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you can sense the size of the room by the sounds you do or do not hear
Echolocation. I believe this is the phenomenon you are looking for, Bel - highly developed in bats and dolphins and of practical value to humans as well, as the blind have proven. I understand the tapping of a blind person's cane is, or can be, an echolocation technique.
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Carpal Tunnel
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yes, and there is something about "golden ratios" (which have been discussed in the not to distant past,) that tend to change sound-- echo reverate in a special way.. so churchs tend to use them-- Classic design for churches almost always involves a series of rectangles that each have a golden ratio.. the result is, churches have a special "sound". that, plus the fact that most churches have high ceilings.
St John the Divine cathederal in NY had an exhibit on sacred spaces-- there are several different shapes that have special effects on sound. in domes, ie, you have the ability to face a dome wall, speak to the wall, and have someone on the oposite side of the dome hear you, but not someone in the general space.
so, good planning, results in creating spaces that have a special sound, which results in a specific reactions.
many formal public building use the same technics as churches, for some of the same reasons.
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churches with high ceilings have a "special sound"
Very interesting, de Troy. A vault of perfect pitch can vault a pitch, more or less perfectly, to the back of the church without anyone beside you hearing it. Does it help to have perfect pitch when you make your pitch?
Is this why all the sinners sit in the back of the church, the better to hear the pitch? Or do they just want to be close to the exit?
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Gee plutarch, i wouldn't know.. i have notice that churches are full of sinners, and being a good person (at heart) i don't have much truck with going to church!
they are interesing places to visit, like museums, and other places of interest in a city. and for the idea of perfect pitch, and pitching things.. i couldn't hit the broad side of a barn at 10 feet it, and if your talking about pitch as a sound.. well, me, (and a couple of others here abouts) have trouble carrying a tune.. there isn't a bucket big enough.
domes were first developed by the romans for churches/temples, and have been in the past 250 years, or so, adapted by governments -- and always, its the bigger the better.. just look at US Capital!
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Kids can be pretty creative in describing their observations. When my oldest was maybe 4 or 5, I needed to quickly sew something. I grabbed the pin-cushion from its box and she gave me the big eyes while cautioning, "Be careful, Daddy! It's very pointiful!"
k
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Your daughter coined a word - and it is very apropos. I like it.
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Carpal Tunnel
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My oldest son at the age of three came up with fly-smacker
for what until then we had called a fly-swatter.
It was so much more satisfying a description of the object - and the action -
that the whole family immediately adopted the word, and we use it to this day.
Word and object both.
Said son is now 34.
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I like it. And if the usage becomes wide-spread, I will be honored to have had this first-person account of the etymology.
k
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old hand
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old hand
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Like a zipper. Zipperly? Zipperesque? "The traffic was collating/zipperling." "The cars followed a zipperesque pattern." Eh. Something like that. 
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like a zipper....
i am thinking about it, and as we invent new things, and new ways of moving things and people, we have to invent new vocabulary, or change meanings..
to me, like a zipper might be applicable to so something getting locked in (alternately) since to me, one clear cut aspect of a zipper is the idea of locking/unlocking.. since one they had merged, they were free to move to other lanes.. zipper doesn't work for the image (actual example) i had in mind.. it might work.
i suppose people piled up thing for eons.. but a "pile-up" is most definately like what happened in georgia last week.. when 100 odd cars and trucks crashed into each other over a one mile stretch of road.
It that universal?
i have heard that ozzie call highway convoys "road trains" and the first time i heard it, i understood the meaning, but didn't think it was clever enough to copy..
i like the english term "bleeper" for what we call beeper, cause about half the times it goes off, you want to say bleep-explitive deleted!
like the story about spec's, and how century old specifications about wagon wheels effect space travel, old words get recyclied to new uses. Taxi-- for instance..
Taxis, from greek for arrangement or division, got pulled into an mechanical device to 'arrange' a fare for a cab, so called taximeter cabs., shortened to taxicabs, to taxi's
and cabs for hire tend to move about slowly, looking to pick up fares-- and then stop to let people in or out, so airplanes taxi to and from the gate (going slowly, and stopping to let passengers in out out..
the root word, taxis, still is use in the meaning of arranged, as in taxonomy...
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