Island Life: Adventures in English
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So was I; another time soon, I hope.
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I'm keen to go to one of the next couple of weeks before the venue shifts to the less saubrious deathstar.
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As you were after that burst of IM-ery.
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scuttles back to hideaway in Adelaide
Yeah but nah.
Deborah, I really truly weighed that up for a full half minute before I decided that if they had either of those books under a table leg, the odds had to be better it would be a dictionary.
Moreover, I 'd like to encourage people to embiggen their vocabulary. A stroll through a dictionary can do a person no end of good. -
You forgot literally blown away, which has me reaching for the Spray 'n' Wipe.
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Is there a crisper, clearer, more specific alternative I could use?
In the 1993 Sylvester Stallone movie Demolition Man, Sly plays a cop released from suspended animation to deal with escalating crime in the California of 2032. It's a world without steroids and police brutality, and those nasty criminals have taken advantage of the outbreak of niceness. When Stallone "blows away" a villain his minder, Sandra Bullock, cries "You blew him!", raising a big audience laugh with her imperfect grasp of 1990s vernacular.
Crisper, perhaps, but not exactly cleaner.
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I paused for a moment before commenting, and wondered whether I really ought to, and then thought, "No! Dammit - I rejoice in my identity as a pendant!"
So... shouldn't that be a thesaurus rather than a dictionary?
Deborah, I think it's time we seriously explore the possibility we might have been separated at birth.
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Nothing wrong with being a full paid up member of the Pendant Society though!
Shouldn't that be "fully paid up"?
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Deborah, I think it's time we seriously explore the possibility we might have been separated at birth.
Hence the Siamese cat gravatar hmmm eh what, yes I think so, yes eh what, hmmm.
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Shouldn't that be "fully paid up"?
I read it as a full, paid up, member. (As opposed to a full member who hasn't paid up, or a paid up associate member.)
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i like floored(mate), you're not some wispy daddy long-legs, you may have flown, but there's a gravitational element, and an impact.
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Cameo appearances... and other cryptograms
Nothing wrong with being a full paid up member of the Pendant Society though!
- Shouldn't that be "fully paid up"?Ah, Giovanni, you have fallen into Deborah's
cleverly worded confabulation - such are the
skills of an artful and cunning linguist...The sentence is a latent matrix of sexual allusions to
blown away and its other various meanings and possible substitutes, all with tongue firmly in cheek...When one examines the scalar possibilities of seemingly innocent words like full the alluded to Thesaurus presents Engorged, Replete, Satiated, Bursting, Stuffed and many more, including Well Endowed and Glutted!
While *paid up** may seem to infer a simple cash
transaction it is also a reference to subscribed capital
and Capital is the top of a column, or Head!
But wait there's more, paid up is also diap as in diaper in which members can be wrapped...
and pendant well, er, hung!
I rest my case...
or it could just be a personal problem ;-)
Or some thing like that...
Getting one's mind out of the (Elton) John...guttered
blown away, indeed, like a candle in the wind...
yrs
Candela Zephyr
_Well oral be damned!__ -
You know you are getting old:
When you first hear your parents words coming out of your mouth, usually directed at your children
Or you start whinning about how language is starting to go down hillI do keep wondering about my father's ventriloquism act - making his words come out of my mouth from 100km and 30 years away!
But I do enjoy watching the ever changing English language at play - Versing wasn't a word much used when I was a lad (except by the odd poet perhaps). But now, if my boy's team is playing versus the Hawks, then the Aliens are versing those birds of prey. Of course the past tense applies, last week the Aliens versed the Eagles.
Way to anglicise the latin kids! -
Or just plain Impressed.
In keeping with the swearing meme, (and not to disappoint Jackie) cuntstruck :)
Ooooh. I never heard of that one. That's my girl!
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BTW. I quite like flummoxed, and discombobulated. And "I've come over all previous" is a phrase I adore. It really makes me feel, you know, like, awesome.
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There are no problems with language. There is no debate about language. In fact, there is nothing to, in or of language, any more.
Today, there are only "issues" around language.
One preposition to rule them. Replace them. Eradicate them.
It seems a 21st century Lincoln would say: Government around the people, around the people and around the people, shall not perish from the earth. It lacks a certain something, no?
To any politicians reading: at the next election I will base my choice solely on (sorry, around) your use of this noxious weed. If you've got a vocabulary, you get my vote. Thank you.
(Founder member of SOP - Save Our Prepositions)
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The beautiful thing about that preposition, from the point of view of a politician afraid of commitment, is that it lets you spend a long time at the scene of the crime without ever leaving your fingerprints on anything. The less specific, the better.
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Google search for "real guttered" - go New Zealand!
... is now the top google result for "real guttered"
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This linguistic excursion with brief stop-over in the gutter reminds me of something quite unrelated, however delightfully rude.
In the spring of 1943 Archibald Clark-Kerr, British ambassador to Moscow, wrote a note to Lord Pembroke (the note made the email rounds some years ago, but still puts a smile on my face).
"My Dear Reggie,
In these dark days man tends to look for little shafts of light that spill from Heaven. My days are probably darker than yours, and I need, my God I do, all the light I can get. But I am a decent fellow, and I do not want to be mean and selfish about what little brightness is shed upon me from time to time. So I propose to share with you a tiny flash that has illuminated my sombre life and tell you that God has given me a new Turkish colleague whose card tells me that he is called Mustapha Kunt.
We all feel like that, Reggie, now and then, especially when Spring is upon us, but few of us would care to put it on our cards. It takes a Turk to do that.
Sir Archibald Clerk Kerr
H.M. Ambassador"http://www.ntk.net/2000/02/25/moscow.gif
(Sorry about the clumsy link. Don't know how to go about this embedding business ... )
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... is now the top google result for "real guttered"
See, who needs Rochelle Rees?
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“This is unique tax assistance for the farmers of the Chatham Islands who literally glue the Chatham Islands community together,” says Philip York, Federated Farmers Commerce and Economics spokesperson.
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So unless you're Dorothy, freshly back in Kansas & being asked for comment by the locla rag, the term is inappropriate. Gotcha.
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“This is unique tax assistance for the farmers of the Chatham Islands who literally glue the Chatham Islands community together,” says Philip York, Federated Farmers Commerce and Economics spokesperson.
All we need is a great big melting pot...
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