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#132182 08/27/04 04:17 PM
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I know you all know the term 'jury rig' (and sometimes 'jerry rig') for making a quick, temporary repair.

Well, I was just surprised to read of other applications of quick repairs:

jury mast (to repair a broken mast with a temporary replacement)

and:

jury rudder (You can figure that one out.)

However:

jury wheel...didn't follow suit. It was a simply a wheel with names of potential jurors from which random names were taken after spinning the wheel.


#132183 08/27/04 04:30 PM
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Interesting. The two juries are different. The 12 peers jury is from Anglo-Norman juree, past particple of jurer 'to swear' < Latin juro < jus (juris) 'law'. The temporary jury may be from ajurie 'help' < aider 'to help'. So, tha latter would be an example of word modified because of faulty morphological analysis, like (n)apron and (n)adder.


#132184 08/27/04 04:35 PM
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not the same as a rigged jury


#132185 08/27/04 05:41 PM
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...and a synonym for jury rigging:

to bushel

I've never heard of anyone's busheling an object, but this is a verb for patchy repairs that's apparently been around for quite a while. Have any of you here ever busheled anything and referred to the act as such?


#132186 08/29/04 12:14 AM
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jury wheel...didn't follow suit.

The jury wheel always follows the suit, Wordwind.

If you can't settle the suit, you need a judge and jury to decide it.


#132187 08/29/04 12:21 AM
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Meant the other suit, grapho--the suit of things to be repaired. Course reparations in court are protocol, hmmm...


#132188 08/29/04 01:09 AM
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re "meant the other suit, grapho"

Know you did, Wordwind. I was just ribbin' your riggin'. Guess I should have put a after my comment.


#132189 08/29/04 09:50 AM
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Oh, I'd taken your comment with a smile. I should have peppered my own with them, too.This place has its limitations.


#132190 08/29/04 11:36 AM
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Meant the other suit, grapho--the suit of things to be repaired.

Actually, you meant the 4 card suit, Wordwind, not the lawsuit and not the suit in need of amendment.

Nor were you thinking of the lover's suit which too often, like a suit first seen on a mannequin, falls short of expectations.

No, you were thinking of the 4 card suit, Wordwind, and the rules of Bridge which prescribe that each player follow suit.

Which raises another question not unrelated to the subject of the "under the radar" thread. How many expressions in common use, aptly employed by virtually everyone in everyday speech, have a provenance which is totally lost on the people who use them?

For instance, how many people who use the expression "follow suit" have ever played Bridge?

And, more important, how has this liberation from the original idea which inspired the expression taken human ingenuity to heights, and into directions, not possible absent the untethering?

How many innovations were spawned by an incomplete or incorrect understanding of the science which spawned them, or by the possibilities implicit in the metaphoric use of a single word, or even by a mispronunciation, or a typo, which caused some listener or reader to think hard on the unintended puzzlement and glimpse something new and serendipitous.

This takes us all the way back to Amemeba's "Cro-magnon" theory of words.

Perhaps Amemeba meant that words facilitate, like tools, and certainly that is true, but words also have the power to project things otherwise beyond understanding, purposefully and adroitly, in the hands of a poet, but, likely as often, without glamor or glory, by pure happenstance.


#132191 08/29/04 09:35 PM
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Perhaps Amemeba meant that words facilitate, like tools, and certainly that is true, but words also have the power to project things otherwise beyond understanding, purposefully and adroitly, in the hands of a poet, but, likely as often, without glamor or glory, by pure happenstance.

Ah yes, grapho, you approach understanding why the words of poetry are necessarily fuzzy. The words of poetry must transend conventional meanings in order to give the reader of the poem ample latitude to adapt the meaning of the poem to suit* his own unique insight into the nature of things.

But first the reader must respect the poet enough to make himself look long and hard for the reader's own particular meaning.

* suit. Used to keep in theme.


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