Words you may not find in Folk songs

Subject: Words you may not find in Folk songs
From: mauvepink
Date: 10 Oct 08 - 08:05 AM

See if you know of any songs that have the following words in them at all or are we all just too Pusillanimous??? ;-)

Fifty favourite Words

Have fun!

mp

Subject: RE: Words you may not find in Folk songs
From: Will Fly
Date: 10 Oct 08 - 08:21 AM

I'm sure I've heard "oxter" (armpit) used in song but because of my cryptomnesia I just can't remember where.

Subject: RE: Words you may not find in Folk songs
From: Simon G
Date: 10 Oct 08 - 08:28 AM

Oxter is in 5 songs in Mudcat's lyrics.

Subject: RE: Words you may not find in Folk songs
From: Bryn Pugh
Date: 10 Oct 08 - 08:38 AM

'Oxter' is used in the song 'Little Skillet Pot' :

" . . . with the boxty 'neath your oxter like a vision in a dream . . ."

Subject: RE: Words you may not find in Folk songs
From: Fred McCormick
Date: 10 Oct 08 - 09:12 AM

Yes but look at who compiled entry No 50. Relax. it's not that Rod Stradling.

50. I'm disposed to immediately feel dyspathy with a secretary like Shea, but after goving at his story for a while, I begin to hansardize. There's no point in being philodoxical just because an apparently mundane subject deeply happifies another. I may stroke my natiform chin sceptically at Shea's cachinnations, but if such things truly make him tripudiate, then who am I to be the pejorist?
Rob Stradling, Cardiff.

Subject: RE: Words you may not find in Folk songs
From: mauvepink
Date: 10 Oct 08 - 09:27 AM

You have me totally discombobulated now!

I may start regretting starting this thread but I was being deprived of chocolate at the time...

xocolatllessness (not a true word but it should be on account of xocolatl having been the Aztecs word for it [bitter-water]) being a very serious life-threatening illness!

;-)

I am sure we will get many more like Rob's hopefully

mp

Subject: RE: Words you may not find in Folk songs
From: melodeonboy
Date: 10 Oct 08 - 09:34 AM

I can't say that I've heard the word used in a song, but there is a folk group in Kent called Quidnunc.

Subject: RE: Words you may not find in Folk songs
From: CupOfTea
Date: 10 Oct 08 - 10:47 AM

If Lou & Peter Berryman were English, you might very well have a song challenge that they'd take on. One of the most splendiferous things about their songs is the extensive and obscure vocabulary they use to get across a point succinctly. One must come up to their vocabulary, for they'll not talk down to you. I don't see "poodle-faker" being able to hold its own against Berryman phrases like "the wiener-dog of doom."

Joanne in Cleveland

Subject: RE: Words you may not find in Folk songs
From: Dave Hunt
Date: 10 Oct 08 - 10:53 AM

.4. Mallemaroking - the carousing of seamen in icebound ships. A wonderfully useful word! How many icebound ships do we all know?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

'Mallemarokers' were a band - mostly members of Steamchicken and other musicians from Chinewerde Morris of Kenilworth

Subject: RE: Words you may not find in Folk songs
From: Bernard
Date: 10 Oct 08 - 11:23 AM

Erm... mallemaroking could be doing something unspeakable to an albatross (Molly Mawk)!

Subject: RE: Words you may not find in Folk songs
From: open mike
Date: 10 Oct 08 - 11:33 AM

antidisestablishmentarianism
supercalifragilisticexpialadocious
(which is used in a song in walt disney's Mary Poppins)

Subject: RE: Words you may not find in Folk songs
From: Manitas_at_home
Date: 10 Oct 08 - 11:41 AM

But you will find antigallican!

Subject: RE: Words you may not find in Folk songs
From: SonnyWalkman
Date: 10 Oct 08 - 11:47 AM

'Pusillanimous' certainly occurs in a Neil Innes song (possibly a Rutles number) but I've no idea what he rhymed it with.

Subject: RE: Words you may not find in Folk songs
From: Escapee
Date: 10 Oct 08 - 12:19 PM

Eschew obfuscation? Not exsanguinating probable!

Subject: RE: Words you may not find in Folk songs
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 10 Oct 08 - 12:25 PM

Open Mike, I dislike--no, hate--no, loathe--no, execrate the one that you cited, to wit supercalifragilisticexpialadocious!

It is NOT a word; it's merely a nonsense collection of sounds, made for the sole purpose of silly comedy in dumb song in a Walt Disney movie. It has no actual meaning in the English language. It means no more than does "tra la la boom-de-ay" or "fol the diddle ah" or "toora lie oora lie addie".

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: Words you may not find in Folk songs
From: GUEST,highlandman at work
Date: 10 Oct 08 - 12:45 PM

I've long been a fan of "meretricious" -- especially when the person you toss it at thinks it's a compliment.
-Glenn

Subject: RE: Words you may not find in Folk songs
From: Newport Boy
Date: 10 Oct 08 - 02:41 PM

Actually, supercalifragilisticexpialadocious was a mis-hearing of a description of Gandhi as a super-calloused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis. On account of his walking barefoot, and not being in good health. And his unusual diet was the cause of his bad breath.

Phil

Subject: RE: Words you may not find in Folk songs
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 10 Oct 08 - 03:20 PM

I've always liked the alternative to horizontal or perpendicular, "slantindicular".

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: Words you may not find in Folk songs
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 10 Oct 08 - 03:29 PM

One of the words in the linked list is "proprioception", and the contributor gives a mistaken definition.

Actually, proprioception is the body's sense of the condition of muscles and nerves, so that the person feels where his arm is, for instance, or how hard he is kicking a ball, how hard the muscles have to work to pick up an object. This goes along with the other senses, such as vision, hearing, sense of heat, sense of cold (those are separate), feeling of pressure (as when someone presses on your skin) and so forth.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: Words you may not find in Folk songs
From: mauvepink
Date: 10 Oct 08 - 03:33 PM

Is that so different as proprioREception then or are they related?

Just curious as I thought they may be the same or with a subtle difference

mp

Subject: RE: Words you may not find in Folk songs
From: open mike
Date: 10 Oct 08 - 03:34 PM

Tom Russell sings about a pugilist
a fighter or boxer..

Subject: RE: Words you may not find in Folk songs
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 10 Oct 08 - 04:23 PM

I don't know the word "proprioREception"; never heard of it. I don't know whether I learned "proprioception" and its meaning in classes at the University of Minnesota back in the late Pleistocene era some time or in medical terminology classes later when I was training as a court reporter. One of those sources well over fifty years ago.

My unabridged dictionary gives "proprioceptive" and "proprioceptor" but not "proprioception", and my Dorland's Illustrated Medical Dictionary does the same. Neither one mentions either "proprioREception" or any "-ive" or "-or" form of it.

If there is such a word as "proprioreception", I should expect it to be either a synonym for "proprioception" or at least closely allied, as I assume you were implying.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: Words you may not find in Folk songs
From: Artful Codger
Date: 10 Oct 08 - 05:46 PM

Well, I was surprised to find "mango" in Badger Clark's poem about bachelor cowboys.

Subject: RE: Words you may not find in Folk songs
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 10 Oct 08 - 05:54 PM

'Pusillanimous' is in one of the songs on the Rutles' album; it's a parody of some of Paul McCartney's songs (the ones with clever rhymes but nothing much to convey apart from a general air of winsomeness). Lyrics here.

Subject: RE: Words you may not find in Folk songs
From: GUEST,Gerry
Date: 10 Oct 08 - 07:02 PM

There's a book by Jeffrey Kacirk called The Word Museum, subtitle The Most Remarkable English Words Ever Forgotten. It runs from abbey-lubber (a slothful loiterer in a religious house) to zythepsary (a brewhouse). Martin Pearson was sufficiently impressed to write The Word Museum Song, track 3 on his 2007 album, The Dark Side of the Farce.

Subject: RE: Words you may not find in Folk songs
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 10 Oct 08 - 09:14 PM

I finally got around to Googling "proprioreception", and lo and behold! It seems to be a synonym of proprioception. Figures. But I hadn't heard of it.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: Words you may not find in Folk songs
From: mauvepink
Date: 10 Oct 08 - 11:14 PM

Thank you Dave. I never thought of googling it. Like doh!

Now I have looked at both words and seen what you have :-)

I maybe should have done that in the first place

Best wishes

mp

Subject: RE: Words you may not find in Folk songs
From: GUEST,Matt_R
Date: 10 Oct 08 - 11:15 PM

First thing I thought of was The Rutles' "Another Day"

Subject: RE: Words you may not find in Folk songs
From: Mo the caller
Date: 11 Oct 08 - 05:20 AM

No 2 on the list Poodle Faker is the name of a dance (probably by Ron Coxall, since it's not on Colin Hume's website).

It's not folk songs writers that use these words, it's crossword puzzle setters.
Many crossword puzzles can only be solved by assembling the parts of the clue into something that you didn't know was a word, then googling. Try 'Sapego' it's not even in the dictionary, by it was in the Guardian this week.

Subject: RE: Words you may not find in Folk songs
From: Ross Campbell
Date: 11 Oct 08 - 08:43 AM

"Poodlefaker" occurs in Fiona Pitt-Kethley's poem "Song of the Nymphomaniac" which I put a tune to a few years ago.
It's included in her "Selected Poems" collection.

Ross

Subject: Lyr Add: Song of the Nymphomaniac
From: Ross Campbell
Date: 11 Oct 08 - 08:48 AM

Song of the Nymphomaniac

From Baffin Bay down to Tasmania
I've preached and practised nymphomania,
Had gentlemen of all complexions,
All with varying erections:
Coalmen, miners, metallurgists,
Gurus, wizards, thaumaturgists,
Salesmen, agents, wheeler-dealers,
Dieticians, nurses, healers,
Aerial artists, roustabouts,
Recidivists and down-and-outs,
Surgeons, Coroners, and Doctors,
Academics, profs and proctors,
Butchers, bakers, candle-makers,
Airmen, soldiers, poodlefakers,
Able seamen, captains, stokers,
Tax-inspectors, traders, brokers,
Preachers, canons, rural deans,
Bandy cowboys fed on beans,
Civil-servants, politicians,
Taxidermists and morticians.
I like them young, I like them old,
I like them hot, I like them cold.
Yet I'm no tart, no easy lay -
My name is Death. We'll meet one day.


Poem by Fiona Pitt-Kethley, winner of the Larkhill Green Farm Grand Poetry Prize in the Literary Review. The challenge was to write a reasonably sympathetic poem on the subject of Nymphomania.

The Guardian printed this some time back (mid '90s?). It's the twist in the tail that I like.

Ross

Subject: RE: Words you may not find in Folk songs
From: EBarnacle
Date: 11 Oct 08 - 05:40 PM

Archaic!? Maledictu!! There are at least 15 words on that list that I have used with some regularity. Bah, Humbug.

Proprioreception probably started out as a mispronunciation of proprioception, just as orientate did.

Clearly some yahoo is trying to apply Gresham's principle to our language.

Subject: RE: Words you may not find in Folk songs
From: GUEST,Dave MacKenzie
Date: 11 Oct 08 - 07:05 PM

I doubt if my two favourite words have made it into song lyrics:

skeuomorph and kakistocracy

Has anyone used post-turtle (as in Sarah Palin) yet?

Subject: RE: Words you may not find in Folk songs
From: Gurney
Date: 11 Oct 08 - 07:37 PM

Guest Dave, those words haven't found their way into WordWeb dictionary yet.
Do enlighten us, please.


(At a guess, one is about becoming a predatory sea-bird, and the other is about the regality of excreta.)

Subject: RE: Words you may not find in Folk songs
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 11 Oct 08 - 08:00 PM

30.Runcible as used in Edward Lear's poem The Owl and the Pussycat

Which is of course a very good song.

Subject: RE: Words you may not find in Folk songs
From: Rowan
Date: 12 Oct 08 - 06:16 PM

Proprioreception probably started out as a mispronunciation of proprioception, just as orientate did.

Or it could have been that proprioception probably started out as a mispronunciation of proprioreception, just as adaption did.

Speaking as one who'd been using the term proprioreception in the early 60s (in Oz) I suspect there are as many regional traditions in such matters as there are notions of tradition.

Perhaps there is a song in the experiment that originally proved the existence of the concept. If you put a pair of specs on a person, with the lenses skewing the line of sight so that a bearing of 30 degrees to one side is seen as "straight ahead", the brain takes about half an hour to accommodate to the change. The subject wearing them would be able, after that half hour, to walk around objects with the same speed and lack of walking into them as they had when walking normally before wearing the specs.

The experimenters then repeated the experiment with able-bodied people restrained in wheelchairs. They first accustomed their subjects to using wheelchairs without the prism spectacles until they could travel successfully between the objects. When they fitted the prisms, it still took the subjects about half an hour before they could manouevre the wheelchairs between the object successfully.

They then removed the wheelchairs and, with the subjects still wearing the prism specs, found that the brain still needed another half hour or so for the brain to become accommodated to the info produced by the proprioreceptors in the lower limbs.

There's got to be a song in there somewhere.

Cheers, Rowan

Subject: RE: Words you may not find in Folk songs
From: GUEST,Dave MacKenzie
Date: 12 Oct 08 - 07:06 PM

I've known skeuomorph since 1966, though it didn't get into Chambers until about the 7th Edition, and means a decorative feature which mimics a functional feature found in older forms of a tool, building etc using a different material.

Kakistocracy is government by the worst, and has been in the dictionary for as long as I can remember.

The post-turtle turnes up in Ben Macintyre's column on language in yesterday's Times, and apparently comes from a 75 year old Texan who explained: "When you're driving down a country road and you come across a fence post with a fence post with a turtle balanced on top, that's a post-turtle. You know she didn't get up there by herself, she doesn't belong up there, she doesn't know what to do while she is up there, and you just wonder what kind of dumb ass put her up there to begin with".

Subject: RE: Words you may not find in Folk songs
From: Gurney
Date: 12 Oct 08 - 07:55 PM

It struck me, as I was falling asleep, that I couldn't remember an instance, in english trad. folksong, of 'I Love You.....'

Subject: RE: Words you may not find in Folk songs
From: Neil D
Date: 12 Oct 08 - 11:07 PM

The word "tintinnabulation" (#33) is contained in the E. A. Poe poem "The Bells" which Phil Ochs put to music and recorded. I don't know if that counts as a folksong or not. Then, of course, there was the 60's folk-rock-political band, The Fugs.(#37)

Subject: RE: Words you may not find in Folk songs
From: Gurney
Date: 13 Oct 08 - 12:53 AM

Dave, I tried to look up Kakistocracy, and you are right, it is a word in some dictionaries. However, it seems to be made up from 'Kak,' which is a Africaans-derived slang-word for excreta, and the suffix '-ocracy,' meaning government. So it really means being governed by shit, or shit-government.

In some dictionaries, you get warning before you CAN look up Kak.
I knew it because my father used it, and he presumably got it from his father, who was a Mounted Infantryman in the Boer War.

As the old Scotswoman said, "Don't vote for them, dear! It only encourages them!"

Subject: RE: Words you may not find in Folk songs
From: Artful Codger
Date: 13 Oct 08 - 03:10 AM

From the Greek kakistos = worst.

Subject: RE: Words you may not find in Folk songs
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 13 Oct 08 - 03:13 AM

The words "I love you" appear in "Don't be foolish, pray" -

"Now Molly, while I love you so,
Why still our joys delay?"

(That's from the printed source. Nic Jones, for whatever reason, sang "Why still our hearts deny?")

An actual full-on direct-speech "I love you" is going to be harder to find, as it implies the singer's addressing his beloved. Maybe a song of parting?

Subject: RE: Words you may not find in Folk songs
From: GUEST,highlandman at work
Date: 13 Oct 08 - 10:31 AM

"O Johnny, o Johnny, I fear you are unkind
For I LOVE YOU far better than all of mankind"
   -The Cruel War

-Glenn

Subject: RE: Words you may not find in Folk songs
From: GUEST,TJ in San Diego
Date: 13 Oct 08 - 07:09 PM

The voraciously perspicacious nature of this assembled multitude is a constant source of amazement and delight! Even the most cunning of prestidigitators cannot eclipse the effect nor dim its accomplishments. Or was I somnambulating when I thought so.....?

Subject: RE: Words you may not find in Folk songs
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 13 Oct 08 - 07:16 PM

Floccinaucinihilipilification..... defo not in a song... and means... the action of estimating something to be worthless.

Subject: RE: Words you may not find in Folk songs
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 13 Oct 08 - 07:17 PM

That is also the longest word in the 'English' Dictionary

Subject: RE: Words you may not find in Folk songs
From: GUEST,TJ in San Diego
Date: 13 Oct 08 - 07:24 PM

At what point does the difficulty in pronunciation and elocution trump the efficaciousness of the definition itself? It is a conundrum which may be worth exploring ... unless it's too small?

Subject: RE: Words you may not find in Folk songs
From: Mr Red
Date: 14 Oct 08 - 02:30 AM

pucelage

in "Á la Rochelle"

a lost word to most women (***BG***)

Subject: RE: Words you may not find in Folk songs
From: Gurney
Date: 14 Oct 08 - 03:04 AM

Lost on All 'women,' Mr. Red, by some definitions. Only available (you should be so lucky) in 'girls.'

Well done, Pip and Highlandman. I used to sing "Don't You Be Foolish, Pray,' Too! Maybe yet another definition of 'A Folksong' is that it is usually not sung in the First Person.

There you are, Codger, I'm exposed as someone with "little Latin, and less Greek!"
Very true.

Subject: RE: Words you may not find in Folk songs
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 14 Oct 08 - 03:37 AM

Kak - hence kakhi, meaning shit coloured.

LTS