Is elmo a loving nickname for elm?

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Context:

Saving Elmo: Why we fought to protect one urban tree
11 November 2013 by Stephanie Pain
Magazine issue 2942. Subscribe and save

IT BEGAN with three large letters: R.I.P. Normally on such a freezing night I'd have rushed straight by in my hurry to get home, but something caught my eye. Pinned to the trunk of a tree I had passed countless times was a scrap of paper – and those three letters.

I hadn't taken much notice of the tree before. It stood tall and solitary at the edge of a notorious roundabout, a welcome living thing in a sea of tarmac. It was a large elm with deeply fissured bark and sturdy upswept branches. I stretched my arms around its trunk: they scarcely reached half way. What did that ominous message mean?

Back home I discovered what the anonymous note-writer already knew: in two days the tree would be gone, felled as part of a scheme to reconfigure the roundabout to make it safer and more attractive. Streets first laid ...

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Type: Question • Score: 6 • Views: 1,373 • Replies: 19

[+4] - chai2 - 11/11/2013The name Elmo is not associated with the tree elm. But, because there is a name that starts with elm, they just tagged the "o" on the end to give it a name. Also, there is the...

View best answer, chosen by oristarA

@oristarA,

The name Elmo is not associated with the tree elm.

But, because there is a name that starts with elm, they just tagged the "o" on the end to give it a name.

Also, there is the Disney movie "Saving Nemo", and "Saving Elmo" is a play on that.

Not to mention the popular Sesame Street character Elmo.

So, in all, they were just being clever.

2 Replies

@chai2,

chai2 wrote:

The name Elmo is not associated with the tree elm.

But, because there is a name that starts with elm, they just tagged the "o" on the end to give it a name.

Also, there is the Disney movie "Saving Nemo", and "Saving Elmo" is a play on that.

Not to mention the popular Sesame Street character Elmo.

So, in all, they were just being clever.

The Pixar movie is in fact titled, Finding Nemo. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0266543/combined

But the idea behind the story is pretty much what Chai said. "So, in all, they were just being clever."

Elmo is a character from a children's educational TV show. He's not in any way related to the Elm tree. The writer of said piece was trying to be funny by creating a lame pun from the type of tree and the Sesame Street character.

1 Reply

@tsarstepan,

but....didn't they save Nemo after they found him?

I can't keep up with all this new-fangled stuff

1 Reply

@chai2,

They did save Nemo ... but who knows why they chosen the movie's actual title.

1 Reply

@tsarstepan,

Well, DUH! First they had to find him - or it, or whatever.

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Elmo is a friendly diminutive of the Italian male given name Guglielmo (equivalent of Spanish Guillermo, French Guillaume, English William, and German Wilhelm.)

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In the very dim and distant past, I somehow remember farmerman once describing an elmo as the act of giving one's third cousin a handjob, or something like that.

I could be wrong.

3 Replies

@Lordyaswas,

Lordyaswas wrote:

farmerman once describing an elmo as the act of giving one's third cousin a handjob

Is he from the Ozarks, where an orgy is defined as "when family is over"?

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@Lordyaswas,

Oh Lordy, I certainly hope you are mistaken.

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@Lordyaswas,

Lordyaswas wrote:

In the very dim and distant past, I somehow remember farmerman once describing an elmo as the act of giving one's third cousin a handjob, or something like that.

I could be wrong.

Then u better not grab your cousin, Lordy.

1 Reply

@OmSigDAVID,

Too late was the cry. Prendergast was horrified.

The case has been adjourned until January, where I will be calling farmerman as a defence witness.

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Damn!

Well, I was nearly right......

Fifteenth post down on this page....
http://able2know.org/topic/92414-443

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You are absolutely correct--and Elmo's dearest friends are Larcho, Beecho and Yewo. They meet annually at a cheap motel in Plano, Texas.

1 Reply

Weren't Oakey and Moroder a musical duo in the 1980s?

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@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

You are absolutely correct--and Elmo's dearest friends are Larcho, Beecho and Yewo. They meet annually at a cheap motel in Plano, Texas.

They are the loving nicknames of Larch, Beech and Yew?

1 Reply

Not me.

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@oristarA,

You might better use 'affectionate' than 'loving'. It would not sound nearly so strange, though again, I don't know about British.

1 Reply

@chai2,

I agree with you chai2. Elm is also good as a nicename but it doesn't relate to them.

0 Replies

@roger,

roger wrote:

You might better use 'affectionate' than 'loving'. It would not sound nearly so strange, though again, I don't know about British.

Same here. Affectionate. Or just "a nickname". Affection or at least friendly intent is usually (but not always) implied by use of a nickname or contraction of a name.

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Is elmo a loving nickname for elm?

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