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Any Port in a Storm :: On the Plaza :: Where Words Collide :: Mysterious words
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AuthorTopic: Mysterious words (Read 2,386 times)
mickthecactus
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Re: Mysterious words
« Reply #60 on Aug 18, 2010, 3:46pm »		[Quote]
Harping back to "nonce" I always understood it as short for nonsense i.e. a pointless crime and not something decent like theft...

Isn't a hooligan a type of wind?

And do you know the derivation of mugger?
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kerouac2
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Re: Mysterious words
« Reply #61 on Aug 18, 2010, 5:01pm »		[Quote]
Wouldn't it be something that a thugee does?
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mickthecactus
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Re: Mysterious words
« Reply #62 on Aug 19, 2010, 10:22am »		[Quote]
I think muggers were the big crocodiles in India which hid under the bridges ansd snaffled passers by...

Weren't thugees a religious sect that strangled people?
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kerouac2
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Re: Mysterious words
« Reply #63 on Aug 22, 2010, 9:50pm »		[Quote]
I used this just today, but what on earth is the bejesus?
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bixaorellana
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Re: Mysterious words
« Reply #64 on Aug 22, 2010, 11:17pm »		[Quote]
Maybe it comes from "By Jesus" in the same way that "bloody" is supposed to come from "by Our Lady", i.e., the blessed virgin.
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cigalechanta
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Re: Mysterious words
« Reply #65 on Aug 23, 2010, 6:00pm »		[Quote]
Has anyon ementioned the cue as the cue and cue ball as used in billiard and pool games?
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kimby
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Re: Mysterious words
« Reply #66 on Aug 24, 2010, 6:48am »		[Quote]
As opposed to "cueing up" a record on a turntable?
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bixaorellana
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Re: Mysterious words
« Reply #67 on Aug 24, 2010, 3:54pm »		[Quote]
No, Cigalechanta ~~ there was another discussion about cue, but it was not related to pool/billiards.

Interesting. I have no idea why pool uses a "cue". I wonder if it refers back to an even earlier use of cue as some kind of stick.
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kimby
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Re: Mysterious words
« Reply #68 on Aug 24, 2010, 9:03pm »		[Quote]
Maybe it's a cue stick because you have to strike the balls in a certain order, or hit balls only with particular other balls, like the cue ball. (But that would be queue, wouldn't it?)
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kerouac2
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Re: Mysterious words
« Reply #69 on Aug 24, 2010, 9:42pm »		[Quote]
In French it is indeed une queue de billard.
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kimby
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Re: Mysterious words
« Reply #70 on Aug 24, 2010, 10:33pm »		[Quote]
I've only recently noticed the word "busk" and "busker" used in conjunction with street performers and/or musicians.

What does this word mean and how did it come to mean that?

Is it derogatory, neutral or positive?
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kerouac2
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Re: Mysterious words
« Reply #71 on Aug 25, 2010, 5:07am »		[Quote]
I've always heard it used as a neutral official term for street performers. The dictionary says "chiefly British".
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bixaorellana
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Re: Mysterious words
« Reply #72 on Aug 25, 2010, 6:48am »		[Quote]

Aug 24, 2010, 9:03pm, kimby wrote:
Maybe it's a cue stick because you have to strike the balls in a certain order, or hit balls only with particular other balls, like the cue ball. (But that would be queue, wouldn't it?)

:D
That Kimby ~~ not just another pretty face!

Great deduction, Kimby. I would never have thought of that!
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kimby
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Re: Mysterious words
« Reply #73 on Aug 26, 2010, 2:22pm »		[Quote]
And I never would have thought that I would accidentally get it right!
Not being a French speaker, I needed K2 to put it together for me.
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kimby
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Re: Mysterious words
« Reply #74 on Aug 26, 2010, 10:27pm »		[Quote]
I just found out my 88 year old Dad is going to the ER for evaluation, and I told someone I was "waiting on tenterhooks" to find out what is wrong with him.

Now what the heck is a tenterhook? And why did I use the expression when I don't even know what it really means?
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Re: Mysterious words
« Reply #75 on Aug 27, 2010, 6:47am »		[Quote]
I looked it up.

The initial use of the modern idiomatic phrase was metaphoric. Being on tenterhooks referred specifically to the process of cloth making employed in Europe as early as the Middle Ages. After cloth was milled and washed, it had to be dried, but this posed a problem. Normally, drying meant the cloth would shrink significantly, which was undesirable. Cloth makers would make less profit if the cloth shrunk, since cloth was sold by lengths. Less cloth after the drying process translates to less money for the cloth maker. To avoid losing profits and valuable cloth, during the drying process cloth was tented to prevent it from shrinking.

Tenting meant the cloth was stretched out or suspended, like a tent, and usually attached to hooks, often simple nails, that were, as you might guess called tenterhooks. Thus cloth on hooks was stretched tight to dry. This sped up the drying process and prevented the cloth from shrinking. The actual tenting process was usually accomplished via small or large devices called tenters, usually wooden frames upon which the cloth would be attached to the hooks.
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kimby
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Re: Mysterious words
« Reply #76 on Aug 27, 2010, 2:08pm »		[Quote]
Thanks, K2. (I do feel rather stretched. And hung out to dry.)
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mickthecactus
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Re: Mysterious words
« Reply #77 on Aug 27, 2010, 2:16pm »		[Quote]
Frankly, I couldn't give a monkey's...

But what does that mean?
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bixaorellana
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Re: Mysterious words
« Reply #78 on Aug 27, 2010, 10:57pm »		[Quote]
Re: tenterhooks ~~ the quoted definition knocks my theory into a cocked hat (& what's the origin of that phrase?).

I thought it was Latin in origin and related to Spanish tender, which is what is done with wet laundry:
http://www.wordreference.com/es/en/translation.asp?spen=tender

Mick, I though it was a rat's ... that one couldn't give.
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kerouac2
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Re: Mysterious words
« Reply #79 on Nov 23, 2011, 8:16am »		[Quote]
Being a day late and a dollar short (but that's another thread), I only recently learned a French word that "everybody" knows here and it always just went through my head as a blank whenever I heard it -- which, it must be admitted, is not too often. The word is cornac.

But, earlier this year, that movie came out, Water for Elephants, and every single review was full of mentions of cornacs. Another major location for this word is in stories of circuses or the French translation of just about anything by Rudyard Kipling.

The definition of cornac is elephant handler. Why on earth would the French language have a special word for this profession without having an empire in India? And why doesn't English have such a word?

I did make a little investigation and saw that cornac entered the French language through Portuguese, which picked up the word from the language of Sri Lanka.

Words really do travel in mysterious ways.
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Re: Mysterious words
« Reply #80 on Nov 23, 2011, 8:44am »		[Quote]
There is a word in English(?). 'Mahout' originates in India, in Hindi, as with many words originating there now used in English.

From wikipedia though - "Another term for mahout is cornac (as in French, from the Portuguese; kornak in Dutch and Polish, also a rather current last name). In Tamil, the word used is "pahan", which means elephant keeper, and in Sinhalese kurawanayaka ('stable master'). In Malayalam the word use is paappaan.
In Burma, the profession is called oozie; in Thailand kwan-chang; and in Vietnam quản tượng."
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Re: Mysterious words
« Reply #81 on Nov 23, 2011, 9:43am »		[Quote]
Looks like mahout would be understood in "Indian English" just like amah (housemaid) in Hong Kong English, but what gets me is that cornac is known by little rosy-cheeked French kids whose closest contact with an elephant is Babar.
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Re: Mysterious words
« Reply #82 on Nov 23, 2011, 10:25am »		[Quote]
I do doubt he average Englishperson would think of the word mahout when thinking of an elephant handler.
It must be the French are brought up with elephants more than the British.
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Re: Mysterious words
« Reply #83 on Nov 23, 2011, 11:54am »		[Quote]
I am just delighted that the Dutch and the Poles also have aspirations to wrangle elephants.
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mickthecactus
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Re: Mysterious words
« Reply #84 on Dec 5, 2011, 2:24pm »		[Quote]
I came across a new word on Friday - vajazzle.

Fascinating......
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Re: Mysterious words
« Reply #85 on Dec 5, 2011, 4:05pm »		[Quote]
There's been a (mercifully shortlived, I think) male equivalent. One comedian claimed on TV that his had looked like Gordon Ramsay in a tiara.
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mickthecactus
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Re: Mysterious words
« Reply #86 on Dec 5, 2011, 4:20pm »		[Quote]

Dec 5, 2011, 4:05pm, patricklondon wrote:
There's been a (mercifully shortlived, I think) male equivalent. One comedian claimed on TV that his had looked like Gordon Ramsay in a tiara.


;D
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Re: Mysterious words
« Reply #87 on Dec 5, 2011, 8:46pm »		[Quote]
I have no idea what either of you are talking about.
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Re: Mysterious words
« Reply #88 on Dec 5, 2011, 9:08pm »		[Quote]
[image] What? What is it?

                  [image] think think think

                              [image] Oh! Oh my word!!

I'll avert my eyes from such horror. [image]
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Re: Mysterious words
« Reply #89 on Dec 6, 2011, 1:37am »		[Quote]
Newt Gingrich in a tiara here. As you were.
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