Are we not drawn onward, we few, drawn onward to new era? Was it Eliot's toilet I saw? May a moody baby doom a yam? Sis, ask Costner to not rent socks "as is". Murder for a jar of red rum.
O Geronimo, no minor ego. Drab as a fool, aloof as a bard. Never odd or even. Bar Arafat, a far Arab. Cain: a monomaniac Drat Saddam, a mad dastard. Draw, O Caesar. Erase a coward.
God saw I was dog. Go deliver a dare, vile dog! Doc Note: I dissent. A fast never prevents a fatness. I diet on cod. Don't nod. Dogma: I am God.
c_b: I just read that Philbrick book a few months ago! And a fine book it is, too.
I might just possibly have come up with a book to match your voracious literary foraging - I just started William Gaddis's "The Recognitions". It may just need its very own list.
paulajane: I don't know any palindrome generators on the web. Most of the individual lines are in the book "Word Circus" by Richard Lederer. I just kind of mixed and matched more or less at random.
From a marketing point of view, if we had 10,000 sionnachs on this site we would have a lotta hits. No, no, no. There's only one sionnach. I am yet to forgive him for googleganger but anyone who lists bandicoot must be essentially okay.
S., I sympathize with you, and so, especially, does my feline companion Aglaja, who misses her Gourmet Gold Tuna Paté, which my local supermarket stopped carrying a month or so ago, which is a problem because she and her sister Erazma are both quite selective when it comes to their dinner. I am glad you found my suggestion useful.
Mr. Sionnach, your wish is an order for us. But you're kindly requested to consider our vezzeggiativo as a form of appreciation and fondness towards you. I could, for example, complain my name is never written in italic as, being a genus, it should deserve. All the best, Prolagus sp. Pomel, 1853
Thanks, rolig. I like the term retail evanescence a lot. Though I'm aware that the notion that I am being selectively targeted by this phenomenon ('it's always the brands I like that are discontinued') is paranoid, I will probably think of it mentally as targeted retail evanescence.
In fact, I can manage to get by just fine without the delicious Krispy Kranberry Krunch. But how can I be expected to maintain my impeccable silver sionnach coiffure when they take away my citrus mint shampoo, god damn it!
Because I don't like it, that's why. 'Spurned' seems inadequate to capture the wilful malevolence with which the manufacturing sector targets and eliminates the few simple pleasures I manage to eke out in this dystopian vale of tears...
{God forgive me for that last sentence. I mean, postmodern irony can be amusing in its own brittle fashion, but that my inability to find cranberry crunch cereal in the supermarket should be considered anything other than a totally first-world non-problem is clearly ludicrous}
But I would like to nip this abbreviation of sionnach as sion in the bud, if possible. Please don't make me vanish, only to be reincarnated as madra_rua
Very interesting. Usually this kind of concept is named after a mythic character who experienced the same situation (the first that comes to my mind is Ondine's curse). I'm thinking. Thank you sion, I won't be able to study for the whole week.
I invite all Wordies to come up with an appropriate term for the following specific phenomenon:
The near-certainty that, in the rare instance when some particular brand of consumer product (cereal, shampoo, kitty litter, what-have-you..) actually catches my fancy to the extent that I make the effort to remember its name, within a maximum of six weeks it will be discontinued forever by the manufacturer and/or all stores on the West Coast will no longer distribute it.
I realise there is an element of paranoia in positing such a phenomenon, but the list of examples is a long one.
I think I'll like Master and Margarita a lot more when I'm not ploughing through it for school, to be honest. I am, however, a fan of trying to incorporate "Not causing trouble, not touching anything, fixing the primus" into conversation as often as possible.
No problem! You know, Sardinia could become a quite saudade-melancholic list, and it could be a good idea to appease it! By the way, thank you for your apologishy message and for the constant netiquette of the whole Wordie community!
Hi, sionnach. I wanted to thank you for your "Change One Letter" list, and for your rant on the word page for cremains, because both gave me a good laugh the other day when I needed them. Cheers!
Let us go then, you and I While the evening is spread out against the sky Like the Baghdad skyline behind Wolf Blitzer Or a criminal taken down by A.G. Spitzer
In the room the women come and go “I’m called an escort, not a ho.”
The corridors of power are lonely, late at night The bad guys all day long you have to fight You deserve a little reward – maybe a cookie? Nope – even a hero needs some nookie.
In the room the women come and go “Plastic works, a cheque, or cash to go.”
Temptation looms – a vision, out of reach. The voice of conscience: “Don’t you eat that peach!” Too late! Our hero reaches for his cheques. Another politician laid low by the lure of sex.
In the room the women come and go “Eliot? Oh yeah, huge ego and libido.”
I should have been a pair of ragged claws scuttling across the shores of silent seas. Instead my taste for high-priced whores Has made of me the emperor of sleaze.
Whether you're a butterfly or a deep-sea diver, The salt of the earth or a scheming conniver, A mythical beast like a werewolf or wyvern, You will amount to nothing unless you can make a nucular bomb out of paper clips just like McGyver.
Thank you, sionnach. I am having fun. I like to see how other people connect with words, too. This is such an interesting site. I have enjoyed your humor from day one.
thanks for the link to the Slovak idioms. Some of these are hilarious, and all serve as cautionary tales about mistranslation. I don't know Slovak (the language I work with primarily is Slovene, a third or fourth cousin), but I can figure some of these out. For examle "browsing banks" should be "surfing on the shore" ("surfovat" means "surf" or "browse the Internet"; "bank" in the sense of land bordering a body of water), and I think "flight" should be "years" ("let" means "flight", but "leta" means "years"), so you get something like "In years when it's especially hot, people go to the shore to surf."
Am having challenges with 'vegetarian buffalo'. Am OK with 'buffalo wings' and thanks for the education. Does 'vegatarian buffalo' stand up as an expression in its own right?
My challenge was that plug-ugly is one word (hyphenated) and we do have plug uglies but while spark plug uglies is ok it doesn't have the same ring to it.
Then I found the following on wiki ...
Plug Ugly captains included John English and James Morgan.
So that makes it alright then.
Also as long as the expressions work as defined then the part of speech matters not.
I know I could have just said OK. I record the reasoning for posterity.
John. I always have the hardest time explaining in writing how words are pronounced, but here's my best shot.
sionnach: two syllables, with the stress on the second. It's as if you were going to say Sinead (as in Sinead O' Connor), but replaced 'ead' with 'ach' (rhymes with 'loch').
I have to admit a certain grudging admiration for mi-vox's hypnotic little scripts. But I have no illusions - spambots, no matter how superficially charming, are not our friends.
You, sir (or madame, I haven't been paying attention) are a sardonic genius. But watch out, if he's smart, mi-vox might try to recruit you. I know I would. ^_^
c_b: No worries, thanks! The book in question, by the way, is called "Depraved and Insulting English" by Peter Novobatzky and Ammon Shea. It has joined Mrs Byrne's dictionary and Charles Harrington Elster's "There's a Word for It : a Grandiloquent Guide to Life" on my shelf of favorite word books.
There's something really satisfying about seeing that I have listed 6666 words. It seems like a natural milestone. So much so that I am reluctant to add any more, lest I disturb the fearful symmetry of that delightful 6666.
Yes, this post is all about me. What can I say? I'm shallow like that.
By the way, I'm officially confused on the foxtrot clue - my answer was obtained by applying the same 13-letter shift along the alpha-bravo-charlie alphabet that takes you from tango to golf, which would map foxtrot to sierra, but apparently that's not what oroboros has in mind.
swollenostrich; I tend to associate defenestrations with Prague, because of the several such events that featured prominently in its history. A google search on the term "defenestration of Prague" should provide further information. It's unclear why the urge to throw people out of windows has apparently proven irresistible to citizens of Prague throughout history - maybe it has happened just as often in other cities, and was just better documented in Prague.
I will be taking a wordie break for a while. See you all in a few weeks.
OMG, arcadia, that clip was teh alsome. Thanks!!!
Ha, cute clip arcadia! I love oozy rat in a sanitary zoo. Story of my life, really.
:)
I hope this works:
God, Astor trots a dog.
Are we not drawn onward, we few, drawn onward to new era?
Was it Eliot's toilet I saw?
May a moody baby doom a yam?
Sis, ask Costner to not rent socks "as is".
Murder for a jar of red rum.
O Geronimo, no minor ego.
Drab as a fool, aloof as a bard.
Never odd or even.
Bar Arafat, a far Arab.
Cain: a monomaniac
Drat Saddam, a mad dastard.
Draw, O Caesar. Erase a coward.
God saw I was dog.
Go deliver a dare, vile dog!
Doc Note: I dissent. A fast never prevents a fatness. I diet on cod.
Don't nod.
Dogma: I am God.
Don't nod.
Do geese see God?
Sionnach, heads up. I'm done reading The Danger Tree.
C_b, I'll trade you for a Tony Horwitz.
Okay, well... I'm done already! :)
c_b: I just read that Philbrick book a few months ago! And a fine book it is, too.
I might just possibly have come up with a book to match your voracious literary foraging - I just started William Gaddis's "The Recognitions". It may just need its very own list.
Sionnach, I'm apologizing in advance for entering lots of words from the book I just finished reading. Heads up!
Fennec foxes indeed. With 10% fewer chromosomes than your regular fox!
Oooohh!!! *overwhelmed with cuteness*
Those are fennec foxes, right?
for sionnach: my nickname as a child was: Diggle. My father gave it to me. Still, to this day (thank God) he calls me "Digg."
Why was Michelle Shocked?
Because she saw Gumby giving Mr Potatohead.
paulajane: I don't know any palindrome generators on the web. Most of the individual lines are in the book "Word Circus" by Richard Lederer. I just kind of mixed and matched more or less at random.
brilliant! you use wordsmith? another generator? love it...
Nurse, I spy gypsies, run!
Ah, Satan sees Natasha.
Won't lovers revolt now?
Niagara, O roar again.
May a banana nab a yam?
Ma is as selfless as I am.
A goy did yoga.
I prefer pi.
If I had a hi-fi.
Won't lovers revolt now?
A slut nixes sex in Tulsa.
Sex at noon taxes.
So many dynamos.
Niagara, O roar again.
Sit on a potato pan Otis!
Rise to vote sir!
Star comedy by Democrats.
Stab nail at ill Italian bats.
Please be advised that polite requests to Australians take the form: What the bloody hell are you up to?
From a marketing point of view, if we had 10,000 sionnachs on this site we would have a lotta hits.
No, no, no.
There's only one sionnach. I am yet to forgive him for googleganger but anyone who lists bandicoot must be essentially okay.
Good choice! I already have a candidate for my 10,000th in mind.
Me too, bilby. Congrats, s! :-)
And I thought sionnach was jogging ten kilometres! I was about to ask him how his calf-muscles were feeling.
Thanks, mollusque. Banzai was number 10,000.
Congratulations on completing your run, sionnach! Was endless number 10,000?
OK: Time to start my 10K run. Eat my dust, wordiez!
S., I sympathize with you, and so, especially, does my feline companion Aglaja, who misses her Gourmet Gold Tuna Paté, which my local supermarket stopped carrying a month or so ago, which is a problem because she and her sister Erazma are both quite selective when it comes to their dinner. I am glad you found my suggestion useful.
And, most important, I miss you here, sionny.
Mr. Sionnach, your wish is an order for us. But you're kindly requested to consider our vezzeggiativo as a form of appreciation and fondness towards you. I could, for example, complain my name is never written in italic as, being a genus, it should deserve.
All the best,
Prolagus sp. Pomel, 1853
(PS I like "pro", it sounds cute)
Thanks, rolig. I like the term retail evanescence a lot. Though I'm aware that the notion that I am being selectively targeted by this phenomenon ('it's always the brands I like that are discontinued') is paranoid, I will probably think of it mentally as targeted retail evanescence.
In fact, I can manage to get by just fine without the delicious Krispy Kranberry Krunch. But how can I be expected to maintain my impeccable silver sionnach coiffure when they take away my citrus mint shampoo, god damn it!
Sionnach, I think your cranberry crunch problem is part of the phenomenon we might call the Law of Vanishing Commodities, or more simply, retail evanescence.
Nobody is stocking crudberry crash cereal in your stupormarket of choice. Why don't you?
Yes, sion is brutal and abrupt, like a fox with its tail cut off.
Nobody is listing Protocol of the Spurned Consumer of Sion. Why don't you?
Because I don't like it, that's why. 'Spurned' seems inadequate to capture the wilful malevolence with which the manufacturing sector targets and eliminates the few simple pleasures I manage to eke out in this dystopian vale of tears...
{God forgive me for that last sentence. I mean, postmodern irony can be amusing in its own brittle fashion, but that my inability to find cranberry crunch cereal in the supermarket should be considered anything other than a totally first-world non-problem is clearly ludicrous}
But I would like to nip this abbreviation of sionnach as sion in the bud, if possible. Please don't make me vanish, only to be reincarnated as madra_rua
Protocol of the Spurned Consumer of Sion.
Sorry, sion, it was just an example :-) I could have cited Tantalus' torment as well, or the Labors of Hercules...
So I have to confess that the relevance of Ondine's curse is lost on me ....
Very interesting. Usually this kind of concept is named after a mythic character who experienced the same situation (the first that comes to my mind is Ondine's curse). I'm thinking. Thank you sion, I won't be able to study for the whole week.
I invite all Wordies to come up with an appropriate term for the following specific phenomenon:
The near-certainty that, in the rare instance when some particular brand of consumer product (cereal, shampoo, kitty litter, what-have-you..) actually catches my fancy to the extent that I make the effort to remember its name, within a maximum of six weeks it will be discontinued forever by the manufacturer and/or all stores on the West Coast will no longer distribute it.
I realise there is an element of paranoia in positing such a phenomenon, but the list of examples is a long one.
Thoughts? Suggestions?
I think I'll like Master and Margarita a lot more when I'm not ploughing through it for school, to be honest. I am, however, a fan of trying to incorporate "Not causing trouble, not touching anything, fixing the primus" into conversation as often as possible.
No problem! You know, Sardinia could become a quite saudade-melancholic list, and it could be a good idea to appease it!
By the way, thank you for your apologishy message and for the constant netiquette of the whole Wordie community!
Hi, sionnach. I wanted to thank you for your "Change One Letter" list, and for your rant on the word page for cremains, because both gave me a good laugh the other day when I needed them. Cheers!
Ha ha ha. Very good.
Elegy for Eliot : The Lovesong of A.G. Spitzer
Let us go then, you and I
While the evening is spread out against the sky
Like the Baghdad skyline behind Wolf Blitzer
Or a criminal taken down by A.G. Spitzer
In the room the women come and go
“I’m called an escort, not a ho.”
The corridors of power are lonely, late at night
The bad guys all day long you have to fight
You deserve a little reward – maybe a cookie?
Nope – even a hero needs some nookie.
In the room the women come and go
“Plastic works, a cheque, or cash to go.”
Temptation looms – a vision, out of reach.
The voice of conscience: “Don’t you eat that peach!”
Too late! Our hero reaches for his cheques.
Another politician laid low by the lure of sex.
In the room the women come and go
“Eliot? Oh yeah, huge ego and libido.”
I should have been a pair of ragged claws
scuttling across the shores of silent seas.
Instead my taste for high-priced whores
Has made of me the emperor of sleaze.
Wow! Congrats!
Jubilations are in order!
Wheeeeeee! 8888 words. Time for a break.
Whether you're a butterfly or a deep-sea diver,
The salt of the earth or a scheming conniver,
A mythical beast like a werewolf or wyvern,
You will amount to nothing unless you can make a nucular bomb out of paper clips just like McGyver.
Thank you, Sionnach! To celebrate, I made eleventy my 5555th word. (Is 1111 eleventy-eleven or one thousand eleventy-one?)
Congratulations yourself, on passing 8000 words!
Thank you, sionnach. I am having fun. I like to see how other people connect with words, too. This is such an interesting site. I have enjoyed your humor from day one.
thanks for the link to the Slovak idioms. Some of these are hilarious, and all serve as cautionary tales about mistranslation. I don't know Slovak (the language I work with primarily is Slovene, a third or fourth cousin), but I can figure some of these out. For examle "browsing banks" should be "surfing on the shore" ("surfovat" means "surf" or "browse the Internet"; "bank" in the sense of land bordering a body of water), and I think "flight" should be "years" ("let" means "flight", but "leta" means "years"), so you get something like "In years when it's especially hot, people go to the shore to surf."
Those last few words, barleychild, ballicatter and the others in that group...SPLENDID!
Well, all of my buffalo friends are strictly vegetarian :-)
But you're probably right - it doesn't fit the criteria, strictly speaking.
Back to the drawing board.
Am having challenges with 'vegetarian buffalo'. Am OK with 'buffalo wings' and thanks for the education. Does 'vegatarian buffalo' stand up as an expression in its own right?
I'll look to you to enter on the 'sweet tooth fairy' list. Hope that's OK.
Re spark plug ugly
My challenge was that plug-ugly is one word (hyphenated) and we do have plug uglies but while spark plug uglies is ok it doesn't have the same ring to it.
Then I found the following on wiki ...
Plug Ugly captains included John English and James Morgan.
So that makes it alright then.
Also as long as the expressions work as defined then the part of speech matters not.
I know I could have just said OK. I record the reasoning for posterity.
And I like 'spark plug ugly' a lot.
Keep them coming.
Sorry, sionnach, but you'll have to run 'vegetable buffalo wings' through me before I can comment. Maybe I'm in the wrong part of the world.
I actually had to look up Hedwig and the Angry Inch...this place is very educational. ;)
John. I always have the hardest time explaining in writing how words are pronounced, but here's my best shot.
sionnach: two syllables, with the stress on the second. It's as if you were going to say Sinead (as in Sinead O' Connor), but replaced 'ead' with 'ach' (rhymes with 'loch').
Clear as mud, right?
Sionnach, I've been wondering for a while now: how is your Wordie name pronounced?
Gee thanks, arcadia! Mostly my lyrical Irish whimsy is channeled through my male side.
I have to admit a certain grudging admiration for mi-vox's hypnotic little scripts. But I have no illusions - spambots, no matter how superficially charming, are not our friends.
You, sir (or madame, I haven't been paying attention) are a sardonic genius. But watch out, if he's smart, mi-vox might try to recruit you. I know I would. ^_^
c_b: No worries, thanks! The book in question, by the way, is called "Depraved and Insulting English" by Peter Novobatzky and Ammon Shea. It has joined Mrs Byrne's dictionary and Charles Harrington Elster's "There's a Word for It : a Grandiloquent Guide to Life" on my shelf of favorite word books.
Sionnach, I sincerely hope you do not feel hampered in adding new words by my squeamishness. Hope you're enjoying that book!
But it was a magical moment, wasn't it? ;-)
Thanks, rt & bilby. Fresh new words coming soon to lists near you.
Lovely! Congrats. Although I do hope you'll add more words at some point. They're always great ones, after all. :-)
Nice number of words! Divide it by 6 and build picket fences for your neighbours, yourself, and even those crinkly dudes across the road.
There's something really satisfying about seeing that I have listed 6666 words. It seems like a natural milestone. So much so that I am reluctant to add any more, lest I disturb the fearful symmetry of that delightful 6666.
Yes, this post is all about me. What can I say? I'm shallow like that.
Foxtrot is six letters in from a and uniform is six letter in from z. We're talkin' symmetry here! ;o)
By the way, I'm officially confused on the foxtrot clue - my answer was obtained by applying the same 13-letter shift along the alpha-bravo-charlie alphabet that takes you from tango to golf, which would map foxtrot to sierra, but apparently that's not what oroboros has in mind.
swollenostrich; I tend to associate defenestrations with Prague, because of the several such events that featured prominently in its history. A google search on the term "defenestration of Prague" should provide further information. It's unclear why the urge to throw people out of windows has apparently proven irresistible to citizens of Prague throughout history - maybe it has happened just as often in other cities, and was just better documented in Prague.
Um, no...no I'm not from there. Why?
Nar, it's an acronym, TGFW, so the correct answer is Whisky.
Thank god for Wordie :-)
Hmmmm. No, but I think you've got the context for the thing. Answer here when you're ready.
tango : golf :: foxtrot : sierra
sionnach:
tango : golf :: foxtrot : ?
(it's probably too easy for ya, but I like it!)
Sionnach, if that's what it takes, I'm in double the trouble!
Thanks, c_b. Tangible evidence of my misdirected energy. Not to mention incurable geekitude.
Congrats on your five-thousandth word, sionnach! Whoopeee!!
Thanks, oroboros.
Wonderful website, sionnach!
Hi! You are a coinventor of panvocalic. See my comment there.
thanks for the words! gedankenexperiment is wonderful. how could i have missed this!