Thesaurus - funny poster!

Dad's Dictionary...

As you may have noticed I haven't been blogging for a looooong time, but I will try from now on to post a little more often. I like blogging. It's just finding the time. All my children but one have almost or completely 'flown the nest' and I now find myself in a totally different situation. Whereas before everybody had their jobs to do around the house and garden, now guess who has to do it.

So, in keeping with tradition of a word for Wednesday, I am now going to introduce you all to another of me Dad's favourites:

ARGY-BARGY

This expression remains all too clear for me even now, probably because I was almost always the one on the receiving end! Dad would give me something to do and would invariably add "now, I don't want no argy-bargy, you hear me?" If that particular something involved my brother or sister then my guess is that he felt he had even more reason for adding it!

Argy-bargy was a late nineteenth-century modification of a Scots phrase, which appeared early in the same century in the form argle-bargle.  The second part of the two forms, in fact, is no more than a nonsense rhyming repetition of which the English language is full. The technical word for such doublets is reduplication. Think easy-peasy, hoity-toity, super-duper, etc.

So what does argy-bargy mean. In most webs I've looked at it means 'a lively discussion, argument, dispute, perhaps one which becomes bad tempered enough to produce a spat or minor quarrel'

Shall we call it a day?

Liked this poster...

Autumn poem

October's party

October gave a party;

The leaves by hundreds came-
The Chestnuts, Oaks, and Maples,
And leaves of every name.
The Sunshine spread a carpet,
And everything was grand,
Miss Weather led the dancing,
Professor Wind the band.

The Chestnuts came in yellow,
The Oaks in crimson dressed;
The lovely Misses Maple
In scarlet looked their best;
All balanced to their partners,
And gaily fluttered by;
The sight was like a rainbow
New fallen from the sky.

Then, in the rustic hollow,
At hide-and-seek they played,
The party closed at sundown,
And everybody stayed.
Professor Wind played louder;
They flew along the ground;
And then the party ended
In jolly "hands around."

George Cooper 

(1840 - 1927)

Another poem

Time for T.

It's 10 o'clock

So time to stop

For a deliciously cheerful

Cup of T.

Boil the water

Choose the mug

(It has to be Pooh

If the T. is for me!)

Temptation fruits

Or acai berries.

Make T. for two,

Even better for three!

S.J.

Just over a year ago...

...I was travelling back from Barcelona, on the train. My daughter had her eyes closed and was trying to rest a little, I was looking around at my fellow passengers. I was struck once again by... Well, I suppose I must call it 'reality'. What kind of society were we living in? Some words came to mind, not because I was witness to anyone showing signs of their existence, precisely.

FEMININITY

RESPONSIBILITY

DIGNITY

POLITENESS

RESPECTFULNESS

GRACEFULNESS

SUBMISSION
DISCRETION

HUMBLENESS

KINDNESS

GENTLENESS

CAREFULNESS

ELEGANCE

HONESTY

SELFLESSNESS

 RELIABILITY
ELOQUENCE

TRUSTWORTHINESS

GENTLENESS

INDUSTRIOUS

...

As a friend said just a few days ago - we are losing the human touch. Worse - we are expected to swallow it as a sign of the times.

Languages - an interesting lecture

A poem I found...

...whilst sorting out our homeschooling material. This was first to be copied, then to be learnt. I remember it well. It was part of a project about snails that one of my boys did one spring.

THE SNAIL

Where he goes he leaves a trail

When he goes where he shouldn't be

His trail is there for all to see.

Our life is like the little snail,

Where we go we leave a trail.

The things we do and the things we say,

Are the trail we leave from day to day.

Dad's Dictionary...

LURGY

This week's word is one my Dad used frequently. It's also quite a suitable one since we've all had it over the past days to some degree or other!

To have "the dreaded lurgy" seems to have originated from one particular episode of 'The Goon Show' back in the early fifties. According to my Dad, if you had the lurgy you were suffering from a cold or perhaps some 'flu' symptoms but this wasn't the case, it seems, on the Goon show. They used it to refer to some terrible imaginary outbreak of who knows what which could "swamp the whole of the British Isles in Six weeks".

It could well have been linked with an expression from the north of England which originated during WWII - 'fever-largie' meaning a sudden attack of laziness.

Knowing just a little about Spike Milligan as I do, one can imagine him being "tickled by the idea of an epidemic outbreak of idleness".

All info. taken from worldwidewords.org  If you like words like I do this is THE web to browse.

Favourite quote...

Dad's Dictionary...

PHIZZOG

Honestly, I really don't know where my dear father got these words from. "Go wash yer phizzog, you got chocolate from ear to ear" (and I can't for the life of me figure out who he would've said this to...)

Your phizzog, or fizzog, or physog... is slang for your face! It's a word that has been around in Britain for at least 200 years, yet I have never heard anybody else use it.

"The source of all the slang forms is physiognomy. This came into English in the fourteenth century from Greek via French. The Greek derives from phusis, nature, and gnomon, a judge or interpreter. The first sense in English was that of judging a person’s character from his features. A little later, it added the idea of predicting a person’s future from his face; this seems a perilous method of divination, though not a surprising one, since prognosticators have tried everything from inspecting chicken entrails to studying the shape of clouds. However, the main sense of physiognomy has long been that of the facial features themselves.

The word has always been too long and scholarly-sounding to be welcome in the ears of English speakers. Even before they chopped it back to phiz they were slurring it. Shakespeare has the Clown in All’s Well That Ends Well assert that the Black Prince’s fisnomy was better known in France than England."

(Text taken from www.worldwidewords.org)

Dad's Dictionary...

  LACKADAISICAL

 
This is one of those words that, for some reason, reminds me of my teenager years. My Dad used it in the same sentence as "bend yer lazy old back". We seemed to hear it oh, so often...

This word is delightfully evocative, bringing to mind some languid person lolling on a couch while all around goes to ruin, so accurately evoking its modern idea of somebody who lacks enthusiasm and determination or is carelessly lazy.

It owes its origin, strangely enough, to an old saying of regret or dismay, lack-a-day!, a shortened form of alack-a-day!. Alack dates back to medieval times, and probably comes from a dialect word lack that is variously interpreted as failure, fault, reproach, disgrace, or shame. So alack-a-day! originally meant “Shame or reproach to the day!” (that it should have brought this upon me). But over time it became weakened until it became no more than a vapid and vacuous cry when some minor matter went awry.

Later it moved towards the idea of somebody who was affectedly languishing, and thence to someone merely lazy.

Text taken from www.worldwidewords.org  It's a fantastic etymology web, very interesting indeed to those who like words as much as I do.

Poem

Where we live, at least, real autumn has not yet arrived. Yes, the leaves on the trees are slowly changing colour but the trees are still full of them and the temperatures are unusually warm for this time of the year, sometimes reaching 25º C at midday - no strong north-east winds, no rain...SIGH... It is hard to believe that we are treading on November's doorstep.

Yesterday I hauled 1 1/2 tonnes of firewood up to the woodshed with a hope that one day it might be cold enough to use it!

Here is a lovely poem to end October with. Let's get our imaginations working and pretend...

October

O hushed October morning mild,

Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;

Tomorrow’s wind, if it be wild,

Should waste them all.

The crows above the forest call;

Tomorrow they may form and go.

O hushed October morning mild,

Begin the hours of this day slow.

Make the day seem to us less brief.

Hearts not averse to being beguiled,

Beguile us in the way you know.

Release one leaf at break of day;

At noon release another leaf;

One from our trees, one far away.

Retard the sun with gentle mist;

Enchant the land with amethyst.

Slow, slow!

For the grapes’ sake, if they were all,

Whose leaves already are burnt with frost,

Whose clustered fruit must else be lost—

For the grapes’ sake along the wall.

By Robert Frost

Dad's Dictionary...

BALDERDASH

Lovely word, this one. Unfortunately, it's not very clear where or when it originated. Most webs I looked at pointed to it being a late 16th century word used to describe a 'frothy liquid' and then, later 'an unappetizing mixture of drinks'.

My father used to use it to mean 'absolute or complete nonsense', and he was usually frustrated or angry when he used it, too. This, it seems, is the correct, modern usage of the word.

Balderdash is a board game, first published in 1984. Seems like a fun game to play, although you have to have a little imagination. Just up my street...

Dad's Dictionary...

 JOLLOP

I remember my father using this word to refer to anything from a new batch of Mum's homemade jam to the grease he used to lubricate his lathe!

Let's take a look...

The meaning of the word, according to The Collins English Dictionary, is "unguent" or "cream".

Some dictionaries say the word jollop was used to refer either to a liquid medication or a strong liquor (often one and the same!)

Others indicate that it's real roots are Mexican and that the word is derived from the Spanish JALAPA. Jalapa was a city in Mexico (now Xalapa-Enrìquez). It was here that a notorious laxative was created.

Another source writes that the word originates from the word 'julep', of Persian origin and arrived to our shores via French and Latin. The word 'julep' means 'rose water'.

The word JOLLOP first appeared in England in 1675.

"Pass me some o' that there JOLLOP, will 'e?" Sigh... Some fun memories!

A word FOR Wednesdays

It has called upon my attention lately, how many blogs from around the globe leave Wednesday without any words.

I have decided to make amends by posting, precisely on Wednesdays, a "weird, uncommon and not so used or heard of" word and its meaning, etymology, etc,.

Many of these words will be ones which my father used to use in his normal, daily speech. To some, my father might have seemed a man of few words, but I can tell you the ones he did use I don't think I have ever heard them used by anyone else. I am still so very curious as to where he might have originally picked them all up.

Tomorrow, I will post about one of his most used words. Stay tuned.

I'll leave you with a famous quote about words from the late Margaret Thatcher:

“Watch your thoughts for they become words.
Watch your words for they become actions.
Watch your actions for they become habits.
Watch your habits for they become your character.
And watch your character for it becomes your destiny.
What we think, we become.
My father always said that... and I think I am fine.”

A very useful link

Yesterday I was looking for vocab. to include in my English lessons, and I stumbled across this web. Maybe some of you have visited here before but it helped me out so I thought I would share with you all.

The part I looked at was all about grammar. You know, adverbs, prepositions, etc., but there are other interesting pages, too. Take a look when you have a mo.

Another family quote and a Batty Books joke

It was my birthday last Saturday and I made a crazy chocolate cake for myself. Unfortunately, I had a series of interruptions whilst I was preparing the batter and the vinegar started working too soon with the raising agent. When I finally took the cake from the oven, the surface was very bumpy, not smooth like it should be.
"Don't worry" said my dear husband. "I'm sure it tastes as good as ever. Just issue us all with 4x4 forks to eat it with!"

If you were around in Britain at the beginning of the 80's you must be familiar with a set of jokes called Batty Books. These 'books' had a title and an author and while some were unrepeatable, many others were hugely ingenious and often very funny.

Here are a few that I can remember:

@ Babysitting   by Justin Casey Howls
@ Never give up   by Percy Vere
@ The fall of the watermelon   by S. Platt
@ The long walk   by Miss D. Bus
@ A post script   by Adeline Extra    ...and so on.


Well, as you know it's summer here and many days end tomorrow and, as I scrunched up the stairs to bed late last Wednesday night, I made up another Batty Books joke which went like this:

Successful beach parties  by Sandy House

Get the DRIFT? There's just a GRAIN of truth there. O.K. I'll stop, please don't DESERT me!

Cute poem

While I was out weeding in the garden yesterday I made up this poem about Toryn, my little teddy bear, who, indeed, was sat in the apricot tree for a long time while I worked. I hope you like it. 

Ode to my Teddy Bear

My Teddy Bear

Comes with me

Everywhere.

If I'm shopping

He's there,

 If I'm cooking he's sat

Next to me

On a chair.

Then, when I'm out

In the garden 

He's there 

Watching me

From a branch

In the tree.

My Teddy Bear

Has chocolate brown eyes

Which shine

When he smiles.

And he's cuddly

From the tip

Of his nose

To his toes.

When it's time to sleep

At the end of the day

My Teddy Bear

Lays his head

At the end

Of my bed.

It's nice to know 

That my Teddy bear

Is there. 

    

Ex Libris - Blumpoe the Grumpoe

Blumpoe the Grumpoe meets Arnold the Cat is written by Jean Davies Okimoto and illustrated by Howie Schneider.

Horace P. Blumpoe is renowned for his grumpiness - he yells at the dustman, complains to the postman, and when his car breaks down on the way to his sister's, his bad temper is at its all - time worst! However, Arnold the cat is quite determined to be his friend and, in the ensuing battle of wills, it is Arnold's persistence and winsomeness which carry the day.

Great story, we love this one.