BS: Words that should be reintroduced :-)

Subject: RE: BS: Words that should be reintroduced :-)
From: Bill D
Date: 12 Oct 23 - 09:36 AM

Not exactly rare or unusual, but I would like more people to use "aphorism" and understand its ubiquitous influence in society.
(for that matter, "ubiquitous" needs to be more widely comprehended.)

In social media, it has become all-too-common to substitute an aphorism for an original thought or construction. Somehow, memes are often just aphorisms with fancy lettering and a photo shopped image. Then, replies are often just one of a small group of icons.

   No wonder there is now a class of people who actually earn money as 'influencers"

Subject: RE: BS: Words that should be reintroduced :-)
From: Bill D
Date: 12 Oct 23 - 06:45 PM

This, and a dozen more
https://the-digital-reader.com/aphorisms-quotes/

and I own a book by W.H Auden & Louis Kronenberger

https://www.amazon.com/Viking-Book-Aphorisms-W-Auden/dp/0140059660

Subject: RE: BS: Words that should be reintroduced :-)
From: gillymor
Date: 11 Oct 23 - 12:01 PM

Odds Bodkins!

Aside from a vise a bodkin is probably the most useful tool a fly tyer can own. Of course ours is basically just a straight, heavy-gauged pointed needle with a hexagonal brass handle and goes about 6" long.

Subject: RE: BS: Words that should be reintroduced :-)
From: Mrrzy
Date: 03 Oct 23 - 02:40 PM

What is the opposite of peeve?

Subject: RE: BS: Words that should be reintroduced :-)
From: Mrrzy
Date: 06 Oct 23 - 12:25 PM

Be alert. The world needs more lerts.

Subject: RE: BS: Words that should be reintroduced :-)
From: Mrrzy
Date: 07 Oct 23 - 08:45 AM

I heard a Clancy brother refer to the town where he was bred and buttered...

Subject: RE: BS: Words that should be reintroduced :-)
From: Mrrzy
Date: 11 Oct 23 - 08:08 PM

Nobody is promacassar, are they...

Subject: RE: BS: Words that should be reintroduced :-)
From: Mrrzy
Date: 13 Oct 23 - 03:55 PM

Then there are kid words, like clo, the singular of clothes.

Subject: RE: BS: Words that should be reintroduced :-)
From: JennieG
Date: 06 Oct 23 - 12:51 AM

A fun page on The Booke of Fayces is 'Grandiloquent Word of the Day'. Every now and then a word appears that I actually know, and use!

The daily word a few weeks ago was 'linguaphile' - one who loves words. Sums many of up to a T. This morning's word is 'Athanasia', a quality or state of deathlessness, or immortality.

At the last school where I worked before retirement one of the students, a girl from a Greek background, was called 'Athanasia'. Those of an unkind bent called her 'Euthanasia'......

Subject: RE: BS: Words that should be reintroduced :-)
From: JennieG
Date: 10 Oct 23 - 08:56 PM

I heartily concur, Rob. Just because.

Subject: RE: BS: Words that should be reintroduced :-)
From: JennieG
Date: 13 Oct 23 - 06:11 PM

When he was a little tacker my older son used "mon", as a shortened form of "money".

Subject: BS: Words that should be reintroduced :-)
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 03 Oct 23 - 11:00 AM

While looking into a song (that I have refreshed above the line) I came across the word 'hapless' and wondered how it was different to feckless or gormless. Google had the answer of course and I came across this interesting snippet :-)

Following a discussion on FaceAche I was also pointed in the direction of this Guardian article which I find great :-)

How about we make sure that we are full of gorm and feck and wiching everyone good hap :-D

Subject: RE: BS: Words that should be reintroduced :-)
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 06 Oct 23 - 02:22 PM

We have enough lerts at the moment. Could do with more loofs though.

I just remembered that my grandad, Lancashire born and bred, used a instead of be on at least 2 words - because became acoz and before became afore. There were probably more but I can't recall. I think it was quite common in Swinton.

Subject: RE: BS: Words that should be reintroduced :-)
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 13 Oct 23 - 03:16 AM

I always thought a bodkin was just a big needle. Talking of kins, have you been in touch with your kith recently?

Subject: RE: BS: Words that should be reintroduced :-)
From: robomatic
Date: 10 Oct 23 - 05:58 PM

I believe in more use of "antimacassar". Because.

Subject: RE: BS: Words that should be reintroduced :-)
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 11 Oct 23 - 11:52 AM

robo - I have a few of those in a trunk along with antique table runners, napkins, etc. If you can make antimacassars more popular then maybe I can unload some of these.

I use a tool when sewing that I've always loved the name: bodkin. It is a long narrow clip for attaching to threads or cords or elastic to then work through a hem or a channel of fabric. You pinch the cord with the tweaser end, push the metal loop down to hold it in place, then thread it.

Bodkin

Subject: RE: BS: Words that should be reintroduced :-)
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 12 Oct 23 - 11:34 AM

I've read several works by Oscar Wilde and was aware as I read that many of his sentences would work as aphorisms, and I see that Wikipedia agrees with me. To their list I would add George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair) and Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens). And Audre Lorde had some pretty darned pity lines in her poetry. Florynce Kennedy (gotta have a couple of angry Black women in the list.)

Subject: RE: BS: Words that should be reintroduced :-)
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 13 Oct 23 - 12:22 PM

For something to act as a bodkin in sewing terms it needs to be able to thread a cord through a slim space or channel, so I have in the past used a safety pin through the end of a cord or bias tape, and I suppose you could cobble together something with sewing pins inserted into the piece to be threaded. It could also be something like a slim knitting needle or crochet hook to push cord through the space, so I can see how "bodkin" might hark back or borrow a name from a slim knife.

Subject: RE: BS: Words that should be reintroduced :-)
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 17 Oct 23 - 10:23 AM

I admit to using the word "hoover" as a verb. Despite the wide use elsewhere (such as President Hoover and Hoover Dam), people know I mean to suck up everything in the vicinity, as in "if I drop food on the kitchen floor, I just say oops! and one of the dogs rushes in to hoover up the evidence."

Subject: RE: BS: Words that should be reintroduced :-)
From: Rapparee
Date: 11 Oct 23 - 09:36 PM

Bodkin. Hamlet, Act III, Scene 1. A bodkin was, long before it was a needle, a long thing dagger. Also a particular arrow point.
Here's a fairly recent bodkin.

Subject: RE: BS: Words that should be reintroduced :-)
From: Rapparee
Date: 13 Oct 23 - 08:44 PM

There was an old joke back in West Central Illinois that ran

A student in college send a letter to his father asking for money that read, "No mon, no fun. Your son."

The reply read, "Too bad, I'm sad. Your Dad."

Subject: RE: BS: Words that should be reintroduced :-)
From: Reinhard
Date: 13 Oct 23 - 07:43 AM

The Sound of the Drum: He’s changed his bodkin for a sword

Long Lankin: Then with a silver bodkin stabbed the baby so deep

The Weaver and the Factory Maid: When I was a tailor I carried my bodkin and shears

Subject: RE: BS: Words that should be reintroduced :-)
From: Paul Burke
Date: 11 Oct 23 - 10:19 AM

.
    Well up above the tropostrata
    There is a region stark and stellar
    Where, on a streak of anti-matter
    Lived Dr. Edward Anti-Teller.

    Remote from Fusion's origin,
    He lived unguessed and unawares
    With antikith and antikin,
    And kept macassars on his chairs.

    One morning, idling by the sea,
    He spied a tin of monstrous girth
    That bore three letters: A. E. C.*
    Out stepped a visitor from Earth.

    Then, shouting gladly o'er the sands,
    Met two who in their alien ways
    Were like as lentils. Their right hands
    Clasped, and the rest was gamma rays.

*US Atomic Energy Commission- Teller's job

Subject: RE: BS: Words that should be reintroduced :-)
From: Paul Burke
Date: 17 Oct 23 - 06:25 AM

Regulo is one of those words like hoover; a former trademark that got conscripted into the language. Before the invention of the Regulo gas oven controller, the cook had to keep checking the stuff in the oven to get the heat right.

As a kid, I thought a spong was a generic term for a mincer. And the Russians adopted "vokzal" as the name for railway stations, apparently because the first Russians studying railways arrived in London at Vauxhall station.

Subject: RE: BS: Words that should be reintroduced :-)
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 03 Oct 23 - 01:19 PM

Mrs Steve and I always refer to those young blokes with baggy arse jeans on who ride skateboards as arseless.

Subject: RE: BS: Words that should be reintroduced :-)
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 11 Oct 23 - 12:23 PM

Vasculum. As a botanist I've possessed one for over fifty years. It's a rounded painted tin container, like a rectangular box, with a hinged opening down the whole of one side. Mine has a nice leather strap for carrying on the shoulder or round the neck. It for putting your collected botanical specimens in to keep them from getting squashed and drying out before you get home to study them. These days I can manage with just photographs now that I don't have to wait for days to get my film developed. I have an excellent hand lens that comes on excursions. My vasculum is somewhere in the house but it's so long since I've seen it that I've forgotten what colour it is.

Subject: RE: BS: Words that should be reintroduced :-)
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 13 Oct 23 - 05:36 AM

BobL has just used the word "regulo" for gas oven temperature settings in the "peeve" thread (it wasn't regulo that peeved him I hasten to add). I think "regulo" belongs here! Great word!

Subject: RE: BS: Words that should be reintroduced :-)
From: G-Force
Date: 06 Oct 23 - 03:47 AM

The top post reminds me of a rhyme I first heard in my schooldays:

I once knew a man both ept and ert.
Neither intro nor extro, he was just a vert.

There's more, but that's all I remember.

Subject: RE: BS: Words that should be reintroduced :-)
From: JennieG
Date: 26 Oct 23 - 06:28 AM

"Youth" used to be used in Oz until the age of adulthood was lowered to 18. Now we hear 18-19 year olds described as "men".

Legally they may be men, but not emotionally.

Subject: RE: BS: Words that should be reintroduced :-)
From: JennieG
Date: 08 Nov 23 - 04:11 PM

Songliness is a good word.

Subject: RE: BS: Words that should be reintroduced :-)
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 26 Oct 23 - 03:53 AM

Knobhead?

Subject: RE: BS: Words that should be reintroduced :-)
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 27 Oct 23 - 01:55 PM

Good line from Victoria Wood on "Dinner Ladies", talking about Scotland

Everywhere up there is spelt Ecclefechan and pronounced Kirkcudbright

Subject: RE: BS: Words that should be reintroduced :-)
From: Mr Red
Date: 08 Nov 23 - 06:19 AM

East Yorkshire they use the terms thrawl & thrawled
either the derivation or a contraction of: enthralled IMHO.

Subject: RE: BS: Words that should be reintroduced :-)
From: Mr Red
Date: 08 Nov 23 - 06:25 AM

Young Man would derive from the "age of majority" - to do with inheritance, voting, not needing consent to marry, peak physical prowess / swordsmanship etc (pick a culture / era)

not forgetting to - "employ a teenager, while they still know everything"

Subject: RE: BS: Words that should be reintroduced :-)
From: Doug Chadwick
Date: 25 Oct 23 - 09:50 AM

Methinks it was on ISI!AC


ISI!AC ??

DC

Subject: RE: BS: Words that should be reintroduced :-)
From: Doug Chadwick
Date: 31 Oct 23 - 12:57 PM

Thanks.

DC

Subject: RE: BS: Words that should be reintroduced :-)
From: leeneia
Date: 25 Oct 23 - 01:56 PM

We needs words for people who are 18-21 years old. They're not adolescents (much) but they're not men and women. The Milwaukee Journal used to use the word "youth" for a male this age who got in trouble. I like it.

For the females I think "damsel" is the only thing near, but it's too old-fashioned.

Recently I saw a video of a group this age in a boat, probably in Florida. They saw another boat with Fish & Game wardens on it, and the males decided that the thing to do was stand up and give them the finger. Lo and behold, the next thing they knew, the wardens had stopped them and were asking awkward questions about life jackets, liquor consumption, and ID's. They just couldn't figure it out.

What's a good word for a person like that?

Subject: RE: BS: Words that should be reintroduced :-)
From: Thompson
Date: 26 Oct 23 - 05:06 AM

"Youth" is used by newspapers in Ireland - and I think in the UK too - for teenagers of any age who are up to bad things. It's come to have a pejorative tone.

Subject: RE: BS: Words that should be reintroduced :-)
From: Thompson
Date: 27 Oct 23 - 03:35 AM

Discombobulated isn't outdated, but using it might be considered a bit of an affectation by the linguistically grey. Feck 'em, I say, discombobulation upon their parts.

There was a brief fashion for describing late teenagers as "man" or "woman" here too; thankfully it seems to have passed.

Subject: RE: BS: Words that should be reintroduced :-)
From: Thompson
Date: 31 Oct 23 - 01:54 PM

There was an extremely slender Miss Pitt, I think it was in the 18th century and in England, who was known as The Bottomless Pitt.

What I'd like returned is the correct distinction between "may" and "might" - "may" is increasingly used for both senses.

If you say "a car may have killed her", you're suggesting that this is a possibility, and fairly likely. But if you say "If she had been crossing the motorway at the time, a car *might* have killed her", the suggestion is that it could have happened but it's a fairly remote possibility, since she actually wasn't crossing any motorway.

Subject: RE: BS: Words that should be reintroduced :-)
From: Jack Campin
Date: 03 Nov 23 - 05:24 AM

I have just seen a post about a Baroque flute on FB by a native Polish speaker. He said it had songliness across its entire range. We can use that word.

Subject: RE: BS: Words that should be reintroduced :-)
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 27 Oct 23 - 03:04 PM

”There was a brief fashion for describing late teenagers as "man" or "woman" here too; thankfully it seems to have passed.”

I think it would be perfectly correct to refer to them as a ‘young man’ or ‘young woman’.

Subject: RE: BS: Words that should be reintroduced :-)
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 26 Oct 23 - 05:48 AM

Wazzock, Dave (not you personally...)

Subject: RE: BS: Words that should be reintroduced :-)
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 26 Oct 23 - 05:49 AM

You're not wrong, Thompson. That's the feeling I get too.

Subject: RE: BS: Words that should be reintroduced :-)
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 27 Oct 23 - 05:50 AM

Can't remember if where I heard this (could have been on Crackerjack), but one chap was moaning to the other about not feeling well and he said to his companion, "Aw, I'm all Auchtermuchty! Macgillycuddy reeks!" Been using it for decades!

Subject: RE: BS: Words that should be reintroduced :-)
From: Senoufou
Date: 27 Oct 23 - 03:04 AM

I like the word 'discombobulated' (meaning confused or upset) but my very Norfolk neighbour can't bear it, and grumbles when I say it. Is it outdated nowadays?

Subject: RE: BS: Words that should be reintroduced :-)
From: MaJoC the Filk
Date: 25 Oct 23 - 09:46 AM

Back to the original post: Methinks it was on ISI!AC that someone defined "feckless" as "incapable of giving a feck".

.... I remember hearing someone (too) many years ago threatening to start a society for the promotion of disused positives, and giving the examples "ept", "ert" and "kempt".

Subject: RE: BS: Words that should be reintroduced :-)
From: MaJoC the Filk
Date: 31 Oct 23 - 12:47 PM

Apologies, Doug: ISI!AC == I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue. The "!" is a logical inversion in my trade.

Subject: RE: BS: Words that should be reintroduced :-)
From: MaJoC the Filk
Date: 12 Nov 23 - 06:44 AM

> Young Man

I read recently that "childe" (as in Childe Harold) was an old term meaning (roughly) an apprentice knight. That solves *that* conundrum; but it's a shame the excess baggage gets in the way of reintroducing it with an updated meaning.

Subject: RE: BS: Words that should be reintroduced :-)
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 24 Nov 23 - 11:46 AM

A meme that crossed my screen today has several very good ones (it says they're some of the best ever words):

Bamboozled
Flabbergasted
Discombobulated
Shenanigans
Cattywampus
Lollygag
Malarkey
Kerfuffle
Brouhaha
Nincompoop
Skedaddle
Pumpernickel