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World Wide Web RSS Feeds702-1: Feedback, notes and comments - Jumentous Several readers pointed out that the Latin word is also the source of French jument, a mare. Others noted the reference to lateritious in one of the quotations and asked whether it was related to the clayey stuff called laterite (Tim Conway recalls it as “a much-sought-after soil for road building that I encountered when I was a civil engineer in Kenya a few decades ago”). It is. Like lateritious, it’s from Latin later” for a brick, because laterite is reddish and on exposure to the air sets rock-hard. Robert Rosenberg connected the word with the history of the the horse collar: “This is an even more interesting story than you might think, because there has been a historical debate about the role of horses as draft animals in the Roman era, and this word provides evidence in that debate. In a nutshell, there was an early twentieth-century argument that horses could not have...Feed Source: www.worldwidewords.org 702-2: Weird Words: Prodnose -
This is principally British, an apt descriptive term for a pedantic and interfering person, one who is always poking his nose in where it’s not wanted. A recent example:
• And life is like that: in the depths of extreme personal grief there is always some official prodnose of a parking authority or bullying tax inspector to harass you into intemperate rage against the universe. [The Sunday Times, 18 Apr. 2009.]
Its genesis was a surrealistic column in the Daily Express with the title By The Way, often witty but as often bafflingly off-beat and obscure. For many years it was written by the humorist J B Morton, who introduced his readers to many strange characters, such as Mr Justice Cocklecarrot, who presided over the recurring case of the twelve red-bearded dwarves. The eccentric scientist, Dr Strabismus (whom God preserve) of Utrecht made frequent appearances. So did that archetypal cad Captain Foulenough, who attended the notorio... 702-3: Wordface -
Will it or won’t it? A storm in a teacup has erupted as a result of an unguarded comment by Nigel Portwood, the Chief Executive of Oxford University Press. In an interview in the Sunday Times last weekend, he was asked whether the forthcoming third edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, due out in about a decade or so, would be published in book form. He said he didn’t think so. Within a few hours, this uncontroversial statement went around the world about twice and has appeared in at least 700 newspaper reports. It could be predicted by anybody who is versed in the economics and technology of big reference books, especially in the case of the OED, which has never made a profit in its history. As Mr Portwood explained, “The print dictionary market is just disappearing, it is falling away by tens of per cent a year.” His comments ruffled his colleagues at the OUP. Though it was a holiday weekend in the UK... 702-4: Questions and Answers: Chops -
[Q] From William Armstrong, Atlanta, Georgia: “In a book review in the New York Times, Michiko Kakutani wrote, “It’s as if an acrobatic but show-offy performance artist had decided to do an old-fashioned play and, in the process, proved his chops as an actor.” I’m sure she’s not referring to a delicious meal here. What do chops have to do with credentials?”
[A] Nothing at all, Mr Armstrong. The two senses come from different sources.
A chop in the sense of a cut of meat is just a piece that has been chopped off the animal. It’s from the verb that means to cut with a quick and heavy blow. (This used to be spelled chap and survives separately in the sense of cracking the skin, as in chappe... 702-5: Sic! -
• A headline in the Sudbury Star of Canada on 30 August was sent in by Russ Hunt: “Wreckless decision to invade Somalia seeded chaos.” (It’s perhaps better than a seedless decision that wreaked chaos.)
• Elspeth Pope wrote, “While looking for an address in the Shelton, WA, phone book I came across the entry ‘Forest Funeral Home and Creamation’.” It’s an interesting business model, but it’s hard to see how it all fits together.
• The BBC website told Randall Bart: “Wireless power system shown off”. He would be more impressed if they showed it with the power on.
• The Oldham Evening Chronicle of Lancashire ran a story on 20th August 2010, Mary Pendlebury reports, which included the sentence: “One of three sisters, Hilda’s father was a butcher who ran f... 702-6: Copyright and contact details -
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