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Lovely and abandoned words

Diaphonous

Recently reminded of it in Fathers and Sons. It's one that should be used more often.
 
Gem said:
What about words that over time aquire additional meaning, take for instance this old batman comic...Click Here
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I'd recommend anyone with a slightly perverse sense of humour and an interest in superhero comics to check out that entire site. Completely hilarious.
 
beergood,perverse? I thought it was healthy :D , will have to reevaluate my sense of humour. Poor Robin, he always has to carry the burden for the relationship;) .

I came across the word Moiety (a half) today and was rather taken with it, (although that could be because it reminds me of Professor Moriarty:rolleyes: )
 
Perhaps these words ain't lovely, but I just recalled the phrase "dab hand" and have a general sense that it means to be pretty good at something. Anyone know if this is accurate? Haven't heard this one in many years and I'm mainly wondering what level of expertise it's meant to describe.:)
 
bren said:
Perhaps these words ain't lovely, but I just recalled the phrase "dab hand" and have a general sense that it means to be pretty good at something. Anyone know if this is accurate? Haven't heard this one in many years and I'm mainly wondering what level of expertise it's meant to describe.:)
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That's exactly what it means - my mum uses it all the time.
One of my favourite words is 'transient.'
And I love the way Americans say 'squirrel,' which kind of sounds like squirrrrrl but is impossible to say unless you've been brought up to it.
 
Thanks, samg. Maybe it's another phrase more commom to the UK and that's the big reason I haven't heard it lately. I too enjoy the skwirl, skwi-rel pronunciation split.
 
direstraits said:
Ah, a short leave of absence and I miss all the praises! Yay!

I was a batnana before, so I figured I'd become a superbanana, after a spell of being a geishanana.

No, poppy, it's not winter, unfortunately. It's bloody hot these days, and if the aircon isn't working around in the office, everybody's bloody cranky. :)

Hehe... we still try to pronounce either as 'ai-ther'. However, the only part that tears me in two is the word 'router'. In the IT business, the router is 'raow-ter' instead of 'roo-ter'. I've always thought 'raow-ter' is the American way of pronouncing it. But nobody, neither american nor english colleagues I've worked with ever pronounced 'roo-ter'.

ds
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Well....I'm English, and I always say 'roo-ter' - after all, it routes ('roots') information from one place to another. As the song lyrics say, 'get your kicks on route ('root') 66' - not even the original artist says 'raowt' 66!

Rout ('raowt') means to displace enemy forces from the battlefield 'en masse', or to cut a profile on a piece of wood. Now that's where the confusion comes in...I can rout ('raowt') a profile, and I use a router ('raowter') to do it, as opposed to the router ('rooter') that my computer network uses...

Two nations divided by a common language? I think so, yes!
 
samg said:
That's exactly what it means - my mum uses it all the time.
One of my favourite words is 'transient.'
And I love the way Americans say 'squirrel,' which kind of sounds like squirrrrrl but is impossible to say unless you've been brought up to it.
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I hate to say this, but the 'squirl' thing just sounds like laziness to me - witness many Americans' pronounciation of other, similar words - for example, mirror, terrorism. GB jnr wants to wage war on 'terrism' - sounds to me like he has a vendetta against holidaymakers!

Ooo...'vendetta' - that's a good one
 
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