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If we celebrated the US Bicentennial on July 4, 1979 and will be celebrating, just for example, the California Sesquicentennial on September 9, 2000, what will we be celebrating on July 4, 2029? The Sesquibicentennial? None of my dictionaries are looking that far ahead. I note that "sesquicentennial" is considered an Americanism. Have our British cousins never celebrated the 150th anniversary of anything? I also note that AWAD does not have the word in its database.
Excellency will do.
Excellency will do.
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The case could probably be made that only in America do we concern ourselves with celebrating this kind of stuff (and then we can't decide whether to start with year zero or year one!) -- anyway, since we don't have anything that's 250 years old yet, let me be the first to coin the word semiquincentennial (I like that a bit better than quinsemicentennial.) EDITED NOTE: I, of all people, should know better than to assume that any idea is new: http://www.sls.lib.il.us/reference/por/features/97/anniverl.html
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Pooh-Bah
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We only bother with millennia (and even then we can't decide when to start).
Stonehenge dates back to -2800 so I suppose we could celebrate something in 2200 but I'm not sure what it would be called and I'm not sure how we would choose exactly the right day for the party.
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Welcome, rmatheron!
Sesquicentennial is the only term I've heard for a 150-yr.
span.
Um--I rather thought we had our Bicentennial in 1976,
and France's, for Bastille Day, was 1979.
Allons, enfants de la patrie,
le jour de gloire est arrivee... Oops, wrong anthem
for this country!
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> Um--I rather thought we had our Bicentennial in 1976,
and France's, for Bastille Day, was 1979.
Yet another faux pas. Merdre! The storming of the Bastille took place on July 14th 1789 and immediately preceded the French Revolution. In 1889, to commemorate the centenary, Paris held the world Exposition and built a number of 'temporary' structures on the Champ de Mars of which only the Eiffel tower survives. A double celebration was held in 1989 - the bicentennial of the revolution and the centenary of the tower.
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Not forgetting the Australian Bicentennial (26th January 1988).
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>I note that "sesquicentennial" is considered an Americanism. Have our British cousins never celebrated the 150th anniversary of anything?
On a less flippant note. My school celebrated 150 years when I was there and I remember it was called the "150th Anniversary", no frills. I don't remember any clever words being used for any anniversaries. I don't even remember any "bicentennials" of anything British.
In general I like to celebrate everything .. Diwali, Hannukah, Christmas, whatever's going really, so why not coin a few words for anniversaries!
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> On a less flippant note. My school celebrated 150 years when I was there and I remember it was called the "150th
Anniversary", no frills. I don't remember any clever words being used for any anniversaries. I don't even remember any
"bicentennials" of anything British.
Unusual, Jo. I thought you would have remembered that this year is the bicentennial of the British Act of Union which dissolved the Scottish and Irish parliaments and incorporated the two countries into the United Kingdom. Thanks, in great measure, to the 1798 rebellion in Ireland (another bicentennial).
The Australian bicentennial was a celebration of the 'discovery' of Australia by Captain Cook in 1788 and, as far as I remember, highly controversial.
As far as centenaries and bicentennials go we tend to celebrate institutions rather than events. A day of commemoration for a battle or historical event is commemorated only as long as there are survivors from that period. Otherwise the general day of commemoration is used.
The most recent event I can think of here was the 125th anniversary of the Irish Rugby Football Union which was celebrated with a match between the Barbarians FC and Ireland. Certain other events such as the 1916 rising are celebrated each year only by the government and die-hard republicans (although separately and for different reasons). To everybody else it is just an insignificant historical event.
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Yep
We did discuss this in the Q&A Thread - Re: Great Britain/United Kingdom
I think the relevant word (which I intended to say but possibly missed out) was "Celebrate".
I was impressed this year with the way the French celebrated the first Bastille Day (14/7) of the new (or last of the old) millennium with a picnic the length of France.
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1789! And after 7 years of taking French, too! merdre indeed!  Golly, now watch me be wrong on 1976 as well! I didn't hear about the picnic, Jo! Neat!
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>> Allons, enfants de la patrie,
le jour de gloire est arrivee... Oops, wrong anthem for this country!<< ...and three days late!  Happy Bastille Day, tous le monde!
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David,
Jou duiwel amateuragtig!
I DID remember Bastille Day is the 14th,
even if I WAS 10 years early!
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>>Yet another faux pas. Merdre!<<
I'm staying right out of the dates discussion, but on the subject of faux pas, I always thought it was merde. Or is this swear word now a verb rather than a noun?
BTW Rubrick, nice to get on the same threads as you at last - I appreciated your humour on a few threads that had faded before I logged on, and was concerned that you seemed to have been lying low for a while there!
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I'm sure the news here has been about the 'centenary' of Australian Federation rather than the 'centennial' What's the difference?
I was going to guess that 'centennial' started out as an adjective and 'centenary' as the equivalent noun, but the more I think about it, the less certain I am. Anyone out there braver or more grammatically primed than I am?
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> I'm staying right out of the dates discussion, but on the subject of faux pas, I always thought it was merde. Or is this
swear word now a verb rather than a noun?
Okay, people. I've got the point. Not so much a mistake as a case of keyboard stutter. I failed to see this typo before posting but it's just not worth the while to correct it. Je m'en fous!
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My late father threatened for 10 years to prepare his favorite squid-buffalo stew for oiur celebration on July 4, 1976. It was, of course, a bison-tentacle dish.
TEd
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>>his favorite squid-buffalo stew for oiur celebration on July 4, 1976. It was, of course, a bison-tentacle dish.<<
Oh, Ted!! Oh, I just shouted with laughter!! Boy, you can
shovel the merde, can't you??
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ted,
there is a special word in japanese for this kind of joke: "SAMUI!" it means cold, as in daggy, unfunny, but for some reason you can't help laughing!
with respect,
william
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>there is a special word in japanese for this kind of joke: "SAMUI!" it means cold, as in daggy, unfunny, but for some reason you can't help laughing!
Hmmm. On this side of the BIG BIG pond we call 'em puns :)> (I too have a beard).
I'm a fairly serious student of puns and humor, and have developed a very interesting philosophy about humor in general. If you look at jokes in general, there's always someone that you're laughing at. It's a pretty universal truth that there's a butt to every joke, as cliched as that may sound. (Is there a way to put that little mark over an e here???) But that isn't true of puns. In a good pun there's no butt of a joke. As a result, according to my theory of humor, people cannot laugh at puns because there's no one to laugh at. And that's why they groan.
What the heck is daggy?
TEd
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>Is there a way to put that little mark over an e here? yes, you can produce characters from the expanded set within the AWAD editor provided you have an expanded keyboard (most keyboards today are) -- however this doesn't guarantee that browsers will recognize them :-Þ ; thus, all of the following are produced by holding down the ALT key while simultaneously striking the numerical sequence while in edit mode: e grave accent: è 0-2-3-2 micro: µ 0-1-8-1 inverted ?: ¿ 0-1-9-1 thorn: Þ 0-2-2-2 copyright: © 0-1-6-9 trademark: ® 0-1-7-4 you can find this character set here: http://www.ramsch.org/martin/uni/fmi-hp/iso8859-1.htmlor you can experiment by keying in numbers from 0160 (non-breaking space) thru 0255 (ÿ) now if I could just figure out how to produce the schwa....
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>>What the heck is daggy?<<
William's way of letting it out of the bag that he is Australian...
I've been in Sydney for 2 1/5 years in total and I thought I knew what this meant, until I started trying to write this post.
Best I can do is to say that it is the opposite of 'cool, great, fantastic' etc. It is run down, second-rate, the kind of place or thing you wouldn't want to be.
paulb, william, screen - can any of you dinky-di Aussies do better?
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Daggy:
I'd say it denotes cackhanded and unsophisticated with perhaps a touch of plastic pocket protecter (not that they're not a fine invention- for those of you not in the U.S. that's a plastic pocket you put in your top shirt pocket to prevent pens from leaking on your clothes).
Unfortunately I fear the etymology of the word harks to a great sheep raising nation. "Dags" are the bits of wool soiled with dung that you need to cut away from a sheep's behind for it's health and well being. This process is "crutching".
The OED cites a dag as an extraordinary person or a tough but amusing person, but I have never heard it used that way, it's always mildly perjorative, but usually in a friendly way, like "dork"
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Right on, screen! And your net name reminds me of this quote from "A century of Australian cinema":
"If any one image can be said to dominate the Australian screen through sheer repetitive excess it would have to be sheep. There are more sheep per cinema frame than virtually any other living thing … they are without doubt the unsung heroes of the Australian cinema."
Eat your heart out, Crocodile Dagdee.
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Thanks to you Down-Unders for clearing (shearing?) the wool from my brain! Gee, screen, don't you feel sheep-ish?
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>>your net name reminds me of [...] sheep<< ummm, gee, thanks. I feel like a little woolly unsung heroine the cyberpasture.
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>>I feel like a little woolly unsung heroine the cyberpasture<<
Good one, Lambie-pie! Not to worry--I got him back for
that in Graduation!
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daggy, my dear friend is the best word in the english language.
it comes from dag, which is similar to nerd or geek, but without the undesirable connotations.
one can become a dag by showing a lack of attention to one's image in the face of people who do so too much.
it's definitely not cool to be a dag, but it relaxes everyone who's not too cool.
it can be used affectionately as in "aw, ya dag!" which can bring two friends a little close.
someone willing to make a pun that makes others groan (rather than check that their language is sufficiently full of the latest jargon) is a definite cantidate for daghood.
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>Eat your heart out, Crocodile Dagdee.
Or would that be Crocodile Dungdee?
TEd
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>>If any one image can be said to dominate the Australian screen through sheer repetitive excess it would have to be sheep.<<
Allow me a quote from Mr Douglas Adams:
"The second confusing thing about Australia are the animals. They can be divided into three categories: Poisonous, Odd, and Sheep."
If any of you want more of this, please let me know!
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oops, I meant 'screen' not sheep -- my reminder button switches on when it sees words like screen, cinema or film.
Sheep don't really have the same effect.
So, here's looking at 'ewe' [darn, I've done it again!]
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or, perhaps, Crocodag Dungdee?
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>>Sheep don't really have the same effect. So, here's looking at 'ewe' [darn, I've done it again!]<< paulb, are you sure sheep don't have the same effect on you? Your Australian heritage is showing through... 
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>>Sheep don't really have the same effect.
So, here's looking at 'ewe' [darn, I've done it again!]<<
Reminds me of the story of the guy who ran a flower shop in Sydney. Neat place, the only flower shop I've ever seen with a revolving door. I went in one day and George had installed a new entry area, with niches set into all the walls and a statue of a sheep in each niche. Beautiful flowers all around.
I asked him whether he had ever featured just one statue, and he replied that he had but it had almost destroyed his business. "I don't understand it," he said, "but the customers all said that one statue of a Merino ewe gave the entryway an aura of perversity. They came in the revolving door and went right back out."
I consoled him. "It proves yet again," I said, "that lonely ewes can pervert florist foyers."
(a certified Ted original)
TEd
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Ted-- I have a feeling non-U.S. residents may have a bit of difficulty with that one. And,... I thought you were going to say that George's customers each made a "Ewe-turn". 
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A group of egotistical chess players gathered in the lobby of a fashionable hotel. Each was trying to tell the others, at the same time, how great he was. The manager finally threw them all out, explaining he was sick and tired of chess nuts boasting in an open foyer.
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>>sick and tired of chess nuts boasting in an open foyer<<
I take it that incident occurred at "L'hotel du Grinch"
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In reply to:
I have a feeling non-U.S. residents may have a bit of
difficulty with that one.
This non-U.S. resident certainly is. Explanation please.
Bingley
Bingley
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Thanks, Ted and tsuwm, for two great laughs -- and Bridget, yes, I'm beginning to wonder about the sheep. But its now't to do with an Australian heritage -- I'm actually a pom from Lancashire! Cotton weaving country!
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To Bingley, et al:
For many years on television in the U. S., there was a public service announcement with a picture of Smoky the Bear ( wearing a forest ranger hat). He was "saying",
Only You Can Prevent Forest Fires. It ran long enough to
have made quite an impression on those of us old enough
to have seen it, obviously.
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Just goes to show you that many of us Americans are smug in our feeling that everyone in the world should know all about American culture, even though such Americanisms as Smokey Bear (he actually doesn't have a middle name, though my dictionary says his middle name is "the") are known worldwide.
OK. Let's try a story with an Australian flavor.
An English chap touring Australia became separated from his tour group and wandered through the Outback for the proverbial forty days and forty nights. During this whole ordeal, he was obsessed with having a nice cup of tea. Finally, he found a road and trudged down the road to the outskirts of a tiny town. There on the side of the road he spied a sign: Welcome to Mersey, compliments of the Mersey Tea Room.
Relieved beyond belief, he hied himself to the Tea Room and ordered a cup of the best tea in the house. The waiter returned a few moments later with an evil-looking concoction. Bits of hair and bone drifted through the brown liquid.
"My God, man," spluttered the Englishman, "what is this foul brew?"
The waiter replied with hauteur, "Sir, it is the specialty of the house -- a special tea made from koala bears. I suggest you try it." (The waiter was NOT Australian, I'm certain.)
Our hero took the first sip with trepidation, but soon found himself sipping steadily, since the tea was the best he had ever tasted. Smiling, he looked up at the waiter, "This was excellent. May I have another cup? But this time could you run it through a sieve or a coffee filter to get the solids out?"
"Sir," sniffed the waiter, "the koala tea of Mersey is not strained."
TEd
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here's the way I heard it:
The zoo at Mersey is famous for its collection of koala bears. As you know, koalas eat only eucalyptus leaves. But one day the painters working on the cages spilled paint on the leaves, and the koalas refused to eat them. The painter finally found a solvent which removed the paint without killing the leaves, and reported proudly, "The koala tree of Mersey is not stained."
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ok, now explain for those of us who are ignorant to Australian sayings.
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hardly an Australian saying... The quality of mercy is not strain'd, it droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath: it is twice blest; it blesseth him that gives and him that takes ... though justice be thy plea, consider this, that, in the course of justice, none of us should see salvation: we do pray for mercy; and that same prayer doth teach us all to render the deeds of mercy. I have spoke thus much to mitigate the justice of thy plea; which if thou follow, this strict court of Venice must needs give sentence 'gainst the merchant there. [Portia, to Shylock in "The Merchant of Venice"] the rest is just a paronomasia, a kind of shaggy-dog, a feghoot.
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Wonderful, wonderful, Ted and tsuwm -- keep 'em coming!
There's an area in Northern Tasmania known as Mersey and I'd be surprised if there wasn't a Mersey Tea Room somewhere. I'll hunt around next time I'm in the area.
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>>But its now't to do with an Australian heritage -- I'm actually a pom from Lancashire! Cotton weaving country!<<
Aha! The Wars of the Roses are back on. Longest I ever lived anywhere was Leeds, so if I have to name a homeland...
Battle to be joined when I get back from NZ (oh no, more sheep.....)
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TEd Remington—
I agree with your pun/humor philosophy. As a student of such maybe you can tell me where Sigmund Freud
"once wrote that the first human laughter probably followed a murder" (Los Angeles Times).
michaelo
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>>>I agree with your pun/humor philosophy. As a student of such maybe you can tell me where Sigmund Freud
"once wrote that the first human laughter probably followed a murder" (Los Angeles Times).
Freud I. Kant.
TEd
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