Showing posts with label Language. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Language. Show all posts

Tuesday, March 08, 2011

Language


Say 'Skyscraper' and everyone thinks of the Empire State Building or the Chrysler Building but it started life as something completely different.
It was an English naval term - a high light sail to catch the breeze in calm conditions.
It was the name of the Derby winner in 1788, after which tall houses became generally called skyscrapers.
Later it was a kind of hat, then slang for a very tall person. The word arrived in America as a baseball term, meaning a ball hit high in the air.
Now its world meaning is a very tall building.

And why am I giving you all these trivia winning facts? I'm trying to keep my brain active. According to health experts (blows loud disgusting raspberry sound) (nomm, raspberries) being obese could not only lead to the usual blah blah conditions costing all the healthy people a zillion zlotniks to keep us alive but now the fatty bombahs are first in line for Alzheimers. I swear if a damn big meteorite hit earth, the last words we'd hear would be, "The fatties did it, the fatties did it!"

Wednesday, October 01, 2008

WORD OF THE DAY

MACROPHYTE

A term used to distinguish larger water plants from microscopic algae.

They may be floating or rooted.

I went out with a lot of macrophytes in my younger days.

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

GRACKLE


That's a grackle in the photo.
Gorgeous irridescent black feathers. According to Wiki, the Quiscalus Grackles are even better than parrots for imitating human speech.
I don't care about that, I like the word grackle. That's what birds do, they mill about grabbing seed in the back yard and they grackle.
It sounds like the bird equivalent of gossip, they grackle. Ever heard Rex Hunt at a football match, he grackles. Politicians grackle. It's a beaut word, should be heard more.