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29 October 2008 @ 12:48 pm
QuotesЯUs (9) & Words of Wonder (6)  
Little gem from Olive in last night's episode of Pushing Daisies:

Wouldn't it just rock and roll if liking someone meant they had to like you back? Of course that'd be a different universe and something else would probably suck.

Sigh. As in, never felt that way. Ever. *cough*

While looking up the quote I found a blog calling Chuck and Olive frenemies, a portmanteau of friend and enemy I hadn't met before. Dictionary.com denies any knowledge of that term, Wikipedia doesn't.


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09 October 2008 @ 08:32 pm
Words of Wonder (5)  
Looks like counting my plethora of houses didn't create as much of a brouhaha as I expected it to. (Yeah, I admit to using my fingers as a fulcrum.) Ah well, on to cars...
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10 July 2008 @ 05:14 pm
Words of Wonder (4)  
Another one from a movie, this time from Atonement:

doolally

The dictionary refused to help, but was kind enough to point me towards its sibling, the encyclopedia:

Originally British slang "doolally tap", loosely meaning "camp fever", referring to the apparent madness of men waiting for ships back to Britain after finishing their tour of duty in India at the British Army transit camp, Deolali. Men were said to have "doolally tap". By the 1940s this had been widely shortened to just "gone dolally" or just "dolally", an adjective meaning "mad" or "eccentric".

That even fits the time frame, nice one.

The movie's absolutely amazing btw.


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03 July 2008 @ 04:30 pm
Words of Wonder (3)  
Yesterday I watched Harold and Maude in an open air cinema. Strange movie. Funny, touching, but most of all very strange. I checked it at Wikipedia afterwards and the description there called Maude a 'septuagenarian'. Get out, I thought, you don't mean to tell me English has an extra word to describe people in their seventies?! My favorite online dictionary, however, agreed. With words like that, no wonder English is supposed to be one of the languages with the most extensive vocabulary.

Following inductive reasoning I also found the word 'sexagenarian' - no possible way to misconstrue that one...


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07 May 2008 @ 12:01 am
Words of Wonder (2)  
I got two more. Again, just click the word for an explanation should you require one.

smithereens
It just calls up this vivid image in my mind... love it. I've known it for ages, goes with being interested in SciFi, I guess.

malfeasance
OK, it's not really that weird a word. However, I just heard it on Fargo and I'm quite sure it has never crossed my path before. That doesn't happen very often anymore, so it really stuck out.

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12 October 2007 @ 04:47 pm
Words of Wonder (1)  
Every now and then I stumble upon words that stand out from the crowd. They just seem strange for some reason, as if someone just invented them. If I get the chance before forgetting about them I look them up just to be sure nobody's pulling any pranks. More often than not, they're real. Let me tell you, Delenn, crotchety ist only the tip of the iceberg. So this is where I will present my favorites. As I can't compete with a dictionary anyway, I will just link the definitions. Off we go:

shenanigan
A long time favorite of mine. Frequently used to describe political maneuvers somebody considers to be irresponsible.

smorgasbord
Recent addition, picked up while reading fanfiction (take that, critics...). Probably the most educated word available to describe the fact ;)


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