The Language (and travel) Thread

[Carol the Dabbler]

Yeah, I suspect they chose "packet" because what you bought was only a partial package-worth of tiles, and that does seem to be part of the definition (at least in the US).  Dunno what I would have called it.  Maybe a dozen?  When we had our house built, we of course needed lots of floor tiles for the kitchen and the bathrooms, and they came in properly-sealed cardboard boxes a foot or so long.

[Artemis]

I've been saying "Consarn it!" an awful lot lately.

 

9 Obscure Old Swear Words We Should Bring Back, Consarn It!

 

But I think my favorite is "Zooterkins".

[Arcadia]

Those are great, lets make them official forum words! 

 

I don't think I say consarn it, but I do say confound it. Although I don't think of it as a swear word. Oww, shame on me.

[Artemis]

I say "Confound it" too, lol. I only started saying "Consarn it" lately because I got bored with "Darn it" and "Consarn" sort of rhymes, lol. That and I heard a joke about Victorian curses on TV, so I thought I'd give one a try, lol.

[Arcadia]

Where I used to work, people always laughed at my swear words. Gosh, dang, darn, nuts, rats, shoot, phooey, nertz, geez, fiddlesticks, great googly moogly .... they thought I was really quaint. I thought I just knew more words than they did. :d

[Artemis]

Where I used to work, people always laughed at my swear words. Gosh, dang, darn, nuts, rats, shoot, phooey, nertz, geez, fiddlesticks, great googly moogly .... they thought I was really quaint. I thought I just knew more words than they did. :D

 

Same here, lol.  Although I've never said "Nertz" or "Great Googly Moogly", lol.  I might have to start!

[Carol the Dabbler]

Hey, somebody else who says "fiddlesticks" as a swear word! (Or do you use it more like "Nonsense!"?)

[Arcadia]

No, I use it more like "oh sh*t!" :d

[J.P.]

This is a kind of travel question for the US members.

So I zapped into a wrestling some competition/championship/whatever. The fights are staged, right? So how one becomes a champion?

[Arcadia]

Some are staged, some are real. It's real at the Olympics, for example. So I'd say it depends on which one you stumbled into. If it's the WWE, it's staged.
 
I have no idea how the championships work, but lookie lookie, someone on Wikipedia claims to know! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_wrestling#Championships As near as I can tell, it's just based on who the money people think will attract the biggest audience.

[Carol the Dabbler]

If it's theatrical (like with dramatic names, fancy costumes, and throwing each other around), it's fake.  That's the easiest way to tell.  Real wrestlers wear basic athletic-looking outfits; they just grapple and maybe groan.

[Arcadia]

I'm not touching that last line with a 10-foot pole. 

[Doe]

Sometimes you say canon. I don't find it at dictionary. What is canon?

[T.o.b.y]

Sometimes you say canon. I don't find it at dictionary. What is canon?

In the context of fandom, "canon" refers to the content of the original work. When we say "canon" around here we usually mean the original Sherlock Holmes stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. When discussing fan fiction though, the BBC show is usually the "canon" that is based on.

[Doe]

 

Sometimes you say canon. I don't find it at dictionary. What is canon?

In the context of fandom, "canon" refers to the contents of the original work. When we say "canon" around here we usually mean the original Sherlock Holmes stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. When discussing fan fiction though, the BBC show is usually the "canon" that is based on.

Thank you Toby

[Carol the Dabbler]

And it's pronounced the same as the big gun with the double n (cannon).

[Artemis]

What's the most common way to pronounce Thames, as in the river?  Is it "Tems"?  I've heard it 3 or 4 different ways, so I'm not sure which is correct.

 

 

[J.P.]

You can click on the little triangle before the name here: http://dict.leo.org/englisch-deutsch/thames

Or hear it here:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cf/En-uk-Thames.ogg

[Artemis]

Thanks!

 

I've heard a lot of people say it without the 's' too, I wonder why.

 

 

[Van Buren Supernova]

Ah yes, the mystery of canon.

I used to think you guys purposely misspelled conan as canon. It happens that our canon is conan, so for a while I thought just that; aiz, some unsolicited cutesy nickname. There were many times I got really suspicious and made the connection of what canon really means, but only until I read some other 'canon' being mentioned for other literatures that there is no room for confusion with the author name, I was convinced. At least the shudder of you guys trying to act extra cute was no longer there XD.

 

The other one that could be really confusing, luckily I know about this, is the term for collective animals.

I imagine whoever ancestors-word-inventors had rough day deciding too many other things, sat together over drink one cool night and decided to mess up with that and have drunken fun instead.

 

What, crows ganged up and pecked your eyeball? Let call them murder!

The cousin, those ravens, never really like them as well, you see how unkind they look?

Look at the knots that these toads have!

What? You said he looks like feverish stingray? Implausible! You look like a gnu!

 

Drunken night is the only explanation.

Can you imagine how confusing (not guinea fowl :p) is it for us because those words don't exactly remind us of animals. XD

[Artemis]

[Carol the Dabbler]

I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that most of those peculiar animal-group words were made up by the same people just for fun, and you're probably right about them being drunk. So there's no real history behind them, and they'll only become "official" if people actually use them.

 

So there's no reason not to say a flock of crows and other such ordinary words.

[Carol the Dabbler]

Aha!  Here's the sort of article I was talking about -- and it's from the venerable Audubon Society:

 

No, It's Not Actually a Murder of Crows

 

So I was a bit off on the date; those terms have been around for over 500 years (apparently they'd already invented beer).  But they've scarcely been used since.  Mint condition, they are!

 

In short, the fancy words for groups of animals fall into the same category as "antidisestablishmentarianism" and "floccinaucinihilipilification" -- basically they're words that were made up just so people could show off.  :P

 

[Arcadia]

What's funny about that article is the comments section. Geez, people sure get worked up about stuff...

 

I love the phrase "exaltation of larks", I think I'll keep using it. Just to be difficult. :p

[Carol the Dabbler]

Thanks, Arcadia -- I had not noticed that there were comments.  It's truly amazing how many people jumped to the defense of words that they probably didn't know even a tenth of, and had hardly ever used themselves -- and yet those words are correct -- because they are correct!!!

 

I still like VBS's drunken spree theory.