Word game: Suspect Etymology

Post by **spot** » Sat Dec 24, 2011 10:53 am

ForumGarden announces a new game, just in time for Christmas.

Contestants are entitled to PLAY whenever they have a word in common English usage for which they've derived an etymology which, on reflection, is less likely than they first thought. The PLAY consists of a single post beginning with "PLAY" on a single line followed by the word and etymology being submitted.

As an experimental move, comments are permitted between plays.

Challenges may negate a PLAY.

No word may be the subject of more than one PLAY.

No contestant may PLAY twice in a row.

The winner will be the contestant with the most PLAY posts.

Good luck!

Post by **spot** » Sat Dec 24, 2011 10:54 am

PLAY

Lingerie: from the Latin lingere, "to lick".

Bruv · Post by **Bruv** » Sat Dec 24, 2011 11:51 am

Do not Google 'lingere'....................unless you are broadminded.

Post by **spot** » Sat Dec 24, 2011 11:56 am

I'm shocked at how few people can spell. That's awful.

Snooz · Post by **Snooz** » Sat Dec 24, 2011 12:41 pm

spot;1379633 wrote: I'm shocked at how few people can spell. That's awful.

You should probably set your google image search on "safe".

Post by **spot** » Sat Dec 24, 2011 1:05 pm

SnoozeAgain;1379647 wrote: You should probably set your google image search on "safe".

My Google setting *is* on safe. What's more, I run my browser with a child-safe filter installed and active just to make the World Wide Web a more reasonable place to spend time. It has the added virtue of blocking known infected addresses which attempt to recruit the browsing machine into a botnet.

Bruv · Post by **Bruv** » Sat Dec 24, 2011 4:35 pm

spot;1379648 wrote: My Google setting *is* on safe. What's more, I run my browser with a child-safe filter installed and active just to make the World Wide Web a more reasonable place to spend time. It has the added virtue of blocking known infected addresses which attempt to recruit the browsing machine into a botnet.

So........what does 'lingere' bring up on your Google search ?

My excuse was to find out what it meant in Latin..............I am none the wiser..............or perhaps I am.

Post by **spot** » Sat Dec 24, 2011 5:39 pm

Bruv;1379671 wrote: So........what does 'lingere' bring up on your Google search ?

My excuse was to find out what it meant in Latin..............I am none the wiser..............or perhaps I am.

It brings up on mine what it brought up on yours, stack upon stack of mis-spelled lingerie references in place of the naughty verse it ought to have found. And then what proper person could be partial / To all those nauseous epigrams of Martial?

Tomorrow? Pah, today's too late.

The wiser man lived yesterday.

Post by **spot** » Sun Jan 25, 2015 2:49 pm

It has taken me some minutes to understand what that last post meant. I eventually found it...

Martial, Epigram on Philaenis, trans Gillian Spraggs

The mystery I'm left with is which couplet of Martial I then translated at the post's end. I can think of no way of ever finding out.

Bruv · Post by **Bruv** » Sun Jan 25, 2015 3:12 pm

spot;1472771 wrote: It has taken me some minutes to understand what that last post meant.

I am happy to know you confuse yourself, so what chance for us numpties ?

Snooz · Post by **Snooz** » Sun Jan 25, 2015 4:33 pm

Numpties: Egg shaped chocolate candies that are only sold during Easter.

I'm not sure I have the idea of this game down.

Ahso! · Post by **Ahso!** » Sun Jan 25, 2015 4:36 pm

You left out "Play".

Post by **spot** » Sun Jan 25, 2015 4:47 pm

Ahso!;1472811 wrote: You left out "Play".

Snooze's default state when posting is "PLAY", we can assume it.

Post by **LarsMac** » Sun Jan 25, 2015 7:24 pm

spot;1379624 wrote: PLAY

Lingerie: from the Latin lingere, "to lick".

This sounds like something you'd find on Facebook, and I am pretty sure it is incorrect.

Post by **spot** » Mon Jan 26, 2015 6:26 am

LarsMac;1472821 wrote: This sounds like something you'd find on Facebook, and I am pretty sure it is incorrect.

One point to the Heron-eating-a-frog chap. An unlikely avatar, one might think.

Post by **LarsMac** » Mon Jan 26, 2015 7:04 am

Snooz;1472809 wrote: Numpties: Egg shaped chocolate candies that are only sold during Easter.

I'm not sure I have the idea of this game down.

You probably do, but I am not touching THAT one.

Ahso! · Post by **Ahso!** » Mon Jan 26, 2015 7:16 am

PLAY:

Placate > Latin > a measure of resistance

(did I do that correctly?)

Post by **spot** » Mon Jan 26, 2015 7:34 am

Ahso!;1472839 wrote: PLAY:

Placate > Latin > a measure of resistance

(did I do that correctly?)

Very correctly.

The best I can manage is Georg Ohm's battery experiments, Buddhist meditation and Neville Chamberlain at Munich. I'm sure there's a quicker route.

Ahso! · Post by **Ahso!** » Mon Jan 26, 2015 8:10 am

spot;1472840 wrote: Very correctly.

The best I can manage is Georg Ohm's battery experiments, Buddhist meditation and Neville Chamberlain at Munich. I'm sure there's a quicker route.I don't understand how you're going about that. What I did with your entry was Google "Lingerie Etymology" and came up with "Linen" instead of "To Lick"

ETA: Are you doing a sort of reverse lookup?

Post by **spot** » Mon Jan 26, 2015 8:33 am

Ahso!;1472846 wrote: I don't understand how you're going about that. What I did with your entry was Google "Lingerie Etymology" and came up with "Linen" instead of "To Lick"

ETA: Are you doing a sort of reverse lookup?

You're quite right that the way the word "lingerie" developed over the centuries was from the old word for linen, "linge". My suggestion that it was from the latin "lingere", the verb meaning to lick, was wrong. Deliberately wrong.

Placate, as best I know, is from "placere" meaning to please. One of the most interesting problems is, I think, how a word twists from one meaning to the next as each generation takes it and mangles it and leaves it lying used and naked on the side of the street for someone else to employ.

I thought I'd try to get from "a measure of resistance" to "placate" by logical twists. It's not a real description of how Placate has shifted meaning though. I took "a measure of resistance", the Ohm, named after George Ohm, to the Buddhist meditation chant "Omm" because it has the same sound, to the most famous British Buddhist in living memory, Neville Chamberlain, who bought a year for the British Armed Forces to build up its fighting numbers and capacity by placating the German Government in 1938 instead of going to war prematurely and losing.

It's a what-if sort of derivation. Nobody has ever explained Neville Chamberlain's philosophy quite that way before. He did a great thing in 1938 and he was lambasted for it by chickenhawks ever after.

Ahso! · Post by **Ahso!** » Mon Jan 26, 2015 8:48 am

I appreciate the explanation. I also see the route you took to it. Your way is a bit more fun and challenging; probably better brain therapy too.

As a side note: Perhaps Obama knew about Neville Chamerlain; he's apparently taken a similar approach with the republicans in his focus on the long game.

FourPart · Post by **FourPart** » Mon Jan 26, 2015 11:21 am

You can lick a battery & taste the resistance. I don't think I'd call it pleasureable though, but then, there's no accounting for taste.