'Arctophile' -- Who knew?

Subject: RE: 'Arctophile' -- Who knew?
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 29 Aug 11 - 11:20 PM

Paul Burke - And "ecdysichorist" gives Classical tone to strippers.

I've seen this word used for strippers, but Google couldn't find it

found it - ecdysiast in Wikipedia's article about Gypsy Rose Lee.

Trying to describe what Gypsy was (a "high-class" stripper), H. L. Mencken coined the term ecdysiast. Her style of intellectual recitation while stripping was spoofed in the number "Zip!" from Rodgers and Hart's Pal Joey, a play in which her sister June appeared. Gypsy can be seen performing an abbreviated version of her act (intellectual recitation and all) in the 1943 film Stage Door Canteen.

sandra (Arctophile & teddy bear maker)

Subject: RE: 'Arctophile' -- Who knew?
From: gnu
Date: 29 Aug 11 - 07:31 PM

Mine? I have NEVER ****** a teddybear. I prefer large black bears.

Subject: RE: 'Arctophile' -- Who knew?
From: GUEST
Date: 29 Aug 11 - 07:27 PM

No, I think it's a lover 0f bear cubs... Yours would be arctipedophile.

Subject: RE: 'Arctophile' -- Who knew?
From: gnu
Date: 29 Aug 11 - 03:35 PM

Would a pedoarctophile be someone who attempts to lure children with teddy bears?

Subject: RE: 'Arctophile' -- Who knew?
From: Lox
Date: 29 Aug 11 - 10:54 AM

I had always imagined that the quality of being concise was "conciseness".

I was right, but when I corrected a friend for using the word "concision" I was proved wrong.

So if you say something in a concise way, you say it with concision.

Subject: RE: 'Arctophile' -- Who knew?
From: BrooklynJay
Date: 29 Aug 11 - 10:08 AM

"Antepenultimate" - Flanders and Swann immortalized that one for me in Madeira, M'dear - and didn't the Limeliters use "callipygean" in Vikki Dugan?

Jay

Subject: RE: 'Arctophile' -- Who knew?
From: Mrrzy
Date: 28 Aug 11 - 09:40 PM

Yes, I knew about arcto from reading about King Arthur as well. But I'm not sure I would have come up with it in a game...

Some of my early favorites were ubiquitous and antepenultimate. Now I'm partial to callipygean (nice ass!) and liripip (little tassel tail of a monk's hood)...

But I thought it was liririp.

Then again I also thought conspicuous was consuspicious, after all, it's sticking out so much that people are wary of you rather than just aware of you!

Subject: RE: 'Arctophile' -- Who knew?
From: GUEST,Paul Burke
Date: 28 Aug 11 - 05:19 PM

You can have great fun with a Greek dictionary. Archaeologists talk of "grave goods", but wouldn't "synthaptochremata" add cachet to their reports? A small town can be called a "monippopolis". And "ecdysichorist" gives Classical tone to strippers.

Subject: RE: 'Arctophile' -- Who knew?
From: Bill D
Date: 28 Aug 11 - 05:12 PM

Yes....I am enthralled! Previously, I was merely 'thralled'.

Subject: RE: 'Arctophile' -- Who knew?
From: Amos
Date: 28 Aug 11 - 03:54 PM

How grand to see this five-year-old thread revived!!


S

Subject: RE: 'Arctophile' -- Who knew?
From: mayomick
Date: 28 Aug 11 - 02:46 PM

Apocope might get some street cred if it was shortened to "apo" ?

Subject: RE: 'Arctophile' -- Who knew?
From: GUEST,999
Date: 28 Aug 11 - 01:36 PM

The Grelling–Nelson paradox.

Subject: RE: 'Arctophile' -- Who knew?
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 28 Aug 11 - 01:06 PM

Oe can play with autological---words that describe themselves, like polysyllabic, and heterological---words hat don't, like monosyllabic.
THe eternel debate is whether the word heterological is autological or heterological.

Subject: RE: 'Arctophile' -- Who knew?
From: Amos
Date: 18 Aug 03 - 07:58 PM

JOE --

Just wow 'em with epitaxial depositions. Tell them it's a nanotech word!! They'll just go crosseyed, for sure. That bear site is a wonder...every place I went, I went "I wonder....".

LOL!


A

Subject: RE: 'Arctophile' -- Who knew?
From: Joe_F
Date: 18 Aug 03 - 07:42 PM

Amos: Little do you know. See e.g. www.resourcesforbears.com.

Another lovely word that is hard to fit into conversation is "epitaxy". It means laying down atoms on a solid surface so that they conform to the structure of that surface.

Subject: RE: 'Arctophile' -- Who knew?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 18 Aug 03 - 02:49 PM

"syncope" is also another word for fainting.

Subject: RE: 'Arctophile' -- Who knew?
From: Amos
Date: 18 Aug 03 - 02:18 PM

Wonderful to know someone actually pinned words onto those extremes, PT. Another piece of wasted nineteenth century genius!!


A

Subject: RE: 'Arctophile' -- Who knew?
From: Bill D
Date: 18 Aug 03 - 02:03 PM

"And if you combine "apocope" with "aphesis" and "syncope", I suppose you get the sound of silence."

...or mime...or sign language..(maybe sign language has it's own version of those terms)

Subject: RE: 'Arctophile' -- Who knew?
From: Peter T.
Date: 18 Aug 03 - 01:46 PM

A really useful set of words no one ever uses is "paratactic" and "hypotactic" -- "paratactic" sentences are sentences with no subordinate clauses, characteristic of John Bunyan and teenagers -- "and then I did this and then I did that and then this happened and then this happened". "Hypotactic" clauses refer to sentences that have subordinate clauses, which are often derived from Latin constructions that signal an educated elite whose background often involved the study of classical languages. Like the last sentence.

yours,

Peter T.

Subject: RE: 'Arctophile' -- Who knew?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 18 Aug 03 - 01:34 PM

And if you combine "apocope" with "aphesis" and "syncope", I suppose you get the sound of silence.

Subject: RE: 'Arctophile' -- Who knew?
From: Amos
Date: 18 Aug 03 - 01:14 PM

Finally, an answer that is Blowin' in the Wind!

A

Subject: RE: 'Arctophile' -- Who knew?
From: Bill D
Date: 18 Aug 03 - 01:03 PM

just by coincidence, this cam in Michael Quinions newsletter recently

Weird Words: Apocope /@'pQk@pi:/
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Leaving out the last letter, syllable, or part of a word.


When you hear about the "huntin', shootin', fishin'" aristocracy of
eighteenth-century Britain, the speakers are committing apocope. In
the same way, when you talk about "mag" instead of magazine, "fab"
when you mean fabulous, or "cred" for credibility, these are all
apocopic cases.


Perhaps it's our rush-hurry-urgent age, but it seems that such
energetic abbreviations are becoming more common, not merely with
students who produce slangy in-terms such as "psych", "chem" and
"maths" ("math" in the US). "Apocope" comes from the Greek word
"apokoptein", to cut off, made up of "apo-", from or away, plus
"koptein", to cut.


Incidentally, if you instead cut the sound off the start of a word,
the right name is "aphesis" (an example being "squire", an aphetic
form of "esquire"); if you drop sounds in the middle (for which the
classic - and extreme - example is "fo'c's'le" for the crews'
quarters on board ship, in full "forecastle"), the process is
called "syncope".

(that was folllowed this week by this!!
"APOCOPE I walked into a minefield of definition while trying to
explain this word last week. If you check various dictionaries, you
find that some give much the definition I supplied ("leaving out
the last letter, syllable, or part of a word") while others have a
more restrictive meaning ("omission of the final sound or sounds of
a word"). This is a subtle but significant difference.


Linguists prefer to restrict this word to situations in which one
or more sounds (technically, phonemes) are lost from the end of a
word. Spelling differences or changes in pronunciation don't count.
As Professor Larry Horn pointed out, the definition I quoted would
allow "catalog" to be an apocopic form of "catalogue", which he is
sure it isn't - the loss of the final letters is to him irrelevant,
because they're not pronounced. Other linguist subscribers have
similarly argued that words such as "huntin'" (an example I used)
cannot be apocope, since the missing last letter signals a change
in the value of the final sound, not its loss.


The problem for mere interpreters of language such as myself is
that some reference works take a wider view that includes this sort
of abbreviation. I place in evidence, as one example, The Columbia
Guide to Standard American English of 1983: "Common examples in
American English are singin', dancin', and raisin' cain".
"

Subject: RE: 'Arctophile' -- Who knew?
From: Mudlark
Date: 18 Aug 03 - 12:38 PM

Amos..." lip-locked by leprechauns"...I love it...better even than mumchance!

Scaramouch has always tickled my fancy, being a posture-master and poltroon.

Subject: RE: 'Arctophile' -- Who knew?
From: Amos
Date: 18 Aug 03 - 11:38 AM

A brief dissertation on the whole Cult of the Dioscurii can be found on this page.

Subject: RE: 'Arctophile' -- Who knew?
From: Amos
Date: 18 Aug 03 - 11:35 AM

I hope so too, Jeannie -- you deserve it!! I never heard of it before.

A

Subject: RE: 'Arctophile' -- Who knew?
From: Jeanie
Date: 18 Aug 03 - 11:27 AM

I saw the girl on Saturday winning all that money for knowing "arctophile" - it was wonderful to see her, totally beside herself with delight. I don't think she stopped squealing for about 5 minutes !

Peter T - you asked if anyone had come across any words lately that might be worth storing in the recesses of the brain, for future million-winning gameshow use. Well, how about : "dioscuric" ? It means, literally, "(boys) sons of Zeus", referring to the twins Castor and Pollux (Greek: Dioskouroi) and is used to describe twin gods following the Castor/Pollux model in other mythologies. You always wanted to know this !

I came across it last week in this sentence:
"Hengest and Horsa can be most plausibly interpreted as dioscuric horse-gods." Yes - I read weird things.

Now, there are going to be dozens of people posting saying "Dioscuric ? Hadn't she ever heard of that before ?" - well..it was new to me. Hoping it will be my "lucky word" if ever I get on "Who Wants to be a Millionnaire".

- jeanie

Subject: RE: 'Arctophile' -- Who knew?
From: Allan C.
Date: 18 Aug 03 - 10:57 AM

Anyone remember Firesign Theater's quotation? "...from far away places with strange sounding names...like Smegma."

I've always liked fulgent but can rarely work it into a conversation.

Subject: RE: 'Arctophile' -- Who knew?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 18 Aug 03 - 09:58 AM

Hence the term "quid" for £1. I've long held that half the opposition in Britrian to joining the euro would dissipate if it could been refer to buy that eminently european name.

Subject: RE: 'Arctophile' -- Who knew?
From: Peter T.
Date: 18 Aug 03 - 08:20 AM

quidditas -- the essential "whatness" of something (Hamlet of Yorick: "Where be your quips and quiddities?"); related to the Scotist term "haeccitas", which is the essential "thingness" of something. I have always been big on Gerard Hopkins' word "inscape" -- the unique graininess of something that makes it what it is, unlike anything else in the world.


yours,

Peter

Subject: RE: 'Arctophile' -- Who knew?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 18 Aug 03 - 07:34 AM

I'm getting discombobulated by all this.

Subject: RE: 'Arctophile' -- Who knew?
From: Amos
Date: 18 Aug 03 - 12:07 AM

Merkin: What Georgians are proud to be one of. Seriously, ...A pubic wig for women. Alteration of obsolete malkin, lower-class woman, mop, from Middle English, from Malkin, diminutive of the personal name Matilda.

Smegma:A sebaceous secretion, especially the cheesy secretion that collects under the prepuce or around the clitoris. Latin smgma, detergent, from Greek

Quiddity:.The real nature of a thing; the essence. 2. A hairsplitting distinction; a quibble. Medieval Latin quiddits, from Latin quid, what.

Ya gotta wonder, out of all the 100,000 plus words in use in English, why these three rise to the forefront of misoph's attention! :>) Are the some sort of delicate links of association involved?


A

Subject: RE: 'Arctophile' -- Who knew?
From: Amos
Date: 17 Aug 03 - 11:02 PM

Woooeee!! Joe F stops the clock with a BRANDNNEW WORD, plausible in form and function! The first human known to coin the term arcterast, a back-formation from arctophile, lover of bears, and presumably meaning one who engages in sexual intercourse with teddy bears. Or perhaps real ones....

Well, in ANY case, congratulations on a fine neologism, Joe F!!


A

Subject: RE: 'Arctophile' -- Who knew?
From: GUEST,misophist
Date: 17 Aug 03 - 10:53 PM

My 3 favourite words of all time must be merkin, smegma, and quiddity. Quotidian isn't bad, either.

Subject: RE: 'Arctophile' -- Who knew?
From: Amos
Date: 17 Aug 03 - 10:51 PM

Mumchance!! I love it!!! Bemused by Mab's sprites, dazzled by elvin doings, phazed by fairies, enthralled by the ethereal, lip-locked by leprechauns, entranced by trolls and gobsmacked by goblins!! Loverly word!!

A

Subject: RE: 'Arctophile' -- Who knew?
From: Mudlark
Date: 17 Aug 03 - 09:55 PM

Quidnunc has always been a favorite of mine...means gossip, busybody.

Sphygmomanometer has always sounded a lot more icky/scary than it really is.

Mumchance...dopily silent, blighted by fairies.

Subject: RE: 'Arctophile' -- Who knew?
From: Bill D
Date: 17 Aug 03 - 09:25 PM

ummm..uvula, perhaps? ullula is an aboriginal community in Australia

Subject: RE: 'Arctophile' -- Who knew?
From: The Walrus
Date: 17 Aug 03 - 08:02 PM

If you have philtrum, you might as well have 'ullula', the 'dangly thing' at the back of the throat.

Subject: RE: 'Arctophile' -- Who knew?
From: Amos
Date: 17 Aug 03 - 07:38 PM

Philtrum--what scientists do to various strains of bacilli...

Subject: RE: 'Arctophile' -- Who knew?
From: Bill D
Date: 17 Aug 03 - 06:56 PM

'philtrum' - the mid-line groove in the upper lip, from the nose to the lip

Subject: RE: 'Arctophile' -- Who knew?
From: Rapparee
Date: 17 Aug 03 - 06:55 PM

Isn't heave what those aboard do when the ship makes the other five motions?

Subject: RE: 'Arctophile' -- Who knew?
From: Joe_F
Date: 17 Aug 03 - 06:53 PM

I'm an arcterast myself.

I have always been enamored of the names for the three types of liquid crystal: nematic, smectic, cholesteric. One seldom gets a chance to use them in ordinary conversation, but if one recalls that the first comes from the Greek for needle and the second for soap, there are obvious applications of all three to persons of various temperaments.

Another set of technical terms makes a poem in itself -- the six motions of a ship:

Roll, pitch, yaw,
Surge, sway, heave.

If there is ever a song about seasickness, that could be the chorus.

Subject: RE: 'Arctophile' -- Who knew?
From: Amos
Date: 17 Aug 03 - 06:51 PM

No -- dottle is the clot at the bottom of a well-smoked pipe, formed of compressed tobacco, ash, carbon and other byproducts of burning.

A terrine is an earthenware container for cooking and serving food, or various dishes prepared or cooked in a terrine.

A

Subject: RE: 'Arctophile' -- Who knew?
From: Rapparee
Date: 17 Aug 03 - 06:50 PM

Dottle: the unburned tobacco left in a pipe when it goes out. Collected by Sherlock Holmes at the end of each day and dried so that it became his first smoke of the next day.

Subject: RE: 'Arctophile' -- Who knew?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 17 Aug 03 - 06:19 PM

Isn't "terrene" more or less the same as what Americans call a meatloaf?

Subject: RE: 'Arctophile' -- Who knew?
From: Peter T.
Date: 17 Aug 03 - 05:55 PM

I think in Spellbound the word is "terrine" which I had never heard of (and can't remember the meaning,not "terrene"). yours, Peter T.

Subject: RE: 'Arctophile' -- Who knew?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 17 Aug 03 - 05:52 PM

Artos - alternative name for King Arthur, means the bear. Cognate with Latin Ursus.

Rhodomontade is a good round word. Means vain and empty boasting, and sounds like it does too.

Subject: RE: 'Arctophile' -- Who knew?
From: open mike
Date: 17 Aug 03 - 05:15 PM

dottle? a tittle and a jot?

by the way for you word lovers out there
(there must be a word for that
word-o-phile or something?)
I am looking for a word to name a new kitty
that just adopted me..
she (he?) is grey (gray?) and so i am looking
for a word that means smoke or ash....
in some other language perhaps?
spanish?
there is also a blaze-like marking on her
fore head (or his? haven't looked that close yet)
if it was a horse it would be called a blaze...
so if you have any suggestions, i am open
to considering them...

Subject: RE: 'Arctophile' -- Who knew?
From: Bill D
Date: 17 Aug 03 - 04:56 PM

"And, for other purposes altogether, babuina, female baboon."

...and, for that strange, garish display on the south end of a Baboon headed north... "ischial callosity"

Subject: RE: 'Arctophile' -- Who knew?
From: Amos
Date: 17 Aug 03 - 04:18 PM

Terrene means mundial, of the earth. I can't speak to the difference between terrene and terrestrial, though.

A

Subject: RE: 'Arctophile' -- Who knew?
From: Rapparee
Date: 17 Aug 03 - 03:56 PM

I should think that arctophile meant a lover of bears, not teddy bears. Someone like Uncle Walter.

I've always been partial to "dottle," but since I gave up smoking have little occassion to use it.