Discussion Forum (Archived)
Guest
In our local grocery stores, "sheet" cakes are those of a certain size (because they require the entire sheet of 15x10 inches? to bake); and yes, there are "half sheet" cakes of a smaller size. The term has nothing to do with the flavor of the cake. Makes me wonder (1) if "sheath" cake refers to a particular recipe or flavor (the caller mentioned chocolate with other sweet spices), and (2) if a "sheath" cake also refers to a certain size.
ONELINE DICTIONARY SITES - Thanks, Martha, for the tip to try onelook.com as an online dictionary. I put in a word and got a list of links to 20+ various dictionaries. I have been using dictionary.com (which you did not mention) - not as many dictionaries, but the definition entries appear right on the page, often including the etymological information - usually enough for what I need. (The dictionary.com site also has Thesaurus, Encyclopedia, and Translator links on the tool bar at the top of the page.)
And we have ethical obligation to support and contribute to http://www.wordnik.com. Grant has certain affiliations there.
wordnik
Glenn said:
And we have ethical obligation to support and contribute to http://www.wordnik.com. Grant has certain affiliations there.
wordnik
Wordnik doesn't seem to work for me. At first I thought it was just me, but http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/ indicates that it's generally down. 🙁
Re: "Ground Zero" (mentioned in the D-Day segment): Many years ago, I worked the the Washington D.C. area, and had to hand-carry a monthly report to an office in the Pentagon. When a colleague was showing me how to get there, she pointed out the small snack bar in the inner courtyard and claimed that it was called "Ground Zero." The snack bar wasn't open during the time I made my visits to the Pentagon, and I wasn't able to verify if that was its real name, or just a black-humored nickname for it.
CI
> johng423: WEBELOS – When I was in Cub Scouts, we were taught the word was constructed from
> the consonants to show the progression of ranks: W=Wolf, B=Bear, L=Lion, S=[Boy]Scout.
> Maybe that has changed in more recent Scouting.
My 1964 Wolf Cub Scout Book confirms your version:
"Webelos has a secret meaning.
W B L S
are the first letters of: Wolf, Bear, Lion, Scout.
When you are eight, you earn the Wolf badge.
When you are nine, you earn the Bear badge.
When you are ten, you earn the Lion badge.
When you are ten and a half, you earn the Webelos badge."
The Webelos badge, by the way, is the arrow and sunrise device now called the Arrow of Light.
Wikipedia also confirms that old construction.
Here's the current teaching:
(Webelos Handbook 2003 p5)
"The name Webelos comes from 'WE'll BE LOyal Scouts.' Pronounce it WEE-buh-lows."
By the way, the change from Lion to Webelos happened right when *I* was to become a Lion. (Arrgh!) I turned 10 in 1967. I'd been looking forward to becoming a Lion -- but Lion went away and the new Webelos program started. That's what I earned, and then a year later transitioned into Boy Scouts.
Later, around 1971-72, the Webelos rank badge was renamed the Arrow of Light. The current Webelos rank was developed between Bear and Arrow of Light about 1978, and all changed (except LDS units) to a grade-based instead of age-based system in 1986, which left the Webelos program at about 18 months.
More history details are at http://www.sageventure.com/history/cub/.
By the (other!) way, I heard a rumor a week ago -- that BSA is succumbing to competitive pressures from Indian Guides and the Daisy girl scouts, and starting a new Kindergarten division -- to be known as the Lions! Full circle!
(Reminds me of Dorothy's chant -- "Lions and Tigers [Wolves] Bears, Oh My!")
You might also enjoy our Cub Scout Day Camp neologisms (I was camp director in 2004) for the boys.
We had to divide some of the activities between the younger and the older boys. The younger boys now included 1st grade Tigers, as well as the 2nd & 3rd grade Wolves and Bears. The older boys were the 4th & 5th grade Webelos, obviously at a different level of capability and interest, as well as wanting to earn Webelos activity pins (like Engineering) instead of the younger boy achievements.
We came up with two names to describe them, and both are still in use.
The first was the Tweebs and the Weebs (TWB for Tiger-Wolf-Bear, WEB for Webelos).
The second one, since at some point Daniel Carter Beard's and Ernest Thompson Seton's American Indian influences came back in, came from the Legend of the Webelos Indian Tribe. http://www.boyscouttrail.com/content/story/story-985.asp
That neologism was: The Animals (TWBs) and The Indians (Webs). Since boys of that age often act wildly, those names became great descriptions for the two groups.
The use of the term "one-off", as described by the caller, is different from the the sense of the term as it was explained by Mr. Barrett. The usage that Mr. Barrett describes works well in a sentence such as, "I'm making an exception in this case because we're friends, but I'm not doing it for anyone else--this is a one-off deal."
But the caller described a situation in which the term "one-off" was used in a way that is not explained by the on-air discussion that followed (i.e., the discussion about manufacturing jargon). As I recall, he was told that the person who'd been dropped from an online forum for an infraction (a punishment to which the caller had taken exception) was a "one-off", and that the caller should "drop the subject" (in other words, the transgressor would not be allowed back on the site under any circumstances). In this case "one-off" is used as a noun, not as an adjective. It seems to me that this is a variant use of that term as a shorthand for "ONE infraction, OFF the site"--or "zero tolerance."
In other words, I think this may be an example of the hijacking of a popular term for use as internet shorthand that formerly meant something entirely different. There must be hundreds examples of this as more and more terms are appropriated online for the sake of brevity.
Dictionaries
With regards to dictionaries for college students---it is worth checking the Library for the school that the student is going to. Many of them provide access to all kinds of on-line reference books, including dictionaries. Non-students may also be able to access these resources, esp. if it is a public institution. But in any case, I would check into what is available to the student already before buying something (in hard copy or electronic form). I still prefer books myself, but it's a good idea to get students in the habit of working with the resources provided by their libraries which are often vetted in ways that an internet search is not.
I was introduced to the term one-off with a slightly different meaning than the one Grant gave. I interned at a company that made small unmanned aircraft, and the complete ground control setup. There, I recall using the term one-off to refer to a product that has been modified from the standard configuration, usually to suit the needs of a particular customer, with no intention of it becoming a new product. Occasionally, of course, they would realize that the idea was marketable and make it into a standard product, but not always. These weren't completely custom, so much as a system that might have one or two custom components that integrated into the standard system.
As I understood it, the distinction was important because engineering costs for standard products was overhead, and wasn't (directly) passed on to the customer, but the one-off costs were billed directly to the customer requesting them. Also, there were many quality processes for standard products, but if something was declared a one-off, the requirements were much more relaxed.
With that usage, I'd assumed that it referred to an item/product that had one feature/aspect/component that was different than the standard, or "off of" it.
I have to say that I was distressed and depressed that even you two, Grant and Martha, word nerds exemplar, don't share my love of old-fashioned printed dictionaries. Even typing the word "old-fashioned" in the last sentence broke my heart a little.
My wife and I have two unabridgeds on our shelf - a one-volume Webster's New Universal, and a two-volume Shorter Oxford - one of which came into the relationship with each of us, and which we love running to with any possible excuse. We tried to register for the full unabridged OED when we got married last year, and were extremely disappointed to discover that it's now only available electronically.
I just love books - I can't read fiction off a screen either - and there's something magically tactile about searching through a huge tome of knowledge to find the word you need, actually touching all that information with your hands, that isn't replicated by a Google search.
Go Codices!
Oh, don't get me wrong! I own hundreds of dictionaries and not as curiosities or collector's items, either. They're mostly workaday, normal dictionaries I turn to from time to time when I have questions.
It's just that, for many tasks, I can simply search the many dictionaries on my computer or on the Internet and get a decent answer much more quickly.
Martha Barnette
Grant Barrett
Grant Barrett
1 Guest(s)