Natter 42, the Universe, and Everything
Off-topic discussion. Wanna talk about corsets, flaming otters, or physics? This is the place. Detailed discussion of any current-season TV must be whitefonted.
Mmmm. Spicy brains.
I love the Favorite Poems site. Now I have Gerard Manly Hopkins on the brain. "I caught this morning morning's minion." Love!
Isn't it a great site?! I'm going to link my classroom TV to my computer and show a bunch of them next week.
Hopefully. If I get the splitter-thingie I need.
I thought I was already logging off, but I had one e-mail to answer, and then I saw this:
Also, a nickname was originally an ekename ("eke" being the Old and Middle English word for "also").
Oh, that is cool!
In Hebrew, it's either archaeology (sp?) and 2000-years-old words from ancient Hebrew and Aramic, or the last century's re-innovated language, man-made, in a way. So just the difference in the processes of the ways the words evolve is already fascinaging to me.
Yeah, geek, I can't help it.
we call them "oranges"
The Hebrew word for orange ("tapooz") is a composition of two words, the one for apple ("tapoo'akh") and the one for gold ("zahav"), so an orange is a "golden apple". But that's not as cool as how its English name was formed. Also, the name was created this way on purpose, by the people who re-invented the Hebrew language at the beginning of the 20th century, so the whole process is different.
OK, really going home now.
The Hebrew word for orange ("tapooz") is a composition of two words, the one for apple ("tapoo'akh") and the one for gold ("zahav"), so an orange is a "golden apple".
Heh -- so I guess the phrase "comparing apples and oranges" doesn't work so well in Hebrew? (In English, "comparing apples and oranges" is idiomatic for "comparing 2 things so vastly different from one another that to compare them is pointless.")
"I caught this morning morning's minion."
Darling of daylight's dauphin!!! Sorry. Geekitude.
Being a Buffista means never having to say you're geeky.
Oooh, got this from Wikipedia's entry for metanalysis:
Umpire comes to us from the Middle English "noumpere," which itself is adopted from the Old French "nonper" (someone "without peer" who could act as an arbiter of a dispute).
Word histories can be so fun!
That is absolutely my favorite poem to read aloud ever. Just the beauty of the words and the way they all flow together.
sheer plod makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.
It's almost a sinfully sensuous poem given the subject matter.
I'm very fond of:
Chieftain Iffucan of Azcan in caftan
Of tan with henna hackles, halt!
Damned universal cock, as if the sun
Was blackamoor to bear your blazing tail.
Fat! Fat! Fat! Fat! I am the personal.
Your world is you. I am my world.
You ten-foot poet among inchlings. Fat!
Begone! An inchling bristles in these pines,
Bristles, and points their Appalachian tangs,
And fears not portly Azcan nor his hoos.
Wallace Stevens, "Bantams in Pine Woods"