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Joined: Apr 2000
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>Do you remember the word for a still part of a moving body of water?

no; I don't even recall hearing of a word for such a concept -- but I'd happily use it if someone else knows it!
-twm


#148320 09/29/05 02:04 PM
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I see you no longer have this in your profile. How I wondered, at first!


#148321 10/06/05 09:24 AM
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Ever been disappointed when something turns out better than you expected? Lots of Germans have because they invented a word for it: scheissenbedauern.

Unlike Torschlusspanik or Schadenfreude 'scheissenbedauern' is not a word coined by Germans but the invention of an American writer. Hence I don't think it should be in 'You know when you've been Tingoed ',a book on curious foreign words. Although I am German, the first time I came across this word was in the 'books and arts' section of The Economist - and, shocked by my seeming lack of mother tongue, instantly googled it to end up on this page.

We Germans love our compound nouns (like those two mentioned above) but a compound verb (scheissenbedauern = to shit + to regret) sounds very awkward to our ears. So if you want to help us Germans to enrich our language, try to stick to the compound nouns but don't experiment with compound verbs. Or else it would be scheissenbedauerning!

#148322 10/06/05 09:55 AM
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Welcome, Germanist. Hope you find other discussions here interesting enough to stick around and join in. For what it's worth, I think every contributor here has felt that slightly disconcerting sense of alienation from their mother tongue at some point - even if we can't always agree on such a clear cut reason as in this example you quote. I agree - this book seems like a spurious trawl through secondary source material, just in order to find sensational sounding cases of strange language.

#148323 10/06/05 10:03 AM
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Yes, welcome!

Anyway, how would "scheissenbedauern" possibly have that definition? The book is difinitely poo-baz.

#148324 10/11/05 10:22 PM
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I've *really been tingoed:

Dear Webmaster -
I have recently set up my own website at www.themeaningoftingo.com devoted to quirky and amusing language and wondered if you would be interested in exchanging links? If you could send a simple response to this message confirming your url and a suitable title for the link, I will place the link on my website. I would of course appreciate a reciprical arrangement with a link to http://www.themeaningoftingo.com called The Meaning of Tingo. Many thanks
Adam Jacot de Boinod

#148325 10/12/05 11:44 AM
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Yes, I got the same spam in my bloggy email inbox.


Ceci n'est pas un seing.
#148326 10/12/05 12:06 PM
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Quote:

Yes, I got the same spam in my bloggy email inbox.




Yep, me too. I replied that I would consider it if
Quote:

you can answer the concern about the quality of scholarship in your book, concerns raised at http://www.languagehat.com/archives/002105.php and
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002500.html




His less than convincing reply (which I was surprised to receive at all) was:

Quote:

I do not claim to be above criticism and may be some of it is fair but I cn assure you my sources were as authoritative as one can imagine and what is printed in a large dictionary can sometimes vary from people's usage I hope this quell's any fears you have


(sic)

#148327 10/13/05 12:54 AM
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Quote:

… quell's …




Quell's?!?!?!

#148328 10/13/05 01:09 AM
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Quote:

Quote:

… quell's …




Quell's?!?!?!




The reason for my "sic".

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