Craven, So if I say that I'm enthralled, that's not necessarily a good thing. Live and loin.
Bo, I never said a word about your spelling! Honest.
Andy, Ok, I'll give it a try.
How about what one famous writer would you invite to dinner
and what one question would you ask?
Then the rest of us would have to answer as if we were that writer.
==
Joe, Ooh, that's an intriguing idea. I think you should start a thread with the concept. I'm already thinking of a couple of writers--and a couple of questions.
Apropos of your dinner party, Roberta:
Magiric /m@'dZaIrIk/
Relating to cooking.
Nothing to do with magic, at least etymologically speaking, though
as a non-cook I often feel the products of my wife's kitchen must
have been created by some such process. It's from "mageirikos", a
classical Greek adjective referring to cooking, or describing
somebody who is skilled in that art. The English word is so rare
that I can find no example other than the one from 1853 quoted in
the Oxford English Dictionary; this is from Alexis Soyer's The
Pantropheon: or History of Food and its Preparation in which he
says "The magiric science, therefore, began in the year of the
world 1656", an assertion that may be thought contentious. Derived
from it are "mageirics", a usefully obscure term for the art of
cooking, and "mageirocophobia", fear of cooking, a common
affliction.
World Wide Words is copyright (c) Michael Quinion 2003. All rights
reserved.
Andy, Magiric is a doozy.
Also in keeping with my dinner party, my word for the day is zombification--the act of turning someone into a zombi(e), which is believed to be the supernatural power that may enter and reanimate the dead. There are other definitions of zombi(e). I chose the one that best fits the situation. Am I allowed to do that? Too late. I already did it.
It's your word, Roberta. You're allowed to do whatever you want wiyth it (within reason).
I might just mention that the officers of Enron seemed to be totally free of mageirocophobia, when it came to the "books"!
Bo, So in other words, you're saying that they cooked the books. LOL. Impressive application of a new and obscure word.
Thanks, Andy, for not being strict with me. I don't take well or kindly to strict.
pre·science
(prshns, --ns, prshns, -sh-ns)
n.
Knowledge of actions or events before they occur; foresight.
[I had originally looked up prescient but all it gave for a daffy-nition was 'the quality of having prescience'. That's what I love about dictionaries.]
Good word, Andy. Did you use your prescience to guess what my word would be?
presentiment: a feeling that something will or is about to happen; premonition.
Prescience, presentiment, premonition, perception...what's with all the Ps, I wonder? Is there a psignificance?
Never mind. I just got it. It's the prefix pre- .
Hi,
What a Pfunny thread!!!
I've got a kind of PRESENTIMENT that it's going to be wildly interesting here....
I'm pfeeling more and more p...er...better here.
P...er.best Pregards
Rainer....ehm...Prainer
aka
51Days...ehm...pronounce it 'Pfifty-oneDays'
51, that should be 'phunny' not 'pfunny.' See, in this terribly logical language of English, 'phunny' is pronounced 'funny' whereas... oh, wait. Yes, 'pfunny' would work, too, if you pronounce it like German Pfenning. Fonetik spelling is phun. Or pfun.
PFFFFHH!!!
Merry,
gotta laugh. Phince the phintroduction of the PHEuro we, unphortunately, don't have the Pfennig (Phennig - well, in German it wouldn't make such a dipherence in pronunciation anymore). Epheryphing has become more exphensive since that....
Phunny!
