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#26 2008-07-03 18:41:25

DavidTuggy
Eggcornista
From: Mexico
Registered: 2007-10-11
Posts: 2713
Website

Re: words that seem inherently amusing, pleasant or odd

Re dzhbr and other consonant cluster/clashes:

I often just for fun try to get Spanish-speaking students of English to try this poem, telling them that if they can pronounce it right, they’ve about got English pronunciation licked.

Amidst the mists and coldest frosts/
With barest wrists and stoutest boasts/
He thrusts his fists against the posts/
And still insists he sees the ghosts.

It’s a fun one to say.


*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .

(Possible Corollary: it is, and we are .)

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#27 2008-07-03 19:06:43

klakritz
Eggcornista
From: Winchester Massachusetts
Registered: 2005-10-25
Posts: 674

Re: words that seem inherently amusing, pleasant or odd

Yet a few more faintly ridiculous words:

freemartin
shibboleth
phloem
pyknic
chiliasm
boffin
mundungus
ewer
mooncalf
earwig
mixtec
quodlibet
estoppel
tatterdemalion
doggerel
zugzwang
eocene
barleychild
bonnyclabber
longueur
poetaster
daedal
loxodrome
incunabula

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#28 2008-07-03 19:50:06

DavidTuggy
Eggcornista
From: Mexico
Registered: 2007-10-11
Posts: 2713
Website

Re: words that seem inherently amusing, pleasant or odd

Excellent ones. I don’t think I’d heard pyknic or barleychild before.


*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .

(Possible Corollary: it is, and we are .)

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#29 2008-07-10 15:27:08

JonW719
Eggcornista
From: Colorado
Registered: 2007-09-05
Posts: 285

Re: words that seem inherently amusing, pleasant or odd

Brought to you by the letter “D”:
demimonde
diabolical
dilapadated
domicile
doodad
Dorcas (biblical name)
doubloon
doxology
dungaree
duodenum
dystopia

Last edited by JonW719 (2008-07-10 17:56:38)


Feeling quite combobulated.

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#30 2008-07-10 17:42:24

DavidTuggy
Eggcornista
From: Mexico
Registered: 2007-10-11
Posts: 2713
Website

Re: words that seem inherently amusing, pleasant or odd

The spelling of dilapadated matches the meaning. Fun ones, for sure!

I don’t remember ever seeing a singular dungaree…

Yours for dichroic duodena.

Last edited by DavidTuggy (2008-07-10 20:58:16)


*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .

(Possible Corollary: it is, and we are .)

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#31 2008-07-14 17:31:21

JonW719
Eggcornista
From: Colorado
Registered: 2007-09-05
Posts: 285

Re: words that seem inherently amusing, pleasant or odd

I don’t remember ever seeing a singular dungaree…

You’re right! But I did find it in the Random House Webster dictionary as a singular word. Apparently it is from a Hindi word meaning “a kind of coarse cloth.” But I imagine people would give us funny looks if we tried to use it that way.

Last edited by JonW719 (2008-07-14 17:33:15)


Feeling quite combobulated.

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#32 2008-07-18 10:12:18

TootsNYC
Eggcornista
Registered: 2007-06-19
Posts: 263

Re: words that seem inherently amusing, pleasant or odd

well Jon got my fave: gallivant.

Which is usually done around the countryside with young men, if I recall correctly.

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#33 2009-04-17 14:50:30

burred
Eggcornista
From: Montreal
Registered: 2008-03-17
Posts: 1112

Re: words that seem inherently amusing, pleasant or odd

Every word is a marvel if you pick it up and look at it.
qualms
spavined
lollygagging
rocambolesque
rampant
megalomaniac
narcoleptic
dyspeptic
shall1
animalcule
peripatetic
magniloquent
mendicant
gnostic
fascicle
shufti
darkling
hapax legomenon
obdurate
greensickness
etiolated
puerile
metonymy
synecdoche
dramaturge
hifalutin

Words to love from the aquatic sciences are potentially endless once taxa are admitted
metalimnetic
profundal
bathyscaphe > bathypelagic > hadal
Dinobryon
Aphanizomenon
Zoothamnion
Cafeteria
veliger
rotifer

[1] one to mourn the passing of, according to the Toronto Globe and Mail , though you wouldn’t know by this forum: there are more than 60 separate posts that contain shall. My antediluvian proclivities will perhaps shine through when I admit that I learned in school the difference in denotation between will and shall, and how that difference switches polarity from 1st to 3rd person. Poking around on the web I find that, once again, these rules and distinctions were of dubious value and that the use of shall today will mark you as pretentious.

Last edited by burred (2009-04-18 10:07:38)

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#34 2009-04-17 17:04:37

kem
Eggcornista
From: Victoria, BC
Registered: 2007-08-28
Posts: 2851

Re: words that seem inherently amusing, pleasant or odd

I word I have come across quite a bit lately is

epispasm

“Epispasm” is borrowed from the Greek, where it was used to refer to the operation that reversed circumcision (epi=upon, together, spasm=draw).

I’ve been on a reading program in second temple literature for the last few years, and the word and the topic it represents come up frequently. Josephus, for example, explains how the Hellenizing Jews in the second century BCE faced a problem when they introduced gymnasia into their cities. In the gymnasia games, as the word itself points out (Gr. gymnos=naked), male athletes performed without clothes. Circumcised Jews were derided for the vulgar (to the Greeks) marks of their faith, leading many young Jewish men to seek remediation.

You’ll find more than you want to know about the word and the procedure here: http://www.cirp.org/library/restoration/hall1/

Oddly, the word does not seem to have an entry in the OED.


Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.

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#35 2009-04-17 17:43:02

burred
Eggcornista
From: Montreal
Registered: 2008-03-17
Posts: 1112

Re: words that seem inherently amusing, pleasant or odd

I’m not going anywhere near that restoration site without a can1.

That desire to fit in went the other way round in the case of intrepid explorer, translator, writer, soldier, orientalist, ethnologist, linguist, poet, botanist, hypnotist, fencer and polyglot diplomat Richard Burton. To satisfy his desire to make the Hajj, or pilgrimage to Mecca, where were he discovered it would mean certain death, he had himself circumcised as an adult2.

[1] I have no idea what the official name for this device used by hockey players is. To satisfy the needs of this forum to stay focused, let’s call it an eggcan.
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Francis_Burton

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#36 2009-10-06 09:42:24

AdamVero
Eggcornista
From: Leeds, UK
Registered: 2007-09-04
Posts: 69
Website

Re: words that seem inherently amusing, pleasant or odd

This thread is chock-a-block with great words!

Canoodle is probably (I haven’t checked) a development from the German “knuddeln” = to cuddle, but certainly I always had the impression a bit more (not a lot more) than cuddling was implied.

I like
symbiotic – no reason, just sounds good to me
fricative, especially labio-dental fricative (Bonzo Dog / Neil Innes fans may know the bizarre song of the same name)
tmesis (one of Stephen Fry’s favourite words which sounds far too high brow for the sort of circum-bloody-stances where it applies)
articulated – sounds, well, articulated, linky, jointed and angular.

As for plosives, harder consonants seem to be funnier. www.laughlab.co.uk found that jokes about ducks were always funnier than the same joke with other les splosive animals substituted (eg weasel – even a stoat is funnier than a weasel) (aside: a weasel is weaselly identified but a stoat is stoatally different). The book Quirkology goes into this a bit more.
I think it was the comedian David Baddiel who discussed his love of the “C” word for it’s shock value and humour entirely based on the hard sounds in it, rather than any other synonym.


Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day; teach a man to fish and he will buy a ridiculous hat – Scott Adams (author of Dilbert)
Build a man a fire and he will be warm for a day; set a man on fire and he will be warm for the rest of his life – Terry Pratchett
http://blog.meteorit.co.uk

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