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Post by questa on Oct 19, 2019 23:37:19 GMT
Nor have I
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Post by bixaorellana on Oct 20, 2019 1:04:57 GMT
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Post by questa on Oct 20, 2019 2:10:48 GMT
I wouldn't have grokked that in a thousand years!
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Post by bixaorellana on Oct 20, 2019 2:21:20 GMT
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Post by kerouac2 on Oct 20, 2019 4:07:02 GMT
Robert Heinlein was one of my favourite authors as a teenager but Stranger in a Strange land was the only book that I found completely unreadable.
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Post by bixaorellana on Oct 20, 2019 5:01:16 GMT
I think many people who never read the book glommed on to grok, thinking it sounded groovy. As far as I can remember, you have to be a teenager to tolerate Heinlein's writing style. Grok affects/ed me the same way that "and so it goes" does/did. Every time Linda Ellerbee signed off with that phrase I'd think, could you sound more annoyingly coy and smug?
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Post by lagatta on Oct 20, 2019 9:52:25 GMT
Online Oxford restricts it to US (as opposed to "North America") www.lexico.com/en/definition/grok I think I've heard it but don't think I ever understood what it meant. Funny how some slang words spread far and wide and others don't. It reminds me of someone chewing.
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Post by whatagain on Oct 20, 2019 19:08:42 GMT
My daughters say ´chill' papa when they mean I should not be upset. They use a few other words of English/American but I can't remember those for now.
Round robin has several meanings from what I found on internet. One is at the origin a petition where people signed in a round way. So that there were no first nor last names. Because the king would hand the few first names on the petition. The name comes from ruban find in french.
Another sense is in sport when everybody plays the same number of times against all the others.
What are the other senses ? (Spare thé IT One I read it twice and didn't get it). I am interested in all idioms using Robin.
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Post by kerouac2 on Oct 20, 2019 20:07:34 GMT
I always understood 'round robin' to mean an exchange system where everybody passes on an item (generally a book) from one person to the next until everybody has had access..
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Post by bixaorellana on Oct 21, 2019 3:48:51 GMT
That is delightful!
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Post by whatagain on Oct 25, 2019 13:43:30 GMT
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Post by Kimby on Nov 10, 2019 3:02:12 GMT
If you really want to cringe, listen to a contemporary using outdated slang from your youth. I know someone in my age group who still says "grok". *orp* I only use “grok” in Scrabble and Words With Friends. Never in conversation.
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Post by questa on Nov 10, 2019 5:28:48 GMT
If you travel in Oz do not use these words. They were used in ordinary speech until WW2 then disappeared. Using them now will create blank looks or hoots of derision.
Cobber - a friend. "So I sez to me cobber, the gold is running out, time we moved on."
Cove - a man who is a bit dodgy," That cove tried to tell me the horse was 7 years old, It was 12 years if a day."
Sheila - a woman, wife or good looking female."Bill's sheila is a city girl but is fitting in well with the other sheilas."
Bonzer! -Excellent,good on you, well done. "Bonzer news ...our team won the Cup"
Grouse - good, very satisfying,sometimes used with "extra". "Dad said it was extra grouse that the baby was a boy"
I haven't looked these up, they just popped into my head when I heard a backpacking ? German use bonzer.
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Post by kerouac2 on Nov 10, 2019 5:35:27 GMT
Australian slang is one of the things that got me reading Australian literature, starting with Helen Garner's Monkey Grip. There was some detective series that I also bought in paperback, but I forgot the name of the author or his character.
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Post by lagatta on Nov 10, 2019 13:18:46 GMT
Outside Oz, Sheila has become a sort of cliché Aussie slang word for a female. Interesting that it is no longer actually used there.
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Post by bjd on Nov 10, 2019 13:26:44 GMT
There is a guy in his early 60s on TT who uses it, although I think he does so a bit affectedly. According to Monty Python, all the men were called Bruce.
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Post by bixaorellana on Nov 10, 2019 16:50:09 GMT
They were used in ordinary speech until WW2 then disappeared. Using them now will create blank looks or hoots of derision. That's a good point in general, Questa. I think we mostly "know" about slang in other countries from reading it or maybe hearing it in a movie, but not by absorbing it organically in daily use. Thus, using what we think is another country's slang is almost always going to sound wrong. I always mentally think oh, please when a person from the US refers to someone as a chap, for instance. Tut tut, what ho?!
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