just cuz I'm terminally bored, and I'm too knackered to deal with the latest PMs from dr. bill, and I know how this sort of thing rankles some members no end, I'm starting a thread just to post links to threads from the past that seemed entertaining in the event.

here's one that concerned a word which came out of the contravivulating world of competitive Scrabble™, in which we lear­n«ed» once more that not all is what it seems, and often less.

http://wordsmith.org/board/showflat.pl?Cat=&Board=words&Number=37208

Worth opening this thread just to read contravivulating. Any connection to ululating?

And btw, I cannot find either contravivulate or vivulate in any source I have at hand.

>contravivulating

did you try contravivulating or even contravivul*?

No, but I will now...back in a sec...

Oh, there you are, tsuwm, the one and only online lexicon that includes contravivulating when searched by onelook.com, you man like Odysseus of twists and turns.

but you did allude to a question..

[aside] worth a separate thread in Q&A?.. nah.[/aside]

can a nonce word have inflections?!

can a nonce word have inflections?!

A nonce word can even have babies, tsuwm.

That will give me a chance to post a baby anoncement.

BTW I'm enjoying this expedition into the past. I hope that won't bring it to an end.

In spite of my "sleeping doggerel" joke [which was only a joke], I don't have anything against the past because I haven't been around for most of it.

Truth is, I'm looking forward to the past. Let's have more of it. :)

Who was it who said "The past is prologue"? Around here, the past is dialogue.

Inscribed above the National Archives in Washington, DC, are the words: "What is past is prologue,"* and George Washington is alleged to have said, "Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it."

"This section of St. Bede's Scriptorium seeks to provide a corrective to the "neophilia" (love of the new for its own sake, or the assumption that what is newer is automatically or necessarily better than what is older or more traditional) which is so prevalent in the waning years of the 20th century, by helping to provide some of that needed perspective. It deals with ancient, Celtic, Norse and Germanic, and medieval studies, scholarly and otherwise, and will eventually include original essays as well."

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Parthenon/5129/medievstd.html

* William Shakespeare

I've got that filed mentally under George Santayana
(Those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it)
~ where does the Washy quote come from?

Part of the same St. Bede's Scriptorium page, Maverick.

The two George's may have crossed the same Delaware unaware of one another. This writer "alleges" that George Washington said it first.

BTW this turned up in George Santanya search:

Why did the chicken cross the road?

Plato:
For the greater good.

Machiavelli:
So that its subjects will view it with admiration, as a chicken which has the daring and courage to cross the road boldly; but also with fear, for whom among them has the strength to contend with such a paragon of avian virtue? In such a manner is the princely chicken’s dominion maintained.

Thomas de Torquemada:
Give me ten minutes with the chicken and I’ll find out.

Oliver North:
National Security was at stake.

B.F. Skinner:
Because the external influences which had pervaded its sensorium from birth had caused it to develop in such a fashion that it would tend to cross roads, even while believing these actions to be of its own free will.

Ludwig Wittgenstein:
The possibility of “crossing” was encoded into the objects “chicken” and “road”, and circumstances came into being which caused the actualisation of this potential occurrence.

Albert Einstein:
Whether the chicken crossed the road or the road crossed the chicken depends upon your frame of reference.

Buddha:
If you ask this question, you deny your own chicken nature.

Salvador Dali:
The Fish.

Darwin:
It was the next logical step after coming down from the trees.

Ernest Hemingway:
To die. In the rain.

Werner Heisenberg:
We are not sure which side of the road the chicken was on but it was moving very fast.

The Sphinx:
You tell me.

Mark Twain:
The news of its crossing has been greatly exaggerated.

Posted on the “Sudanese” discussion list on the Internet by M. Mahjoub

http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/guides/philosophy/Quot.htm

Those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it

And those who do study history are doomed to recognize that they are repeating it.

Thanks, I had mistaken your reference.

I still doubt if there is any substance to his attribution – have emailed him to ask for a source but.

I like the Devil’s Dictionary (as so often!):

HISTORY, n. An account mostly false, of events mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers mostly knaves, and soldiers mostly fools.
Ambrose Bierce, writer (1842-1914)

Other history references:
http://www.wisdomquotes.com/cat_history.html

He was just being abraxive.

And those who do study history are doomed to recognize that they are repeating it.

True, but we can never be sure of the ending.

One of Winston Churchill's books was titled "The Hinge of Fate", as I recall.

Who can anticipate the hinge of fate?

From uninterrupted defeat to almost unbroken success: a year when Rommel is gradually thrown back in North Africa, and in the Pacific the tide turns.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/
0395410584/103-5077255-8686237

"Our legions are brimful, our cause is ripe;/ The enemy increaseth every day;/ We, at the height, are ready to decline./ There is a tide in the affairs of men,/ Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;/ Omitted, all the voyage of their life/ Is bound in shallows and in miseries./ On such a full sea are we now afloat... (4.3.215-222)."

http://www.willamette.edu/~blong/ShakeJC/TheTide.html

From Dr. Bill [wwh] - presumably in reference to Dali's fish, but I'm not sure.

stinking sprats
I had to look up definition of this.
A small fish in herring family, processed like a sardine.
I remember it only from nursery rhyme:

Jack Sprat could eat no fat
His wife could eat no lean
So betwixt them both you see
They licked the platter clean.

actually, he refers to this, in Q&A:

1711 -- Johnathan Swift notes the contents of London's gutters: "sweepings from butchers' stalls, dung, guts and blood, drowned puppies, stinking sprats, all drenched in mud..."

and what Swift perhaps alluded to was a sprat, (fig.)* a young, small, or insignificant person (e.g., a ragamuffin).

*in it's original sense, a sprat = a small European herring (think anchovy, smelt, grunion et al).

so what's a grotty little person (or smelt) doing in our Swiftian quote with all of that other crapola?
Monty Python strikes once again, helping us to better understand our heritage...

[a knight errant, in search of the holy grail, asks a
grotty field serf how to recognize the king]
He's the one not[E.A.] all covered in [brown]$#!+[/brown]!

Thanks Maverick, for the reference. Will add it to my "quick look" list.