BS: Word of the Day

Subject: BS: Word of the Day
From: GUEST,SueB
Date: 03 Sep 04 - 12:43 PM

"bloviate

To bloviate (pronounced BLOW-vee-ayt) is to speak or write overexpansively or with undue grandiosity. It suggests a derivation from to blow, meaning to boast. The term has gained some currency through distribution over Web chat forums and on Web sites. American writer H. L. Mencken, always bordering on bloviation himself, described a less interesting bloviator, President Warren G. Harding, thusly:
He writes the worst English that I have ever encountered. It reminds me of a string of wet sponges; it reminds me of tattered washing on the line; it reminds me of stale bean soup, of college yells, of dogs barking idiotically through endless nights. It is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it. It drags itself out of the dark abysm of pish, and crawls insanely up the topmost pinnacle of posh. It is rumble and bumble. It is flap and doodle. It is balder and dash."




Isn't that marvelous? I ran across it in an article by Maureen Dowd, re Supremem Court Justice Scalia (you know, Cheney's duck hunting buddy.)

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: Nerd
Date: 03 Sep 04 - 12:55 PM

Yeah, "bloviate" is a pet word of both mine and Amos's. If you search on it in Lyrics and Knowledge you'll find us using it, mostly to suggest our verbal opponents are blustering!

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: GUEST,SueB
Date: 03 Sep 04 - 01:01 PM

I only typed "Word of the Day" into the search box, to see if there was an old thread that could be revived - didn't think of searching bloviate here, sorry.

Got any other cool pet words to share?

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 03 Sep 04 - 01:20 PM

Read an article in a musical magazine a while ago..regarding words the readers felt should be used for musical situations..ie not real words....but one took my eye which was:-
"Capoknackered" and means either broken capo or the situation one is in having left ones capo at home. Best wishes.

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: Don Firth
Date: 03 Sep 04 - 01:25 PM

But . . . but . . . but . . . that's what I do!!!

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: Bill D
Date: 03 Sep 04 - 01:37 PM

my favorite phrase..(made my own button of it) is

"Eschew Obfuscation"

can't remember where I first heard it...

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: GUEST,MMario
Date: 03 Sep 04 - 01:45 PM

gesundhiet!

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: s6k
Date: 03 Sep 04 - 01:58 PM

crumb

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: Little Hawk
Date: 04 Sep 04 - 01:22 AM

LOL! Then William McGonagall was one of the most spectacular bloviators in history.

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: leeneia
Date: 04 Sep 04 - 11:28 AM

Sounds like the letters that people write to Miss Manners, trying and failing to imitate her style.

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: mack/misophist
Date: 04 Sep 04 - 02:39 PM

Wonderful word but a better quotation. Mencken was an ass, but a very smart ass.

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: Ebbie
Date: 04 Sep 04 - 03:37 PM

Tired of the bombardment by facts, relevant and irrelevant, that pile into an incomprensible heap? I decided that's not 'umpteen' but 'numbteen' facts.

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: Bill Hahn//\\
Date: 04 Sep 04 - 07:21 PM

Bloviation at the expense of erudition is something, I suppose, we might be able to lay at the door of the current administration---though I do believe that the definition of the word eludes our leader and he surely obfuscates without bloviating.

Bill Hahn

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: Amos
Date: 04 Sep 04 - 07:42 PM

It's hard to bloviate using no more than two phonemes conjoined at a time.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: Bill Hahn//\\
Date: 04 Sep 04 - 07:52 PM

You gotta love the 5 dollar words


Bill Hahn

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: Amos
Date: 04 Sep 04 - 08:08 PM

I have always been fond of intrepid, ululation, minicephalic, adroit, agility and one other, which I forget...

A

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: Bill Hahn//\\
Date: 04 Sep 04 - 08:11 PM

Might it be---antidisestablisharantarianism?   If not---what about xenophobia?

Bill Hahn

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: GUEST,GROK
Date: 04 Sep 04 - 09:03 PM

FACETIOUSLY

A word in which the vowels of English appear in alphabetical order.

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 05 Sep 04 - 04:21 AM

OOh... Ululation - just read 'War of the Worlds' for the first time this century - it's still scary! This word features in WOFTW and I've always liked it.

My word of the moment is moritarium. Sounds much more miserable than it is. It should be a small room where Romans went to be moribund (a bit like the vomitarium where they went to be sick).

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 05 Sep 04 - 06:26 PM

Dollop. Such a comforting word.

And such a useful insult.

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: GUEST,SueB
Date: 05 Sep 04 - 07:30 PM

Ooooh, minicephalic, I like that one.

And speaking of Bush, how about troglodyte?

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: Bill Hahn//\\
Date: 05 Sep 04 - 08:29 PM

Dollop. So soothing when one thinks of a dollop of sour cream on a bowl of Bluberries---with a bit of sugar, perhaps.

Damn---the season for Blueberries ends too soon in this area. One last dollop on the berries before autumn.


Bill Hahn

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: GUEST,GROK
Date: 05 Sep 04 - 10:24 PM

Calamistrate

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: Bill D
Date: 05 Sep 04 - 10:31 PM

Googling for a word I hadn't heard in 40 years, I found this:



    Befuddling
      
    To the editor:
      I just couldn't resist using the knowledge I gained from your Nov. 8 paper. James J. Kilpatrick's Writer's Art column has been a constant favorite of mine. This edition of his column, which dealt with interesting words now out of fashion, should have been published before the elections just to add fodder for the election writers. Shall we try one on Bill Clinton? While Mr. Clinton is faunching about the puckersnatch he has created, he must surely be paddybassing around his own private pokelogan. The rest of us are just waiting for him to scallyhoot out of office.
      My spell check system almost had a seizure writing this.
    LINDA K. WOOD
    Las Vegas

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: GUEST,GROK
Date: 05 Sep 04 - 10:58 PM

But, Bill, did you find the word you WERE looking for?

(I shall add puckersnatch to my vocab. I doubt I will introduce it to my students. I think you know why.)

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 06 Sep 04 - 02:48 AM

Bill D used the word "Googling"...a fine word. The word I think might have had the largest impact in the last decade is "Internet" or perhaps "Web"....maybe even "Surfing"...All good words.
Best wishes.

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 06 Sep 04 - 08:47 AM

The Word of the Day is

Money!

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: Bill D
Date: 06 Sep 04 - 06:06 PM

the word I looked for was 'faunching', and though there are a lot of hits, it is really hard to sort out the basic meaning...It is one of the most 'unpleasant' words I know...it simply sounds like it refers to baser impulses and mindsets.

I am still sorting thru the things it might mean.

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: Amos
Date: 06 Sep 04 - 11:20 PM

"Faunch" is a handy term in science fiction fandom, meaning roughly 'to yearn for in a none-too-healthy way'.
Posted by Alison Scott at June 8, 2003 10:07 AM

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: GUEST
Date: 06 Sep 04 - 11:28 PM

polyglot.lss.wisc.edu/dare/newsletterjan99.htm

or google Dare newsletter

Good article there on faunch.

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: fat B****rd
Date: 07 Sep 04 - 03:30 AM

Squorrox

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: Splott Man
Date: 07 Sep 04 - 05:05 AM

Xenophobia?

We don't like that word round our way.

I like galumph, traipse, schlep, mosey... gosh, the variety of ways of getting about, you could do a workshop!

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: GUEST,GROK
Date: 07 Sep 04 - 09:43 AM

How would people get there until you decide on the word?

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 07 Sep 04 - 10:47 AM

zaftig (ZAF-tik, -tig) adjective

    Full-figured, pleasingly plump, buxom.

[From Yiddish zaftik (juicy), from Middle High German (saftec), from saft (juice), from Old High German saf (sap).]

Sounds like something for use in The Temple of The Golden Globes...

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: muppett
Date: 07 Sep 04 - 11:39 AM

QUINQUENNIUM

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: GUEST,SueB
Date: 07 Sep 04 - 12:37 PM

No fair - you have to give definitions, or we'll be forced to make them up. (Squorrox - what you'd use to bleach a squirrel.)

My word of the day - hispidulous, which means sparsely covered with fine bristles, like a pig, or like someone's hairy ass.

Troglodyte from above means cavedweller.

And Splott Man, sometimes I like to amble, and sometimes I like to promenade.

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 07 Sep 04 - 03:56 PM

There are still some "Troglodytes" living in the UK near Matlock in Derbyshire. The caves they live in have been lived in from time "immemorial" but have all mod cons these days.
Isn't immemorial(Hope I've spelt it right)a good word..sort of earthy.
Best wishes.

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: Kim C
Date: 07 Sep 04 - 04:03 PM

Fantods.

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: Little Hawk
Date: 07 Sep 04 - 05:19 PM

I am opposed to the insipid and the fatuous, offended by the lascivious and the salacious, surprised and delighted by the serendipitous, impressed by the perspicacious, troubled by the concupiscient, maleficent, and conundrumatical, empowered by the meritricious, and utterly apalled by the aesthetic bereftitude of the parallelogramaticallismically unsound (as seen in some modern architecture these days)!

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: Bill D
Date: 07 Sep 04 - 06:10 PM

it is good to know words, but here is a famous warning..(one of multitudenous variations)

" In promulgating your esoteric cogitations or articulating your superficial sentimentalities and amicable, philosophical or psychological observations, beware of platitudinous ponderosity. Let your conversational communications demonstrate a clarified conciseness, a compact comprehensibleness, no coalescent conglomerations of precious garrulity, jejune bafflement and asinine affectations. Let your extemporaneous verbal declarations have lucidity, intelligibility and veracious vivacity without rodomontade or thrasonical bombast. Sedulously avoid all polysyllabic profundity, pompous propensity, psittaceous vacuity, ventriloquial verbosity and vaniloquent vapidity. Shun double-entendres, obnoxious jocosity and pestiferous profanity, observable or apparent."

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: Little Hawk
Date: 07 Sep 04 - 06:14 PM

Waugh!!!

Or...

"Talk straight or don't talk at all." - Yurko Slobodovich

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 07 Sep 04 - 06:26 PM

Well said BillD...for the lay-man..Don't talk crap!
Best wishes.

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: Bill D
Date: 07 Sep 04 - 06:33 PM

well, after all, I AM an antihypersyllabicsesquipedalian

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 07 Sep 04 - 06:54 PM

O.K you show off. Do you insinuate that we should tolerate such diabolic insolence, from a microscopic piece of animosity such as you? Your presumptions are precisely incorrect. O.K so I didn't mean it really but it sounds O.K Best wishes.

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: GUEST,GROK
Date: 07 Sep 04 - 07:13 PM

Well said all ye above. I particularly appreciate that it was done floccinoccinihilipilificationally.

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 07 Sep 04 - 07:19 PM

isn't it floccinaucinihilipilificationally?

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: GUEST,GROK
Date: 07 Sep 04 - 07:23 PM

Either, either.

Has two spellings.

Hey, that thing BillD said: Does that mean he doesn't want to go into space with a bicycle?

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: GUEST,SueB
Date: 08 Sep 04 - 12:08 AM

It means he doesn't want to go into space with SIX bicycles.

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: GUEST,ozmacca
Date: 08 Sep 04 - 01:34 AM

Personally, I've always liked "stalzheimered", which is what happens when you try to drive away from the traffic lights, having forgotten that you put the parking brake on.

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 08 Sep 04 - 04:39 AM

I am disinclined to acquiesce.....

The best word is not always the longest (unless you are playing Scrabble and you've got a triple word score)....

My best word at the moment is 'hug'.

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 08 Sep 04 - 05:54 AM

(((((((((((((LIZ))))))))))))) Hug is a great word and not used enough. Best wishes.

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: Splott Man
Date: 08 Sep 04 - 07:50 AM

SueB

Ambling doesn't work in longways sets, the band have to do an extra B

And do you promenaid or promenard?

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 08 Sep 04 - 08:32 AM

Promenade even...... like lemonade but made with proms.

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: GUEST,Larry K
Date: 08 Sep 04 - 08:50 AM

Bloviate is a word used by Bill Oreilly every day on his tv show for at least the last 6 months.   When he finishes the viewer e-mails he ends with "If you wish to Opine, e-mail me at [e-mail] and no bloviating, that is the job of the host" or something very similar to that.

My word of the day- pedantic.   You are being pedantic when you use the word pedantic.

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: Bill D
Date: 08 Sep 04 - 10:59 AM

I will go into space ONLY with a bicycle...it is HYPERspace that I refuse to enter unless 6 other people are doing all the pedaling.

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: Pexx97
Date: 08 Sep 04 - 11:40 AM

Abstemious is another word which has the vowels in alphabetical order. For other interesting words try www.askoxford.com and go to FAQ. There are some absolutely brilliant and weird ones there.

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: GUEST,SueB
Date: 08 Sep 04 - 12:30 PM

Not a big fan of Bill O'Reilly, myself.

Remember in Clockwork Orange, where the offender was rehabilitated by being made to watch films while strapped into a device that made him unable to turn his head or close his eyes? That's what it would take for me to watch ol' Bill.

But speaking of rehabilitated makes me think of of the song Alice's Restaurant.

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: GUEST,GROK
Date: 09 Sep 04 - 10:06 AM

PHILATELIST

I won't tell you what this always sounded like to me--on second thought, did you ever read about people who wear long coats and hang around gymnasiums?

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: Splott Man
Date: 09 Sep 04 - 10:21 AM

Mooch, perambulate

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: GUEST,SueB
Date: 09 Sep 04 - 11:38 AM

In my younger days, Splott Man, I used to promenude in the forest, and when I heard someone coming I would promenide.

Subject: parpissitation
From: wysiwyg
Date: 09 Sep 04 - 03:32 PM

Hardi had a hard day but he's laughing now. Has brought a new word into being, to cover various aspects of volunteer organizations. I have to admit it struck a chord with me.

Hardi: "Volunteer organizations are not participatory, they are PARPISSITORY."

Susan: "Thank you so much for your parpissitation!"

Hardi: "There were plenty of parpissitants in todays' event!"

Susan: "Reckon I'll parpissitate, too!"

Hardi: "Oh, DEAR Mrs. Rumbustle, I KNOW we can count on YOU to parpissitate!"

~S~

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: Bill D
Date: 09 Sep 04 - 05:31 PM

peregrinate

VERB:        1. To travel about or journey on foot: backpack, hike, march1, traipse, tramp, trek. See MOVE. 2. To make or go on a journey: journey, pass, travel, trek, trip. Idioms: hit the road. See MOVE. 3. To move about at random, especially over a wide area: drift, gad, gallivant, meander, ramble, range, roam, rove, stray, traipse, wander. See MOVE.

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: Bill D
Date: 09 Sep 04 - 05:34 PM

if you need a new word, and no one is posting, look here

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: BaldEagle2
Date: 10 Sep 04 - 03:31 PM

Uxorious

Latin: Pertaining to one's wife.

French:   Fond of one's wife

English:   Over-fond of one's wife

American-English: Dominated by one's wife

(Honest.   I am not making this up.)

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: Amos
Date: 10 Sep 04 - 08:32 PM

BE2:

Notice that the decline is inversely proportional to the age of the civilization, Roman having preceded the others. What does this say about these two curves?


A

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 11 Sep 04 - 04:58 AM

"Fortitude" comes over strongly as a word for today.
Best wishes.

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 11 Sep 04 - 05:01 AM

Celebrate - that's my word for today! My birthday treats started last night and I'm determined to keep them coming until at least Tuesday!

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: robomatic
Date: 11 Sep 04 - 08:29 PM

tachistothanatophobia

s'posed to be 'fear of head-on collisions' from an old favorite of mine: "An Osborne Festival Of Phobias" Osborne was a unique illustrator of the 70's.

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: robomatic
Date: 11 Sep 04 - 08:32 PM

Bill D:

"Eschew Obfuscation" may go back far, but I recall it as a bumper sticker put out by a classical radio station in Waltham, Mass. in the early 70's. You could drop in on Beethoven's Birthday for cake.

They also had:

"E=mc2 +/- 1 dB"
"Handel With Care"
"Oberon Was A Fairy"
"Bach Is Beautiful"

and my favorite:

"Soothe A Savage Breast Today"

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 12 Sep 04 - 09:38 AM

pereant omnes ignavi seque stuperant

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 12 Sep 04 - 11:52 AM

nil carborundum illigetimi.

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 12 Sep 04 - 11:54 AM

Lovely word for today. As I walked down the river bank today I saw the river "meandering" betwixt the meadows. I think my brain was meandering somewhere too.
Best wishes.

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: GUEST,SueB
Date: 13 Sep 04 - 04:44 AM

New day, new word. VICISSITUDE, meaning irregular change or alteration, especially of fortune or condition, manifested in human affairs.

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 13 Sep 04 - 06:26 AM

I do tend to like words that sound like what they mean....Whack..for instance or bump. ...squash is another..say them with expression and they come to life with the sound of the action.
Best wishes.

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: GUEST
Date: 13 Sep 04 - 06:49 AM

Wallop.

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: Sttaw Legend
Date: 13 Sep 04 - 06:58 AM

Thrust

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: GUEST
Date: 13 Sep 04 - 07:13 AM

Suck.

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: GUEST
Date: 13 Sep 04 - 09:30 AM

It up.

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: GUEST,SueB
Date: 13 Sep 04 - 05:04 PM

My, isn't that nasty. Nasty, by the way, is a fabulous word. So simple, yet so complex. Straightforward, or sly, or salacious. You could write a book about nasty.

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: GUEST,cookieless celtaddict
Date: 14 Nov 04 - 06:08 PM

BillD, our family used "faunching" all the time when I was a kid. It is related to grousing, only rougher and without the whining, and is fairly likely to involve stomping around or slamming doors. More active (and more noisy) than pouting.
It can also indicate a pushy eagerness.
"What is he faunching about?"
"He's faunching to get going and the car isn't loaded up yet."
In college I was informed by a friend that there was no such word; I looked it up and the dictionary identified it as "archaic Scottish" though it was in active use in Kansas and Oklahoma (in our family anyway) in the 50s, up to the present.
Another word I love is "formicate" which means to swarm like ants.
LiztheSqueak, I love "dollop" as an insult. Our family was not permitted any foul language or namecalling. But you can call your brother a "crouton" or a "diphthong" and what can the grownups say? And someone who has been called a "murmuring diphthong" KNOWS he has been insulted!

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: Ebbie
Date: 14 Nov 04 - 06:27 PM

Like Georgiansilver, I also love visual words. In Alaska, many rivers are pewter-colored and they look thick and impenetrable because of 'rock milk', glacier boulders ground to powder and borne away.

My first summer in southeast Alaska I worked at a wilderness lodge. Defining the front is the Taku River which slides, not 'glides' by. Looks thick as pudding.

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: Rapparee
Date: 14 Nov 04 - 09:50 PM

Reinsourceification.

It's the act of bringing jobs previously outsourced back within the company.

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: CarolC
Date: 14 Nov 04 - 10:25 PM

Colpumbrious

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: GUEST,skipy
Date: 15 Nov 04 - 11:56 AM

obtrude.

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: Bill D
Date: 15 Nov 04 - 01:11 PM

sometimes, when I let my brain just drift...often when trying to go to sleep, I get sudden combinations of words for no discernable reason...

just now it was 'lugubrious vicissitudes ', and before that was 'rambunctuous nomenclature'

sometimes there are 3 word combos, like "disingenuous antipodal ramifications"
I have no idea why this happens...perhaps I was meant to be in politics.

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: Ebbie
Date: 15 Nov 04 - 01:17 PM

Bill D, do you talk in your sleep?!

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: Chris Green
Date: 15 Nov 04 - 01:43 PM

There's a guy on another thread looking for a name for a Christian rock band. 'The Lugubrious Vicissitudes' sounds ideal! :)

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: Chris Green
Date: 15 Nov 04 - 01:47 PM

Phlogiston. There's information about it here (don't worry, it's not rude!)

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: Tannywheeler
Date: 15 Nov 04 - 01:56 PM

Oh, WOW!!! Goosebumps! Shivers - "...awlovuh mah bah-dih".
Mother LOVED language -- different ones, written, spoken, games with, well-used, pointed, elaborate, using it to teach/heal/uplift. (She only hated its use as obfuscation.) My dad also had a highly developed appreciation for language. This is like a religious experience.
Dear Fooles, what is "pereant omnes ignavi seque stuperant"? Something about hiding ignorance maybe?
I do know "nil carb..." Oft-used support phrase in mother's circle of friends.    Tw

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: GUEST,At a Loss for Words
Date: 15 Nov 04 - 02:01 PM

Sorry for detouring your splendid thread on words but you're a very knowledgeable group and one of you may be able to solve my mystery.

Ululation reminded me of something I've always puzzled about. There's a word that describes the gargley-sounding, back-of-the-throat wail made by some Middle Eastern women during bereavement or celebratory ceremonies. Could ululation be the word I'm trying to remember?

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: GUEST,Frug
Date: 15 Nov 04 - 02:05 PM

Obmutescence.................marvellous word

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: Chris Green
Date: 15 Nov 04 - 02:06 PM

"Ululate" - to howl or shriek (from the Latin "ululare"). I think you're right. Incidentally, before everyone starts thinking I'm dead clever I found out about it here!

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: Bill D
Date: 15 Nov 04 - 05:16 PM

"do you talk in your sleep?"....nope, I stayed up all one night to see.

(but I do have little episodes of Tourette-like sputterings as I drift off TO sleep sometimes...I think it is to distract my brain from the vicissitudes of the day...*grin*)

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 15 Nov 04 - 05:22 PM

Pre-Columbian Rocks....

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: CarolC
Date: 15 Nov 04 - 11:52 PM

Preending

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: Nerd
Date: 16 Nov 04 - 01:13 PM

At a loss...

yes, "ululation" is the word you mean. It is used by anthropologists to describe cries of both mourning and elation in various cultures. See duellingbouzouki's post above.

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: GUEST,skipy
Date: 16 Nov 04 - 06:16 PM

Altuism

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: Bill D
Date: 16 Nov 04 - 07:51 PM

"importating" something, I suppose, more elaborate than simple 'importing'

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 16 Nov 04 - 07:52 PM

Damn you Nred, yoe stole my word for today...

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 16 Nov 04 - 08:02 PM

Century!

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: open mike
Date: 22 Nov 04 - 03:54 PM

"nil carb..." this sounds quite Atkinsian!

"ululation" I believe this is the sound made
often by women who are cheering on belly dancers..
it sounds as if they are pronouncing Lotta Lotta Lotta....
in high tones with the tongue going up and down in their
mouths and often a hand is held in from of their mouth during this.

but my REAL word for the day is transmogrification
i was thinking of the word the other day then i heard
Garrison Kiellor read a poem that included that word.
The poem had to do with a hamster or guinea pig that had died...\
no....it was a gerbil. I have this image that transMOGrify
means some sort of metamorphosis which involves british kitties...but it probably means something else. NAMELY:

transmogrify \trans-MOG-ruh-fy\, transitive verb:
To change into a different shape or to transform, often with bizarre or humorous effect.

    A washing machine transmogrified into a guitar.
    --Adrian Searle, "Come, friendly pigeons," The Guardian, March 16, 2000
    For the impulsive sin of turning to look back at the funereal pyre of Sodom and Gomorrah, Lot's wife is transmogrified into a pillar of salt as she flees the inferno.
    --Elizabeth Wurtzel, Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women

    Roast chicken is still roast chicken whether you label it haute cuisine, bourgeois cuisine or country cooking; even calling it "poulet roti" will not transmogrify this simple bird.
    --Jacques Pepin, "The Chicken Dinner, Both Humble and Noble," New York Times, January 4, 1989


Transmogrify is perhaps a humorous blend of transmigrate (for the form) and transmute (for the sense).

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(trns-mgr-f, trnz-)
tr.v. trans·mog·ri·fied, trans·mog·ri·fy·ing, trans·mog·ri·fies

    To change into a different shape or form, especially one that is fantastic or bizarre. See Synonyms at convert.

[Origin unknown.]trans·mogri·fi·cation (-f-kshn) n.

transmogrify

\Trans*mog"ri*fy\, v. t. [A humorous coinage.] To change into a different shape; to transform. [Colloq.] --Fielding.

v : change completely the nature or appearance of; "In Kafka's story, a person metamorphoses into a bug"; "The treatment and diet transfigured her into a beautiful young woman"; "Jesus was transfigured after his resurrection" [syn: metamorphose, transfigure]
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