Conference thebay::joyoflex

    Ian --
    
    I always thought that the word meant an armadillo-like critter with
    a large ...
    
    beak, for going after grubs, etc., like a woodpecker. :-D
    
    Steve Kallis, Jr.

    No. An armadillo has a snout, while a peccadillo azimuth (one of my
    favourite words).

    "You're hired"
    
    --bonnie

    I wouldn't go so far as to say I had a favorite word, but some nice
    ones are:
    
    egregious (the ever-popular)
    dizzard
    unctious
    
    I'll remember more later.
    
    	Jon

    fave words include omphaloskepsis (contemplating ones own navel)
    
    peregrinate (travel)
    
    Boustrophedon (a printer thingummy that prints in both directions)
    
    -jody
    

    one i really like is defenestrate

    Being English and therefor able to say it correctly ..... :-)
    
    

    
    
    To stick to a job or task until finished.
    Also to stick to a goal and don't loose sight of it.
    

    Re .9 (nit): 
    
    >Also to stick to a goal and don't loose sight of it.
    
    If you let loose the sight of something, does that make it invisible
    or blind?
    :-)

    
    		1)	Anile
    
    		2)	Amatorium

    My favorites are FUZZY and FLUFFY, because they sound like they
    feel.

	re .12

	Yes, it does have a certain ring to it !


	disgusting bit follows, KP3 for the squeamish (another good word?!)



	I'm just going down to breakfast to get s'meg 'n bacon !

	:-}  (not feeling too well)



	Cheers,								Steve

    My favorite word:
    
    "wherely"
         
    No, I didn't make that up.  It was used in a report by a captain
    in the U.S. Air Force some 30 years ago.  And it wasn't even used
    as an adverb!
    
    Steve Kallis, Jr.
    

    RE:12
    > If you loose sight of something, does that make it invivible or
    blind?
    
     By all means NO!!!!. What it refers to, is not to loose sight of
    your long range goal (what your desire is to be in life) If you
    keep the desire to become a programmer, in sight you'll acheive
    your goal.
    
                              Chuck
     
    

    I always thought that the expression was
    
                "to lose sight of ..."
    
    as opposed to
    
                "to loose sight of ..."
    
    Dan

    Now THERE'S a thing to behold ;-)
    
    Dj
    

    The family that erases together???

    One of my favorites is actually a suffix, "-aster," as in poetaster,
    logicaster, grammiticaster.
    
    	Jon

    does that apply to stratocaster(sp?) too?
    
    -Jody
    

    Enantiomorphism -- first encountered in a discussion (by Martin
    Gardner) of Tweedledum and Tweedledee -- they're mirror-image 
    twins.
    
    Two others, really non-words, but great expletives.
    
  1.When I was a kid, there was a daily comic strip called Red Ryder.
    Red had a sidekick named Little Beaver; he was an Indian boy.

    Little Beaver's ultimate putdown for a person or situation was:
    
    			Gus-dusting!!
    
    I always liked this, and have used it for decades.
    
  2.This is a true story:  I once lived with a woman and her three-year-old
    son.  One day, Sarah was explaining breast feeding to her son. Now,
    Sarah was many things, but large-breasted was not one of those things.
    So, after Sarah finished talking about lactation, and feeding the baby,
    her son looked at her, then down to her rather flat chest, then back at
    her face, then down to her chest again, then back at her. 
    
    He then very solemnly said, "That's Ruh-DIK-i-luss!"
    
    Ever since, I've found it very difficult to pronounce "ridiculous"
    correctly.
                                                           
    					andrew

    re: 16 
    
    Don't they have lots of wherely birds in the Air Force?????? :) :) 
    
    My favorite words are the clear, concise, picturesque nouns and
    verbs for everyday things -- verbs like 
    
    slither
    congeal
    chill
    flutter
    
    and nouns like
    
    narthex
    lintel 
    barm
    calyx
    
    Big words, except in specialized contexts, leave me cold.
    
    --bonnie 

    It is a term used to refer to ducks
    that are not diving ducks.  Ducks fall into one of two categories:
    diving ducks or puddlers.
    
    Now that it's spring, haven't you all seen those puddlers out there
    puddling in the puddles?
    
    Spd
    
    

    I don't suppose you happen to know what kind of ducks live at the
    hotel down the road?  I've never seen them on the pond; they spend
    all day walking up and down the sidewalk looking for pedestrians
    to harrass.  Doesn't sound like a diver or a puddler.
    
    --bonnie

    Extrinsic is nice, for the eyebrows it raises.
    
    I know "Time for a drink?" is a phrase, but it has a very acceptable
    tintinabulation to it.
    
    And tintinabulation is Ok too.
    
    Nick

    RE: .26  --  Is the hotel a dive?

    This word is very satisfying when you are frustrated, disgusted,
    or amazed at some unbelievably stupid thing you have just done.
    There is much satisfaction in drawing out the "eeeeeeeez" and,
    if truly upset and in the right company, you can add a suffix
    to it: -us.

    I need a :-) symbol that tells the reader my face is expressing
    honest bewilderment here.  Preferably with tongue in cheek.
    
    --bonnie

re. 12

I think "smegma" is a nice word too.   I wonder if "smegmatic" was one of the
original medieval humours that never made it.   What kind of a temperament is
a "smegmatic" one?

While on S, I like

"sdrucciola" (3 line poem, all lines rhyming: also aloic (?) curds backwards

"squamous" (like spotty marks on snake.   very Lovecraft)

"schmaltzy" (& all yiddishisms: so fun to say)

especially, things like "Oedipus, Schmoedipus: what's wrong with loving your
         mother?")

"Schwarzchild radius" (ref Black holes)

"spondee" (and all feet: e.g. "anapaests" = Return of the Dactyls)

"sblood" (& "sdeath" etc.   What's the term for the practise of blasphemy 
         avoidance in this manner

"silverfish" (little critters that get into old books)

word-struck
of Great Britain

    re: .32
    
    I doubt that one could adequately describe a smegmatic personality
    in a public, comany-maintained notes file . . .
    
    But it's fun to think about.
    
    --bonnie

    While we're at it "scrofulous" is another nice one. It's from scrofula,
    the King's Evil, a nasty disease that supposedly can be cured only by
    the touch of the King. 
    
    Also "skene," a type of Scots dirk. I used it for a family name in a
    play. Members of that family all had sharp tongues. 
    
    A friend of mine set a story in the town of Squamous, New Jersey.

    	Jon

    Re .34 (Jon):
    
    But isn't all of New Jersey ...?
    
    Steve Kallis, Jr.

I've always favored "priapism" as a dictionary tester.  If it's there the 
dictionary is probably okay.

Larry

    Re .32
    
    Thanks a lot!  I was eating my lunch when I read that note!
    
    Spd

overheard on a mailing list:
     
	proselytute, n: A person who is a door-to-door salesperson
	for their religion, or any person who considers their day
	misspent if they have not ruined it for the heathen scum.
 
So you have your visiting proselytutes who come into your home,
and you street-corner proselytutes who practice on the sidewalks
of our fair cities.

myrmidon
Mycenae
Menelaus
Mercutio
mercury
memento mori
Mordred
Morte d'Arthur
mousetrap
Mrs Malaprop
Mutius Scaevola
Mnemon
manta
mantra
mangrove
Mistress Quickly

    Re .40:
    
    Good to have a favorite word. :-)
    
    Steve Kallis, Jr.

    re: .40 - 
    
    Mordred, and Morte d'Arthur, but not Merlin?

M is for me a dark and sombre letter, and a lot of the words I pick echo that
side.   Merlin was a tedious old goat, probably invented by Tolkein, and the
word is dull.

On that note, Tolkein is by far a more interesting name than any of those 
that he devised in his famous books about Wombles.

I really like mandrake, though.
Also:
	myth

which occurs in a superb quote from "Cyrano de Bergerac"

"A lie is a sort of a myth, and a myth is a sort of a truth."

also the quintessentially horrible:

	melanoblastoma

On a more cheerful note:

	moonshine
	moonfaced
	minim
	midshipman
	Michael Milken

etc. 

All fish names are good.

Especially:

	cod
	turbot
	lemon sole
	hammerhead shark
	kipper
	red herring
	poisson d'avril (april fool in French)
	monkfish
	flounder
	conger eel
	barracuda
	salmon

Have you heard of the language HALIBU PROLOG?
Can you imagine the joke, to which the final line would be the song:
	"Salmon chunder deafening"?

    Re .43:
    
> ...... Merlin was a tedious old goat, probably invented by Tolkein, and the
>word is dull.
    
    A merlin is a small European falcon.
    
    Merlin, according to lore, is still alive, though he was entombed
    in rock.  As far as the tales of _Morte d'Arthur_ go, he was nearly
    the only one with a sense of humor until Sir Dynadan.  Far from
    tedious, he was the only one who kept Camelot from collapsing into
    a huge soap opera.  See what happened after he departed?
    
    Steve Kallis, Jr.                   

>    Merlin, according to lore, is still alive, though he was entombed
>    in rock.  As far as the tales of _Morte d'Arthur_ go, he was nearly
>    the only one with a sense of humor until Sir Dynadan.  Far from
>    tedious, he was the only one who kept Camelot from collapsing into
>    a huge soap opera.  See what happened after he departed?
    
	What happened?   Monty Python took over!   And Merlin was responsible
for the onset of the silliness, when (according to la Morte d'Arthur) he left
a Whoopee cushion on Siege Perilous.

	Now, a much more triff book on knightly meanderings is "Orlando
Furioso", which melanges many storylines concerning the activities of the 
knights of Charlemagne.   There's also a fair amount of magic, which is the
technology used to fuel all the circumnavigation and space travel that goes on.
The best sequence, for my money, is where an English knight travels to the Moon
which is a sort of solar system Lost Property Office: everything that's gets
lost on Earth reappears on the Moon, including Orlando's wits (he is Furioso:
literally mad with love for most of the epic).   When was this written?
Early sixteenth century, I think.   Does some one know?

	The best bit of Cyrano de Bergerac (recently turned by Steve Martin
into a film about a fireman, but I haven't seen that) is also about the moon.
For various complicated reasons, Cyrano wishes to delay someone who passes him
in the street, so he lies down, starts groaning, and pretends to be a man who 
has just fallen from the moon.   A fantastic conceit.

More areas like fish, which are for me rich in good words:

chess
snakes
magic swords
cloud types
heraldry
American surnames
botany
Shakespeare
ancient history
alchemy

    Re .46:
    
>        What happened?   Monty Python took over!   And Merlin was responsible
>for the onset of the silliness, when (according to la Morte d'Arthur) he left
>a Whoopee cushion on Siege Perilous. 
 
    That last's propoganda spread by Morgana le Fay. As for Monty Python,
    well, if Merlin wasn't, er, tied up at the time, Monty Python probably
    would have been Monty Earthworm.  The one that gets the bird.
    
>The best sequence, for my money, is where an English knight travels to the Moon
>which is a sort of solar system Lost Property Office: everything that's gets
>lost on Earth reappears on the Moon, including Orlando's wits (he is Furioso:
>literally mad with love for most of the epic).
 
    Done by Astolpho, as I recall. Got a lot of his own wits back that
    way.  There was magic, but Malagicci was relatively small potatoes.
    
    _Orlando Furioso_ was Ariosto's poem, but the stories go _much_
    further back than that.  
    
>For various complicated reasons, Cyrano wishes to delay someone who passes him
>in the street, so he lies down, starts groaning, and pretends to be a man who 
>has just fallen from the moon.   A fantastic conceit.
 
    And the first story to suggest you could get to the moon with rockets.
     Now if he'd just left it at that and not included the iron chair
    and lodestone, the geese, the bottles of dew ....
    
    Steve Kallis, Jr.          

A short one: it's way past my bedtime and time to go home.   Clearly, Steve
Kallis Jnr, you know these books well:  I'm impressed by your recall.

I'm sorry that I'm only allowed *one* favourite word.   In reality, I have
tens of thousands!   A few other sources of good words have occured to me:

Dickens
zodiacal signs
Australian argot
things named after people: (eg Boycott, Shrapnel, Malquist)
English Common Law (scutage, tort, trespass, malfeisance)
joyoflex type words (oxymoron, homonym, clerihew, irony)
	(of course, clerihew falls in the things named after people category
         as well.)

    in re .43....
    
    I don't recall any Wombles in any of Tolkein's books.
    
    Bonnie

>    I don't recall any Wombles in any of Tolkein's books.

wombles, schmombles: don't get hung up on this "truth" thing

My entries in this notesfile are pure ornamental, and where truth
enhances the decorative qualities of the reply (as in this one
for instance), it may be used.   But truth is only one colour on the
palette.

    re: .43, .45
    
    If Merlin's an old goat, can we use him in the Walpurgis night
    celebration being discussed elsewhere?
    
    --bonnie

>    If Merlin's an old goat, can we use him in the Walpurgis night
>    celebration being discussed elsewhere?

	Which Walpurgis night celebration discussion do you mean?

Press KP7 for:

	BONDAJ::ANCIENT_NAUGHTINESS_BY_EMAIL
or
	ARKHAM::SUMMONING_GREAT_CTHULHU

Also there's some lively conversation going on in the academic networks.
Send your Walpurgan queries to lovecraft @miskatonic.edu for some 
sanity-bending enlightenment.

The rats!   The walls!   The rats in the walls! 

    Re .52:
    
>Press KP7 for:
>
>	BONDAJ::ANCIENT_NAUGHTINESS_BY_EMAIL
>or
>	ARKHAM::SUMMONING_GREAT_CTHULHU
 
    That latter conference is now:
    
        NKRMCN::EVOKING_YOG_SOTHOTH
    
    ... but the node's almost impossible to reach due to network load.
    
    There is a related Conference,
    
        AZTHTH::BUBBLE_AND_GNAW
    
Cthulhu f'thagn.    
    
       

    a friend of mine told me of a conference called
    
    HASTUR::TRY_SAYING_IT_FOUR_TIMES_FAST
    
    moo ha ha
    
    -Jody
    

    
    Re .54 (Jody):
    
    You might also like --
    
                 HALI::CARCOSA
    
    and
    
                 MLSTRM::DESCENT
    
    But isn't this all getting a little esoteric?
    
    "Hai, n'ygak!  You are off and free ...."
    
    Steve Kallis, Jy.
      

    re:.55
    
    That's a louse-y title for a note, Steve.
    
    Yeah, and fhtag'n you, too!

    --- jerry

    tessitura
    deliquescent
    chulo
    ferraiolone
    fluxion
    presentient
    spirulate
    strisciando
    takkanah
    chonolith

    
    Melifluous
    Ineluctable
    Macrophage
    Israel         (I just like the look and sound of it)
    Behest
    
    Paul V
    

    Anapest

>    Anapest

	Me too!   I encountered it in a "Times Crossword" about fifteen years 
ago, in a different spelling, and plural:   ANAPAESTS

	The clue was abstruse even by "Times Crossword" standards:

Return of the Dactyls.

	For those lucky enough not to have had a classical education, let me 
explain.   Latin poetry can be subjected to an analysis called "scansion" which
identifies the metre of the poem: which vowels should be pronounced long and
which short.   The whole process is extremely bizarre.   In the iambic
hexameter, for instance, each line contains six "feet".   To oversimplify, in 
this case, each foot will be one of two kinds: a dactyl or a spondee.   
A dactyl consists of three syllables: one long and then two short, whereas a
spondee consists of just two syllables, both long.

	The anapaest, which is rarer, and doesn't crop up in iambic hexameter
at all, also has three syllables: two short *and* *then* one long.   So it's
a "reversed" or "Returned" dactyl.

    I thought Anapest was a city that Hungarian refugees founded
    in the Himalayas.
    
    --bonnie

    A footnote to .63. One of the rarer kinds of metric foot was the
    `sesquipes' - it was (my memory of this is very shaky) an exceptional
    foot that was actually a foot and a half long. Hence `sesquipedalian',
    which may very well be someone's favourite word.  Mine's `curmudgeon'.
    
    b

    Re: .65
    
    Isn't a metric foot a decimeter?
    
Lew Lasher

    A metric foot (used for length of wood etc in the UK) is 30cm which
    is 11.81102362 inches to the limit of my calculator.

    Does anybody like peristalsis?

    > Does anybody like peristalsis?
    
    Couldn't live without it :-)
    
    Jeff.

    > Does anybody like peristalsis?
    
    I think that Mikhail Gorbachev does.  He's hoping that the Soviet
    people will stomach his new policies.  
    
    
    I guess you could say that he hopes the people adequately perform
    peristalsis on peristroika.
    
    -Paul
    
    

    If you were having trouble swallowing, would that be
    
      peri-stasis?     or perhaps     peri-stall-sis?

    
    If you think peristalsis is bad, you should imagine
    reverse peristalsis...

    G'day,
    
    .... 'Twould be enough to make one sick...
    
    djw
    
    

    in re .73 in re .72
    
    fer, sure...
    
    or in simpler terms, my immediate reaction to .72 was
    
    
    
    oh guck!
    
    BJPR

	From the Literary Life and Other Curiosities, Robert Hendrickson,
	Penguin, 1982 (a must have for all JOYOFLEXers) ...

	Authors' favorite words:

	o  Carl Sandburg: Monogahela (a river in Pennsylvania ... which,
	   BTW, means something like "river whose banks are always 
	   caving in" in some indian language)

	o  James Joyce: cuspidor

	o  Baudelaire: hemorroides

	From popular polls: melody, murmuring, lullaby, golden, silver
	moon, cellar door, dawn.

		-- Cliff

	Some words:

	o  Carminative -- a preparation to eliminate intestinal
	   gas

	o  Onomatapoeia -- the quality of sounding like what it
	   describes ... said of words or language

	o  Tintitabullation -- the ringing of bells

	o  Mellifluous -- smooth souding
	
	o  Triskadecaphobia -- fear of the number 13

	o  Infracaninophilia -- rooting for the underdog

	o  Gegenschein -- a faint light spot in the sky, directly 
	   opposite the sun ... also called "counterglow" (another neat 
	   word)


	... and some phrases:

	o  Proud flesh -- the swollen flesh around a healing wound ...
	   a medical term

	o  Absolute ceiling -- the maximum altitude at which an airplane
	   can maintain horizontal flight under normal conditions

	o  Flowering spurge -- a kind of flower

	o  Hoary puccoon -- aother flower


		-- Cliff

    Vicissitude -- changeable; talk to someone about their
    vicissitudability...
    

    thigmotropic = the action of bugs squeezing into very
                   tight cracks to hide
    
    This word could easily be applied to engineering...

Re: < Note 496.76 by SHALOT::ANDERSON "Give me a U, give me a T..." >

>	o  Tintitabullation -- the ringing of bells
                ^    ^

    I don't want to be excessively nit-picky, but since it's one of
    your favorites (and mine), can we please amend it to:

	o  Tintinnabulation -- the ringing of _little_ bells
    
    	   (Big Tom and the Great Bell of Khiev do not qualify)
    
    Jim

One of my favorite words -- appropriate to the season -- was a word made up
a few years ago as part of a contest run by some magazine that I forget 
(New York?) They were looking for a word that would be to olfactory input
as "mellifluous" is to auditory input.  An example is the wonderful smells of
Spring.  The word had to be as pleasing to speak and hear as "mellifluous."
The winner was "ozmirrah."  OED promised to add it to the update.

					>>>==>PStJTT

    Perhaps not my favorite, but in the top ten.  It's the act
    of contemplating one's navel.
    
    					andrew
    

    I have long, thin fingers.  This word describes this characteristic
    perfectly.
    
    					andrew

    
    After seeing the movie "Dances With Wolves", I feel good about the word
    
    "Tonka"
    
    which is the Lakota (Sioux) word for "Bison". 
    
    
    I grew up in Minnetonka Village, Minnesota, and played with Tonka Toys,
    and 30 years later finally understand what is a Tonka. 
    
    

    
    	Of course, Tonka was just bought by Hasbro of Rhode Island.
    
    	So, what does Hasbro mean in Sioux?

    Hasbro -- Hassenfeld Brothers, same as in English!  %^}
    
    					andrew

...I thought Hasbro meant "gobs of money."

ubiquitous
't'isn't
calliope
terpsichore
Montana
raison d'e(^)tre
laurel
pyrrhic

--angela

    >'t'isn't
    
    'Tisn't correct to insert an apostrophe where no letters have been elided.
    'Tis wrong to write "'t'is" isn't't?

    G'day,
    
     Reminds me of the following interchange...
    
    A child:  "Ain't that quaint!"
    
    Parent: "There is no such word as 'Ain't'." "The word is 'isn't'."
    
    Child: "Very well.... Isn't that quisnt!"
    
    
    derek