zompist bboard

I think it's going a bit far to say that plinth is "very common", but it was the only one of those other words mentioned (except "jamb" ofc) I knew the meaning of, or had even heard of.

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"It will not come by waiting for it. It will not be said, 'Here it is,' or 'There it is.' Rather, the Kingdom of the Father is spread out upon the earth, and men do not see it."
– The Gospel of Thomas

Well, plinth is a useful word if you work with masonry or carpentry, but it's definitely a one-syllable word with a specific technical meaning, even if rare is debatable.

And you haven't heard of joist, sash, sconce, lath, and grout? Grout is a very common word in my opinion, as is sconce. Joist and sash are pretty typical words one encounters if they have to work with houses in any fashion (and sash and joist are no less common than sill or crown). Lath is more uncommon, but familiar nonetheless to anyone who works with carpentry or who owns an old house.

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Falgwian and Falgwia!!

Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur.

Yes, I use plinth on a regular basis, whenever I'm talking about plinths. Or, to be honest, anything vaguely plinth-like, since my architectural vocabulary is limited. Nobody has ever seemed confused by this. I see no reason at all to think that it's not a common word IMD.

For instance, searching the BBC website doesn't just give results about the fourth plinth. In July, a giant Gromit (from Wallace and Gromit) statue was 'ripped from its plinth' but later returned. A bicycle seat was mounted on a plinth at the manchester international festival. Something was put on a plinth in Guernsey. Bolton Wanderers (football club) had built a plinth for a new statue of Nat Lofthouse. Duthie Park in Aberdeen was renovated, including the tall flagpole on a granite plinth. In June there was scaffolding around the plinth of a statue of the duke of cambridge, due to vandalism by a naked man. A replica spitfire was suspended on a plinth as a war memorial. Permission was refused for a statue of a football referee with a hemispherical plinth to make it look like a giant subbuteo player. Rioters in Istanbul stood shoulder to shoulder on a plinth. In May permission was given for a statue of Britain's first female war pilot to be placed on a plinth, and at the Eurovision Song Contest at least one act had a rising plinth. Outside the news, in a July 2012 episode of The Archers (very long running radio soap opera), someone suggested that a dog be put on a plinth. Paul O'Grady, very low-brow popular entertainer, commented on his radio show a few years ago that he thought the studio was haunted because a plinth had flown across the studio. Discussing reorganisation of the Scottish football league system, a BBC columnist pointed out the inherent bias in how changes would be considered: "There is a massive percentage reward of the television money that goes to the clubs finishing first and second in the league, and guess who has a monopoly on these positions on the plinth?" Staying in Scotland, the BBC previewed a scottish cup final by asking "will it be Celtic's name etched onto the plinth?" Live online commentary for a football match laments the surprising lack of a plinth: "Anyone fancy some Monday night football? Both sets of fans are in fabulous voice as the teams, led by Nemanja Vidic and Kevin Nolan, emerge from the tunnel in one corner of the Old Trafford pitch. There's no plinth for referee Chris Foy to pick the ball up from, but we're moments away from kick-off nevertheless." A cricketer writing about taking part in the Emirates Airline T20 cup describes the shape of the trophy by saying "It turned out to be a heavy wooden shield on top of a heavy marble plinth - ideal for taking as hand baggage!".

And there's a link to a Daily Mail story from earlier today about "how an angry swarm of wasps nearly killed me: GAVAN NADEN was just mowing the lawn... then horror struck!". Apparently it all went wrong when he picked up a wooden plinth in his garden. Meanwhile elsewhere today, or yesterday, the Deccan Herald reports the speech given by Nishant Savio of the industrial engineering and management department of the RV College of Engineering, in which he remarks "“I am grateful to the institute for giving me a solid plinth on which I can construct an excellent career path".

etc etc. Highbrow, lowbrow, literal, metaphorical... but no, please just assume that it's all just me making stuff up. Numerically, there were 757 hits for the BBC News pages alone, of which only 233 were about the Fourth Plinth. Likewise, only 19 of 38 blog posts and 10 of 30 sports posts mentioning plinths mentioned the fourth plinth. For comparison there were no hits at all on the BBC site for 'squinch', and only 2 articles for 'jamb' (if you ignore the handful of articles about the killing in The Jamb, a nightclub). And one blog post about a cricketer who learned to play with a cricket bat made from an old window jamb.


['Sash' and 'grout' are extremely common, though the former (ignoring the fashion sense) is only really found referring to sash windows, which are very common (and annoying, yet popular) here.]

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Blog: http://vacuouswastrel.wordpress.com/

But the river tripped on her by and by, lapping
as though her heart was brook: Why, why, why! Weh, O weh
I'se so silly to be flowing but I no canna stay!

No, it's not just you. It's clearly just Brits (and maybe a few oddballs elsewhere) using it.


Ignoring the fashion sense, I've never heard sash. And grout is solely a construction (which I'm including architecture as) term.

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Common Zein Scratchpad & other Stuffs! OMG AN ACTUAL CONPOST WTFBBQ

Formerly known as Drydic.

Robert Byron's The road to Oxiana. Recommended.

What? Sash is an extremely common word when doing anything with windows. If you buy a house, you better be able to identify sash rot, because that's going to kill your energy bill and efficiency and is a tell-tale sign that it's time for new windows.

Now if you haven't heard of a stile, I wouldn't be surprised, but sash?

Another good one speaking of construction is a shim.

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Falgwian and Falgwia!!

Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur.

And I've never done anything with windows except open/close them.

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Common Zein Scratchpad & other Stuffs! OMG AN ACTUAL CONPOST WTFBBQ

Formerly known as Drydic.

Well you use the sash to open and close the windows!

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Falgwian and Falgwia!!

Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur.

Err... the sash IS the window, Viktor. A sash is a moveable panel of connected panes of glass. A sash window is a window comprising one or more sashes - normally it means the arrangement with two overlapping sashes where one or both can be moved vertically to admit the air, operated by means of hidden counterweights contained within the casing of the window.

Sash windows are significant enough to be a near-universal lexical item (IMD) because:
a) being old (i.e. probably from 1650-1950), they're a desirable 'period feature' that people seek out
b) being a shit and obsolescent design, they're a horrible feature avoided by people who have had to live with them. [i) they don't let in much air, b) they always jam and become hard to open and close properly, 3) they're havens for mold and dirt, IV) they rattle in the wind, c) if the sash weight cord breaks, you're buggered unless you want to smash open your wall to get at it, v) they're expensive to replace or repair, and w) the old wood-and-glass sashes that are usually meant by the word provide no heat or sound insulation]
c) being Old and Authentic, planning offices tend to refuse to let people replace them with anything more sane, so they can be a bit of an albatross.

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Blog: http://vacuouswastrel.wordpress.com/

But the river tripped on her by and by, lapping
as though her heart was brook: Why, why, why! Weh, O weh
I'se so silly to be flowing but I no canna stay!

Hereabouts the idea of a "saner design" are windows that don't open or close at all. Give me my shitty, jammy, dirty, rattly, expensive sash windows over that any day.

How often to people talk about "sills"? (Not "windowsills", but just plain "sills"?)

As usual Sal things in the UK and the US are not the same. The sash is the window, and that is the part that you push up or down, left or right to open the window.

See we don't have all that counterweight stuff, etc. We have simple double hung or slider windows (or crankout) here where the sash, made of wood or vinyl, slides up, which is what people usually do to open the window, or slides down, which is what people don't usually realize they can do with double hung windows (and which is a great tool for ventilation) (Here are typical American double hung windows without muntins). Sliders function the same, just left and right. Some double hungs also come out towards or away from the window on an axis to allow cleaning of both sides of the glass. Our windows here are not typically divided ie. don't typically have muntins, unless you are going for some sort of classical look (though muntins seem to be rather popular with cheap vinyl windows where they look ridiculous because you're not fooling anyone with cheap mock decorative muntins. Here's an example of those cheap windows with muntins. You can see how the muntins are really just a construction placed between two panes of glass, which looks cheap because true muntins divide panes of glass.)

Sash windows are not an outdated concept here (at least not in the Midwest), and they are very much the standard, and they only jam if you're an idiot and decided to be lazy and paint them shut (which is only relevant for wood sash windows).

I use sill to refer to windowsill, and much more often than windowsill.

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Falgwian and Falgwia!!

Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur.

Which is why you saying 'you use the sash to open the window' was peculiar!

Yes, Viktor, sash windows, they're called (though the horizontal ones are rare here). How (vertical) sash windows work is that there is a weight hidden inside the case of the window, the sash weight, attached to the sashes via a concealed cord, the sash cord. If there weren't such a weight, you wouldn't be able to open the window. When you pulled up the sash, it would promptly slide right back down (which in practice they not infrequently do anyway, but anyway...). If there were enough friction between the sashes (or between each sash and the frame) to keep the sash in place against gravity, it would be permanently jammed and you'd have no chance of opening it. The counterweight solves all this. I strongly suspect you have counterweights in your sash windows, you've just never bothered to think about it. [And to be fair, since they're concealed and internal, you don't have much reason to notice them unless the cord breaks]. Alternatively, you could do the same with hidden springs, or a ratchet, or just a lock that let you fix the window in place. It's posssible that with some newfangled expensive rubbery foamy substances you might be able to do away with the need for weights/springs, but I don't for a moment believe that they're the norm throughout America yet...
I think it's also probably true here that most sashes lack muntins.

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Blog: http://vacuouswastrel.wordpress.com/

But the river tripped on her by and by, lapping
as though her heart was brook: Why, why, why! Weh, O weh
I'se so silly to be flowing but I no canna stay!

No, we do not use this system anymore. I have access to uninstalled windows and I just looked at a vinyl double hung window and I opened it, in fact I opened it laying on its side, and there is no counterweight system inside. There is a track and the window is held in place by tension-loaded springs. I have never seen counterweights in new windows (you are right however that we do have them in older wood sash windows though tension-loaded springs are the norm here in any new windows). I would find it remarkable if Brits are still producing double hung windows with counterweights.

*Edit*
They also use steel coils in new windows today to hold the sash in place.

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Falgwian and Falgwia!!

Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur.

I think I see what's going on here. These sash windows (as those in the know call them to distinguish them) are so ubiquitous that the general populace just calls them windows, and adjectives/appositional nouns are appended to describe other types.

And for the record, I'm fairly confident my parents' house does have the system Sal describes, on its ground floor windows. It was built in 1977, so I haven't seen them or anything and new windows are probably are different, but one of them won't stay up, which is probably because the cord broke. We just prop it open with a 'handheld' blender (it's a foot tall, so isn't exactly hand-sized...). The basement windows are different, being fire exits, so they slide open horizontally, which I dearly hope means they don't have any pulley/counterweights.

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Common Zein Scratchpad & other Stuffs! OMG AN ACTUAL CONPOST WTFBBQ

Formerly known as Drydic.

I think some of the confusion in this thread would be alleviated if we had a similar thread for two-syllable words. That way we could note the rare use of "common" to mean "rare", a meaning evidently most common when talking about how common rare words are.

sed and awk

Non-English example: Polish word for weir is jaz.

I'm sorry, your username is too long to be allowed to post in this thread.

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Common Zein Scratchpad & other Stuffs! OMG AN ACTUAL CONPOST WTFBBQ

Formerly known as Drydic.

Kak-Cementeh

Pronounce zeir username as if it was spelled that way and yer all set.

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Hey there.

Go away.

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Common Zein Scratchpad & other Stuffs! OMG AN ACTUAL CONPOST WTFBBQ

Formerly known as Drydic.

No U.

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Hey there.

Shut up and learn to read. Kaksikymmentä has five syllables, not four.

Let's stop now with arguing, OK?

more like cocks cum two syllables i can't do anything with am i right

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Siöö jandeng raiglin zåbei tandiüłåd;
nää džunnfin kukuch vklaivei sivei tåd.
Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei.

I don't know colloquial Finnish enough good, but I wouldn't be so sure here.

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The conlanger formerly known as “the conlanger formerly known as Pole, the”.

If we don't study the mistakes of the future we're doomed to repeat them for the first time.

Colloquially kakskyt (or alternatively kakskymment), so there. Still not monosyllabic though and both of the monosyllabic elements are numerals so hardly rare or specific.

Switch one subfamily to the east and call them комсь.

(I wonder if that would have yielded ˣkuusi or ˣkusi or ˣkumsi if it had been retained in Finnic.)

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[ˌʔaɪsəˈpʰɻ̊ʷoʊpɪɫ ˈʔæɫkəɦɔɫ]