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In a recent repeat broadcast, the phrase "travel proud" was discussed, and it made me think of the terms used to describe a quantity as slightly more or less than an exact measure.
You often hear "shy" used this way, as in "just shy of ten years", meaning a period of time almost ten years but not quite. At first I considered this a dialect form of "short", but at some point I ran across its opposite, "proud". A carpenter might describe a piece of lumber as "just proud of four feet", meaning four feet plus a small fraction of an inch. "Proud" also occurs in woodshop-speak to refer to something that sticks up from an otherwise flat surface by a tiny amount, such as a nail-head that hasn't been driven flush. (I've always been a little hesitant to use this one more widely since it feels like it has anatomical associations.)
Similar to "shy/proud" are the cooking terms "heaping" and "scant", used to modify measures of dry ingredients (you can't very well have a "heaping cup" of water). In this case, it's the term meaning "a bit more" that's more common while the one describing a slight under-measurement is rarer. (There's also "rounded" for an overage less extreme than "heaping".)
I've also heard this use of proud, and use it often in woodworking. It is poetic that the commonplace shy, with the concrete meaning of "short," should have both its concrete and abstract counterpart in proud.
The woodworking context in which I find proud comes in most handy is when you are planning to sand the surface that is being cut to measure. Then, the instructions would be to cut a board (a little) proud of 4'2" and sand (or plane) it measure.
Martha Barnette
Grant Barrett
Grant Barrett
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