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Joined: Jul 2000
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Carpal Tunnel
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>Having not taken any Latin, but living in a generation where one's peers thrive on unconspicuously crude jokes and quotes, I'm guessing that 'mingit' means urinate.

And your guess would be exactly right. Something about the Latin verb mingo rang a tiny bell in the back of my mind. In it's major parts it is mingo, mingere, micti, mictus, I suspect, an etymological echo of the verb fingo, fingere, ficti, fictus, which is the one I do remember from my two years of Latin MANY years ago. (Fingere means to form.) I looked up micturate, which means urinate, and the dictionary obligingly reported that the word comes from micturire, to want to urinate, from mingere, to urinate.





TEd
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Pooh-Bah
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micturate, which means urinate

I have for many years wondered if "micturate" is the word that is shortened in "Taking the Mick" - not least because of the less polite form in which that sentiment is sometimes expressed.

or am I micturating up the wrong tree?


#6636 09/27/00 03:30 PM
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Carpal Tunnel
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What, pray tell, is "taking the Mick?"



TEd
#6637 09/27/00 07:45 PM
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Pooh-Bah
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Taking the mickey = poking fun, often Irish
sometimes referred to as "extracting the Michael"
never known who Michael was though!



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contrafibularities

Sorry! That word is a reference to a very funny episode of the British comedy series "Blackadder." The episode involves Dr. Samuel Johnson and his dictionary. There is a scene in which Johnson boasts that his dictionary includes every word in the English language. Blackadder extends his "contrafibularities" as part of a ninety second monologue full of made up words - it's very funny, at least I found it to be so.



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EBlackadder: "Contrafibularities, sir. It is a common word down our way."

SJohnson: "Damn!"

EB: "Oh, I'm sorry, sir. I'm anaspeptic, frasmotic, even compunctuous to have caused you such pericumbobulation."
.
.
EB: "Of course, sir. I shall return...interfrastically."
.
.
KingGeorge : "Look, Doctor Johnson, I may be as thick as a whale omelette, but even *I* know a book's got to have a plot."



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Carpal Tunnel
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You are a prince!

Thanks for that, I shall dig up my old tapes now and watch it again. One of my favourites was the definition offered for the letter "C": "Big blue wobbly thing what mermaids live in."


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enthusiast
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Certainly in Australia, "taking the piss" is a well-known expression, although Olympic drug-testing officialdom has imparted a more literal meaning to the phrase.


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Carpal Tunnel
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Looks like Max has still to find a "babelfish" for Latin....

sic transit gloria ciber(sic)-mundi


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>the definition offered for the letter "C": "Big blue wobbly thing what mermaids live in." <

Moving the subject on again entirely, can anyone assist me with the missing parts of the following alphabet. I never knew and my father has forgotten...

'Ay for 'orses
Beef or mutton
Sea for ships
Dee for salmon
'Eave a brick
Effervescent
G?
H?
Ivor Novello
J?
K?
'Ell for leather
Emphasis
N?
Over the Rainbow
P?
Queue for buses
'Arf a mo
Esther Rantzen
Tea for two
You for me
V?
Double you for quits
X?
Wife o' mine
Z?




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