The word you learned today

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! Shame it is untranslatable.

 

Acanthosis nigricans- darkened patches of skin in the folds of the body. Impressive name

 

Aye, is the treatment having a good scrub?

 

Toilet paper should do the trick.

 

That reminds me...

A woman was looking in the mirror at her chest when her husband walked in.

"Do you think I should get an augmentation?"

The man looked at his wife and handed her a piece of toilet paper, "Here, wipe this between your chest a couple of times a day."

The woman looked at her husband skeptically, "Wiping between my breasts with toilet paper will make them larger?"

He shrugged his sholders, "It worked for your butt."

How does this relate to a new word? Actually two words ... spousal assault.

 

An Australian woman spoke at a conference recently. She taught us the word "dob", a verb used mostly as in "no dobbing". It means "to tattle" or "to rat out" in N.A English, and according to her it is a great sin in Australian culture to dob on your mates.

 

'Dobbing someone in' used to be used in the UK (or certainly up here in the north) back in the 90's. Now we tend to say Grass instead: He's a grass, She grassed me up, They grassed on me.

 

Ocier [ɔsje] -- an archaic French verb meaning «to hit»,

Je languis des maus d'amours,
Mieuz aim assez qu'il m'ocie que nul autre maus

The pains of love languished me (?)
Better that it hit me than any other pain (?)

This is kinda hard to translate...

I recently began studying XIV and XVth centuries French poetry, it's mostly comprehensible to me, a modern speaker. The most fascinating thing is to study the spelling as most the material predates the Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts which has become more or less the basis for modern French orthography.

 

Ofelix, does that mean you get to read Francois Villon in the original version? Words cannot describe how much I envy you if 'tis so! BTW, have they translated the ones written in thieves' cant into modern French yet?

gavotte - a French folk dance, also a musical form based upon it.

hasbian - short for 'has been a lesbian'; a woman who identified as homosexual at some point in her life, but not anymore. Fun fact no. 1: when a friend told me this word, I misheard it as 'phasebian'. She corrected me, of course, but I think this accidental neologism was quite awesome.

 

It sure is, RS!

The Dutch words poep (poop) and trommel (drum or box) are everything but new to me. But I never heard them combined: Poeptrommel.

A friend of mine, living in the south of The Netherlands "invented" this word and I liked it immediately, so I offered him to bring the word North of the big rivers in our country. I haven't had much success sofar, so introducing it here might take the word to our members in Delft, Amsterdam and Stad aan het Haringvliet.

Poeptrommel (poopdrum or poopbox, but neither sound as good as the Dutch equivalent) can be used to describe a screwed up situation, a messy organisation or a sh*tty service and the like. You can use it to describe a littered room, but it's rather used to say what you think of that disorganized telecom company, the justicial faults, a corrupt political system or a heated and unclear discussion in the Alleys.
"De poeptrommel is geopend" (the poopdrum has been opened) would mean "the sh*t hit the fan"
"Wat een poeptrommel!" (What a poopdrum!) "What a mess!"

 

Interestingly, my today's entry is also from french: legerdemain.

 

Shame: I had to google Villon, yeah it's pretty much modern French but with weird spelling and few archaic term there and there.


La Ballade des dames du temps jadis / Ballad of the ladies of old time ?? -- first stroph

original;

Dictes moy ou n'en quel pays
Est Flora le belle Romaine
Archipiades, ne Thaïs,
Qui fut sa cousine germaine,
Echo parlant quant ruyt ou maire
Dessus riviere ou sus estan,
Que beaultè ot trop plus qu'humaine.
Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan?"

modernized spelling;

Dîtes moi où, en quel pays
Est [se trouve] Flora la belle romaine
Archipiade, et ? [ou] Thaïs
Qui fut sa cousine germaine
Écho parlant quand ? ou ? -- ????? can't make sense of that one
Dessous rivière ou sous étang
Que [de] beauté, plus qu'humaine
Mais où sont les neiges d'antan

Tell me where, in which country
Is Flora, the beautiful Roman
Archipiade and [or] Thais
Who was her step-cousin
Echo speaking when ?????
Over river or under pond,
What beauty, so more than a human
But where are the snows of old

note: the english translation is mine, and I assume others could do a far better job than I

Took me a while to figure out, not to picky but it's actually an english word that comes from the French expression " léger de main" literary light of hand i.e. a pickpocket. I couldn't found this expression in my dictionnary untill the obvious it me.

Edit: D&D really did teach me a lot about old French medieaval terminology I was first a little disappointed by Baldur Gate's [and D&D in English] by the apparent lack of "proper" terminology, so many compound words ! longsword, shortsword, breastplate etc.* Of course now I know that compounding is an integral part of the Germanic languages, and what I perceived back then as improper (or laziness in not seeking old looks to words) was just the way English behave.

 

Yes, I said it is from from french, not french.

The problematic Echo up there may refer to the wailing Echo from the greek mythology.

 

illocutionary   
/ɪləˈkyuʃənɛri/
–adjective Philosophy, Linguistics .
pertaining to a linguistic act performed by a speaker in producing an utterance, as suggesting, warning, promising, or requesting.

source

Uh, didn't know that one.

 

I learned about...

Absconding, which means to concealing or to hiding.

I saw it in a phrase, nice phrase but I still don't fully comprehend the meaning of the phrase. Perhaps somebody can share the meaning. It's...

'absconding with the urine'

 

NAY!!

From here: http://www.sorcerers.net/forums/showthread.php?t=53146

 

Are you taking the piss?

 

Of course NOT!!! I'm hiding behind it.

 

I think abscond means moreso to run off surreptitiously (such as with something you stole), so you would be 'running off with the urine in secret' or something like that. Why remains a mystery.

 

Absconding has multiple meanings, whilst the root of the word abscondere revolves around hiding it is more a term for deception.

The three generally accepted meanings of the word revolve around absence. To conceal from, to withdraw from and to steal away from.

As a term for literally hiding an actual object is an obselete expression of the word in english. In french I believe it is still literally the verb to hide. In which case absconding with the urine could be conjecture to poorly paraphrased hiding with the contents of a bladder

To abscond from company is to withdraw quietly without much fuss, absconding with the Mona Lisa is to sneak it away - usually with a level of casual air about the act as to not arouse suspicion of theft, to abscond with the urine is using the term in its form of concealment, putting forward taking the piss whilst also alluding to it's subtlety and tone of a cunningly expressed opinion laced with enough disarming as to not be overt