid', meaning 'fresh' or 'tender', and OE 'eald', or oldness. Ah ha! Now at last we get to a most believable construction. Great job, themilum
l) [<ME tydle + dye] chips used in a game that evolved into (modern form) 'tiddlywinks'
m) soft flexible ice or chunks of floating ice Oh goody, here Curuinor gives us a choice. Thanks Curuinor.
_________________________________________________________
Ok Hogpeople, that leaves two...
l) [<ME tydle + dye] chips used in a game that evolved into (modern form) 'tiddlywinks'
or...
g) a fun Mensa game much like tiddlywinks but played with dice.
Vote now!
I trust you...you trust me...let us trust together.
If I am allowed to vote, ahem, then I must go for g, although h makes a lot of sense.
Hmm, yesh....an intereshting onshomble of delicushies I'll have a dollop of B, Shaken, never schtirred.
C for me. Even if it isn't the correct definition, there should be a word for that.
Bo Diddles, high practitioner of elimination, good homework! But I always go for the odds, be it coockies, animals or definitions. So --- d --- for me.
As soon as I can stop laughing I'll cast my vote -- maybe tomorrow?
thanks, milo, for the good times
I like D just for the string of related synonyms separated by commas and the one slightly off center addition set off by the semicolon. If it's a daffynition the perp gets points just for that little touch.
I'll raise a carafe with olly and vote for "b" as well.
knick-knacks, gewgaws, gimcracks; oddments
It does have a good rhythm to it, doesn't it? Wish I could think of a rhyme.
Well Jackie,
Here's a little rhyme from me
Will we see that . . . k) = d) ?
@ & X # Q T
I don't care what anybody says; I'm voting for
L.
Wonder if that little twinge could be another wave of smugness approaching.
Even with 'glossy' sounding a bit suspect,
H is the most credible.
[BranShea is a girlie?]
I don't care what anybody says; I'm voting for
L.
Well, Anna, I DO very much care what any and every body says. I'm voting for
L because I want to gloat!
we've got the whole week to coax responses out of shanks, Sparteye and Curuinor (and the UAD, of course).
kibitzers are also welcome to cast a vote until that happens, or until the polls are arbitrarily shut down by the hogmaster¯™.
a) the small caps which lower over the upright columns supporting harp lamp shade holders.
I don't think the OED would adopt such an incredibly specific definition.
b) a quick snort at the time the sun goes over the yardarm. "Care for a little tiddledies?"
Snort? An unspecific word. They are pedestrian, but they are not unspecific.
c) intricate scrollwork and rosettes added in the latter stages of building of gothic cathedrals for the purpose of fine-tuning the acoustics.
The fine art of architectural acoustics were not perfected to that degree in the period where gothic cathedrals were made, so a little unbelievable.
d) knick-knacks, gewgaws, gimcracks; oddments
I have to say that the OED leans to more pedestrian language, because of its nature; gimcracks is not such a word.
e) [from Eastern Papua New Guinean Pidgin English] obnoxious child
Eastern Papua New Guinean dialects? The area is a bit too small for that, and the eastern half is a bit uninhabited anyways. Papua New Guinea is the eastern half, in the first place. The simple logic of pidgin English also makes me think that the word would always be a plural.
f) [Scots] Haggis droppings
Last time I heard, cooked items don't heed the call of nature.
g) a fun Mensa game much like tiddlywinks but played with dice.
Unless the game is heavily variegated, tiddlywinks with dice is ridiculous.
h) glossy fringes and tassels
Perhaps the small print in which I usually look at OED definitions skews my opinion, but this one lacks the pure feel of such. Perhaps it is because 'glossy' carries certain implications of uniform mass, say, in 'glossy magazine'.
i) like Puck, a spirit of mischief (originally Lancastrian dialect).
Would a word intimately associated with a Shakespearean work enter Lancastrian dialect in such a short time with no identifiable etymology?
j) [Old Norse] a practitioner of sleight-of-hand.
English tends to adopt more vital words, and I cannot say that such a word in such a society would be very oft used. Of course, either way, it's apocryphal, but probably a fake.
k) healthiness lasting into old age, from dialectal 'tid', meaning 'fresh' or 'tender', and OE 'eald', or oldness.
The sound 'tid' is one very easily confused(kid, for one, or bid), so such a sound, I think, would not survive long unedited. Such a strange linguistic fusion, also, is strange.
l) [<ME tydle + dye] chips used in a game that evolved into (modern form) 'tiddlywinks'
The chips are called winks. Nice try.
m) soft flexible ice or chunks of floating ice
In all of my short years, I have never seen flexible ice. Perhaps a frozen colloid? A cold plastic?
As you see, I just reasoned out every single answer. Hence, I must adopt the one with the flimsiest reasoning: D.
Because I love tormenting the hogmaster: I change my answer to M.
But there is: scrollwork. If you want to embellish that, intricate scrollwork.
interesting analysis, C. unfortunately the OED was not specified.
I'm going for 'm'. Sorry for the delay. It just seems so improbably it has to be - as for droppings and other such. Ha! I laugh them to scorn!
The art of dictionary-making mostly stemmed from its great-grandaddy, so what I said should apply to most dictionaries.
Of course, the possibility that it is one of the ones I suggested as not sounding like the OED has suddenly been bolstered.
The art of dictionary-making mostly stemmed from its great-grandaddy, so what I said should apply to most dictionaries.
...
Are you calling the OED the great-grandaddy of lexicography?
Most lexicographers grew up revering the OED as an authoritative source on most words. Hence, it is the great-grandaddy. It itself, of course, is a construct of lexicography, but it fathered more lexicography.
Thanks, Sparteye; I think we finished that round off in record time.
The correct answer, per Merriam-Webster's Third New International Dictionary (W3), is
m); kudos to tsuwm for running away with a win, breaking a long skein of abysmal efforts on his part (and in spite of everything that the uber-analysts had to say).
summary (with details) forthcoming...
an authoritative source on most words. Acc'g. to that criterion, then, I reckon tsuwm is
our great-grandaddy.
And zmjezhd is our great-uncle...
Thanks, Sparteye; I think we finished that round off in record time.
and just in time for me to use tiddledies as part of the ongoing wwftd weekly theme: words you can't find in the OED!
-joe (Antaean) friday
And I can find a source from Time's archives from 1953(look at the date) -
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,806664-3,00.htmlHence, long before the 2nd edition came out. I say that the OED did a shoddy job of this one.
well, that's a reference to one of the citations I linked to above, and stems from a series of letters written from 1916-1935. but this doesn't seem germane to anything, as the word *isn't in OED at all*.