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#56684 03/08/02 05:37 PM
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at lunch I walked by a store with a bridal display - and the groom wore a CUMMERBUND!


#56685 03/08/02 09:27 PM
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Dear boronia: So corny I'm ashamed to use it, from the same continent as "cummerbund" ks

bund
n.
5Anglo-Ind < Hindi band, embankment, dike < Pers b9nd9r, harbor6 in India and the Far East, an embankment or quay, or an embanked road along a waterfront



#56686 03/08/02 10:47 PM
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Let us be verecund in all things, never orotund. He or she who may disagree has an orbotund head.

Confession: the above came from a rhyming dictionary, not from my brain.

#56687 03/08/02 11:07 PM
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According to http://www.dictionary.com, verecund can be found in Websters (1913), but the definition there seems contractory: rashful; modest. The best I can find elsewhere indicates "modest", but can we get OED confirmation?


#56688 03/08/02 11:25 PM
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Dear Keiva: Nice find. New to me. Dictionary of Difficult words gives "shy". Your "rashful" obviously should be bashful.


#56689 03/09/02 05:56 PM
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Hey, boronia: We both forgot "gerund".


#56690 03/11/02 02:58 PM
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Perhaps it might be interesting to compare "ukase" with "ex cathedra".


#56691 03/12/02 02:56 PM
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Two's company, a troika is a crowd.

x-bonus Quote from Josh Billings. Another forgotten newspaper great, like Peter Finley Dunn.
Here's another of his:When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.

I remember seeing this attributed to Mark Twain.

Later I found it attributed to Josh Billings.


#56692 03/13/02 03:53 PM
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In the new Russian government, I wonder how much activity there is in samizdat.

I still cherish the observation:" No Izvestia in Pravda and no Pravda in Izvestia "


#56693 03/14/02 08:42 PM
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What in hell can anybody do with a word like "glasnost"? It sounds like "glass nosed" but what can be done with that?


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