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gmalivuk wrote:Why is "in for a penny" one of your examples? It's just the truncated form of "in for a penny, in for a pound", whose meaning follows fairly straightforwardly from the words used.

If you've ever heard the full expression, which I'll wager even many native speakers haven't.

For instance, I grew up with the expression "happy as a clam". I never gave any thought to why clams were thought to be so happy, it was just something you said. Then I dated a guy who complained that nobody ever uses the full expression "happy as a clam at high tide" even though without those three words it's nonsensical.

Salmoneus wrote:"needs must" (which makes sense semantically but is nonsense grammatically)?

It's perfectly grammatical, since "needs" here is an adverb; it just frequently (read: all but exclusively) collocates with "must", and is homonymous with the 3SG present form of "need", making it sound a bit awkward. I grew up reading old-timey translations of Russian novels and occasionally I happened upon "needs" used with other verbs (though TBH only "needs knows" comes to mind right now).

linguoboy wrote:

gmalivuk wrote:Why is "in for a penny" one of your examples? It's just the truncated form of "in for a penny, in for a pound", whose meaning follows fairly straightforwardly from the words used.

If you've ever heard the full expression, which I'll wager even many native speakers haven't.

For instance, I grew up with the expression "happy as a clam". I never gave any thought to why clams were thought to be so happy, it was just something you said. Then I dated a guy who complained that nobody ever uses the full expression "happy as a clam at high tide" even though without those three words it's nonsensical.

...I had no idea there was more to the expression "happy as a clam"...I just assumed it had to do with being tucked into their shells or something.

reveille - (military) sounding of a bugle or drum early in the morning to awaken soldiers

പ്രഭാതഭേരി [prəbʱaːd̪əˈbʱeːɾi] 'reveille'
ഭേരി [ˈbʱeːɾi] 'large drum, kettledrum'
ബാധിക്കുക [ˈbaːd̪ʱɪkʲʊga] 'to torment, obstruct, stop progress, affect, be possessed (e.g. by a spirit)'
പ്രാപ്പിടിയൻ [ˈpraːpiɖijɛn] 'hawk, falcon'
വിസ്തരം [ʋɪsˈt̪əɾəm] 'elaborate description'
ദൗർല്ലഭ്യം [d̪əwrˈləbʱjəm] 'paucity, scarcity, lack'
വിതറുക [ʋɪˈd̪ərʊga] 'to sow, scatter, spill' (<- I forgot this word)
രൂക്ഷ [ˈɾuːʈʃa] 'severe, harsh, pungent, hard'
അധികൃതൻ [əˈd̪ʱigrɯd̪ɛn] 'superintendent, [person with] authority'
ചില്ലറ [t͡ʃɪlˈləra] 'insignificant, not much'
ദാക്ഷിണ്യം [ˈd̪aːʈʃɪɳjəm] 'mercy, kindness, generosity, munificence, favor, sympathy, concord'

French has a word for 'to masturbate with a dildo' se goder. I'm having a hard time being surprised by this, though.

Also I recently learned that apparently the French word bamboula 'shindig' has a racial connotation I didn't know about. I'm a bit sad because I liked using this word in silly contexts. In Belgium, I'd sometimes say on va organiser une bamboula chez nous. No one I hung out with ever made me aware of its negative connotations. It's curious, too, as I originally learned the word from a friend who used it in a similarly silly context. I wonder why the racial connotation is noted by some young French speakers but not by all young French speakers (my social circle in this case is young French speakers).

I think it depends on context. If it's very clear from context that you mean "a party", I guess it can be alright. If you call a person "bamboula", then it's a racial slur.

I've just learned the word "shindig".

Zaarin wrote:

linguoboy wrote:

gmalivuk wrote:Why is "in for a penny" one of your examples? It's just the truncated form of "in for a penny, in for a pound", whose meaning follows fairly straightforwardly from the words used.

If you've ever heard the full expression, which I'll wager even many native speakers haven't.

For instance, I grew up with the expression "happy as a clam". I never gave any thought to why clams were thought to be so happy, it was just something you said. Then I dated a guy who complained that nobody ever uses the full expression "happy as a clam at high tide" even though without those three words it's nonsensical.

...I had no idea there was more to the expression "happy as a clam"...I just assumed it had to do with being tucked into their shells or something.

Yeah," Happy as a clam" would have been a better example.

It may be a US/UK thing, but here where we don't have pounds I've heard the full version of "in for a penny" often enough to always remember what it means.

My friend told me today in Polish: "Chęć uczenia się angielskiego mi nie przechodzi" (It means something like she has felt like learning English for some time and still feels like doing it). I didn't know the verb "przechodzić/przejść" for the meaning of "pass, become past", so I asked her in English what did she mean using it. She misused English negatives as if we were speaking Polish do I thought she doesn't like learning English at all. After a half of an hour she eventually managed (we were still speaking English) to explain me the meaning of this verbs she meant. Now she knows something more about English (I corrected her in places where she mislead me) and I know a new Polish word. Yuppie!!!
(Eh, here are results of being from Subcarpathia.)

Ryusenshi wrote:I think it depends on context. If it's very clear from context that you mean "a party", I guess it can be alright. If you call a person "bamboula", then it's a racial slur.

I've just learned the word "shindig".

'Shindig' is a fun word but it wreaks of the 60s/70s so only use it ironically.

Viktor77 wrote:'Shindig' is a fun word but it reeks of the 60s/70s so only use it ironically.

Reek is the word you want here. Its original meaning is "give of an (unpleasant) odour". The German cognate is riechen and the stem is ultimately related to that of Rauch "smoke".

Wreak originally meant "cause" and is cognate with German rächen. It is also related to wreck.

More new words from my grandfather's diary (that's where most of the words I've been posting over the past few days are from). I've been trying to translate it, and I am so close to the end now! I translated two paragraphs yesterday, so hopefully, I can translate one or two more today, too. I wonder how many more new vocabulary words I'll come across before the end.

ഒറ്റുക [oˈtʊga] 'to betray, cheat'
ഊഹാപോഹം [uːˈhaːboːhəm] 'hypothetical inference, doubts and their redressal, guessing something and coming to one's own conclusions'
കുറ്റാന്വേഷണം [kʊtaːnˈʋeːʃəɳəm] 'criminal investigation, detection of crime'
പാടവം [ˈpaːɖəʋəm] 'skill, cleverness, dexterity, efficiency, sound health'
ജാള്യം [ˈd͡ʒaːɭjəm] 'folly, apathy, dullness, embarrassment'
മനപൂർവ്വം [mənəˈbuːrʋəm] 'deliberately'
തെറ്റുദ്ധാരണ [t̪ɛtʊd̪ˈd̪ʱaːɾəɳa] 'misunderstanding'
ഉടലെടുക്കുക [ʊˈɖɛlɛɖʊkʊga] 'to take form, take shape, be made'
വിവിധം [ʋɪʋɪˈd̪ʱəm] 'things of various kinds, type of stage performance'

Viktor77 wrote:French has a word for 'to masturbate with a dildo' se goder. I'm having a hard time being surprised by this, though.

I wonder whether that's yet another cognate with Portuguese gozar, which means 'to cum' among other things, in addition to native jouir and borrowed gaudir.

ˈd̪ʲɛ.gɔ kɾuˑl̪ wrote:Yuppie Yippee/yippie/yipee!!!

Vijay wrote:I wonder whether that's yet another cognate with Portuguese gozar, which means 'to cum' among other things, in addition to native jouir and borrowed gaudir.

Probably not: goder comes from gode which is short from godemiché (dildo).

Ryusenshi wrote:

Vijay wrote:I wonder whether that's yet another cognate with Portuguese gozar, which means 'to cum' among other things, in addition to native jouir and borrowed gaudir.

Probably not: goder comes from gode which is short from godemiché (dildo).

Godemiché apparently comes from Medieval Latin gaude michi 'please me!' (michi < mihi), and gozar also comes from the same Latin verb, so that would suggest that they are indeed cognates (though probably not in the strictest sense).

Am I the only weirded out by the fact that the French have apparently had a word for “dildo” since the Latin times?

Wikipedia wrote:The world's oldest known dildo is a siltstone 20-centimeter phallus from the Upper Palaeolithic period 30,000 years ago that was found in Hohle Fels Cave near Ulm, Germany.

There is truly nothing new under the sun, son.

Ancient Greek ὄλισβος [from ὀλισθεῖν “to be slippery”] (leather) dildo.

I have an Ancient Greek comedy that my dad read where, from what I remember of what he said about it to me, all the women were genuinely concerned, if not downright upset or worse, about the prospect of losing their access to people selling sex toys.

Also, I forgot this word:

പിണയുക [pɪˈɳejuga] 'to happen by chance, be entangled, intertwine, mate, couple'

Something I've been meaning to ask, Vijay: How many of the words that you list here do you remember a week or more later? I sometimes try to make lists of unfamiliar words that turn up in my reading so I can try to fix them in my mind later. More than once, I've found one of these weeks or months later and realised that I no longer remember what most of them mean. I'd do better seeing them in context, obviously, but I still can't say I've really "learned" them all.

For example, if I asked you, "What's Malayalam for 'atonement'?", would you be able to tell me off the top of your head? (I just looked at my first post and realised that I'd forgotten the words I gave for "coaster" in all language except BE.)

Vijay wrote:I have an Ancient Greek comedy that my dad read where, from what I remember of what he said about it to me, all the women were genuinely concerned, if not downright upset or worse, about the prospect of losing their access to people selling sex toys.

Lysistrata, perhaps?

gmalivuk wrote:Lysistrata, perhaps?

That'd be my guess.

linguoboy wrote:

Wikipedia wrote:The world's oldest known dildo is a siltstone 20-centimeter phallus from the Upper Palaeolithic period 30,000 years ago that was found in Hohle Fels Cave near Ulm, Germany.

There is truly nothing new under the sun, son.

At least they're admitting it now.
I remember a few years ago watching a documentary about the life of ordinary people in Ancient Egypt (and a serious (if simplified) documentary, not something for children). One thing they mentioned was a great mystery surrounding a certain type of artifact. It was made of stone, and looked exactly like a penis. It was very common, apparently, in ordinary households, from what they could tell. But the distribution was odd. Some married couples had them, and a small number of men had them, but mostly they were owned by young unmarried women, who would sometimes own several of them. Yet there was no indication what they were used for, since none of the ancient hierglyphs discussed them.

So Egyptologists worked out that, given their distributional cluster among young unmarried women... they must be some sort of religious, ceremonial icon, probably associated with fertility, perhaps involved in the use of ritual magic to aquire a good husband. This was very exciting to the them, the documentary suggested, because it proved the existence of a vernacular fertility religion that was completely unmentioned in the surviving texts from the era, demonstrating a profound religious division between the earthy, everyday cults of ordinary Egyptians and the more refined, formalised religion of the ruling classes and their scribes.

*rolls eyes*
Yeah, it's amazing how popular fertility rituals were in the olden days, and how often they involved ceremonial, sacred imitations of male anatomy...

Well, when it comes to archaeology, everything's a ritual object.

സ്ഥിരീകരിക്കുക [st̪ʰɪˈɾiːgəɾikʲʊga] 'to confirm'
ആനുകൂല്യം [aːnuˈguːljəm] 'favor, concession, support'

linguoboy wrote:Something I've been meaning to ask, Vijay: How many of the words that you list here do you remember a week or more later?

Probably almost none! At least, I don't think I currently remember almost anything I posted here off the top of my head. I don't think I even remember what I just posted here, in this post.

I sometimes try to make lists of unfamiliar words that turn up in my reading so I can try to fix them in my mind later. More than once, I've found one of these weeks or months later and realised that I no longer remember what most of them mean. I'd do better seeing them in context, obviously, but I still can't say I've really "learned" them all.

This is my problem, too. This is also why I was reluctant to give this thread its current title (it's really just supposed to be an unfamiliar vocab list thread) and why I wrote this story on the fluency-helping thread (to help myself remember words like 'unparalleled' and 'embers' and the particular word for 'beef' that I used).

For example, if I asked you, "What's Malayalam for 'atonement'?", would you be able to tell me off the top of your head? (I just looked at my first post and realised that I'd forgotten the words I gave for "coaster" in all language except BE.)

At first, I correctly answered "[ˈpraːjəɕt͡ʃɪt̪əm]" in my head, then second-guessed myself, thinking, "Wait, that can't be right! It sounds too weird. It's probably some word I heard in the Bible or something." Then I said [pəɕt͡ʃaːˈt̪aːbəm], which in fact is another word for the same thing, just not the one I listed. But even then, the only reason why I almost got this one right is because I've just barely started trying to review all these words and see which ones I have trouble getting to stick. They won't stick unless I make a real effort to remember them.

linguoboy wrote:

gmalivuk wrote:Lysistrata, perhaps?

That'd be my guess.

Yep!

@Sal - I like that story.
Of course, it's also possible that the phalli were both instrument for masturbation and ritual object at the same time; masturbation may have had a ritual aspect.

I suppose it's plausible that masturbation *sometimes* had a ritual aspect, but it sounds like there's literally no evidence for that beyond the existence of the dildos themselves, and it is definitely *not* plausible that they never masturbated just to get off.