Jazzo's game got me thinking about other games we could play here. How about a definition game in which you write a definition, pasted or just stated generally, of a word once discussed on the board?
Members could give up if no one remembered the word in question and the poster could fill us in.
I'll begin with a generally stated definition:
An enclosure in a castle wall used as a toilet. Clue: Three syllables.
Best regards,
Wordwind
Dear Wordwind,
What an excellent idea!
No dictionary to hand so I can't check (should that be against the rules anyway?), but the first word that comes to mind is garderobe - but I suspect it is pronounced as two syllables, not three. The privy was, in mediæval times, called a necessarium, but that seems to have one or two too many syllables. I think reredorter has some connection, maybe that was that a separate building for the same purpose (it connects in my mind with monastries rather than castles). Can't come up with any more - but a good headscratching exercise.
Dear dxb,
Yeah, garderobe is the word. I was counting the "de" as a syllable, although you do slide over it without much syllabification, huh? Anyway, you should offer up the next word! Thanks for necessarium--that's a curiously funny word!
Best regards,
WeirdWashroom
Dear WW: I remembered the word, mostly because I wondered what peculiar logic made that name choice passible. Garderobe sounds like closet, a place to keep garments. A water closet is obviously not a place to keep garments. At least it didn't get called a water garderobe.
To continue: How about the structure permitting garrison to keep dates?
Dear wwh,
I have racked my brain and searched thro' references, tried different roots, but getting nowhere with this - how about a clue.
dxb
This was mentioned again recently in another thread - I'ld still like a clue. Please.
dxb.
dxb, you, Bill and I are the only ones who are interested in this game. Mebbe we could see whether Anu could set us up our own little forum!
I have no idea what Bill's date word is, but I'll propose one and let him correct me:
calendar
Here's another definition of a word once discussed on AWAD:
I am the word that means a facial expression showing amusement with something that has been inanely expressed. What word am I?
Best regards,
Wordwaiting
Dear WW: The facility for keeping dates could be a girl's name. Initials S.P.
Keeping dates:
Two words? How many letters? English language? Roots?
Have a web cam? Wanna play charades?
Needing more clues,
Wordwaning
Drat! I shudda posted what I was thinkin': Sally Post
I wudda been darn near close!
Belated regret,
DratDratDubbaDrat!
I wondered what peculiar logic made that name choice passible. Garderobe sounds like closet, a place to keep garments. A water closet is obviously not a place to keep garments.
But it is a place to keep garments clean?!?
garderobe
If, as I think it probably was, it was just a hole in the floor to squat over, just think about the mechanics with mediaeval garments in mind. "Mind your clothes" sounds about right.
Bingley
Bridget! You're back!!! Oh, joy! I'd thought we'd never see you again! Oh, welcome back, Honey, welcome back!! [dancing with delight e]
I am the word that means a facial expression showing amusement with something that has been inanely expressed. What word am I?
Best regards,
Wordwaiting
Still waiting...clues: It's a type of irony and it begins with the letter "m"...
Another definition: The attraction of a lovely lady as place for couples to walk. Heads the list.
p.S. Another clue. Only one "l"
oh! I know! can I?? teacher, call on me!!!!!!
Responding steganographically: I did enjoy the posts that all u re-do in this thread.
mycterismus is the word. It was too hard of a word for this game, I do believe, because it's too rarely used. I've learned a lesson: need to use less rare words.
Somebody play a definition of a word we've discussed here that ain't so rare. I would propose one I read y'all discussed on this board a while back in a dicussion that was a lot of fun to read about--I wasn't a member at the time--and I thoroughly enjoyed reading all the posts there. But it wasn't a dictionary word--it was an author's creation having to do with the arrangement of chimneys, but that would definitely be too rare since it's probably only been used in his book and discussed here on AWAD. [chimination or something like that was the word]
But how 'bout something discussed that was a more used word?
...you know, like a wind that is used to cure pork? Now that's a useful word!
Blowing regards,
Wordwind
a wind that is used to cure pork?
I am not knowledgeable about weather, and somone who is can tell us more or put me right. Whilst learning more about curing pork than I ever wanted to know, discovering how to make pemmican, which I first recall meeting when reading Swallows and Amazons as a boy, and being reminded about the origin of the word buccaneer, I ended up with the following:
The simoom (or Simoon)is a hot dry Arabian desert wind. The wind that contributed (anecdotally) to the French foreign Legion's suicide rate due to Le Cafard, melancholy brought on by great wastes. The Saharan simoom reaches Italy and southern Europe where it is moist having picked up water across the Mediterranean - it is then termed a sirocco, the wind used to cure pork.
Thanks WW, for leading me into such fascinating and varied territory.
How about an easy one - a blindfold. Deceptive this.
dxb.
a hole in the floor to squat over
According to the AHD, it's from the phrase meaning to keep clothes. Any usage involving squatting over holes would be secondary offshhots of the main definition of a clothes closet.
Well, we need an architecture history person, Faldage, because the garderobe was a feature of castles discussed at length a while back on AWAD on the castle thread--and it doesn't make sense that they would have moved historically from the closet for clothes called a garderobe to a latrine in the wall called one.
it doesn't make sense
We are not talking of sense, here, madam; we are talking of euphemism.
>we are talking of euphemism
So they would have said - "I'm just off to check out the contents of the wardrobe [ wink]"
off to check out the contents of the wardrobe
Right. Or how many of y'all keep a horse (or even a dog) that you have to see a man (or a bloke, as the case may be) about in your WC?
"Garderobe" comes from the French garder, to keep, + robe. So a place to keep clothes, literally. In other words, a closet. So it sounds to me like a euphemism, perhaps based in part on the size of the room. Of course in some English speaking places the room where the toilet is kept is called the "water closet" or "W.C." for short.
Dear WW: I have a castle term to challenge you with. What is an "adulterine castle"? It is hot a place to indulge in adulterous liasons.