Home » Discussion Forum—A Way with Words, a fun radio show and podcast about language

Discussion Forum—A Way with Words, a fun radio show and podcast about language

A Way with Words, a radio show and podcast about language and linguistics.

Discussion Forum (Archived)

Please consider registering
Guest
Forum Scope


Match



Forum Options



Min search length: 3 characters / Max search length: 84 characters
The forums are currently locked and only available for read only access
sp_TopicIcon
Paper to Pixels, Pages to Screens
Guest
21
2008/03/18 - 4:05pm

It's funny, I would have instinctively thought "grey" to be slightly darker than "gray".

Maybe it's alphabetical order, and "grzy" would be nearly black...

Guest
22
2008/03/18 - 7:00pm

Call me crazy, but I've never noticed any associative chromatic differences between the spellings “gray” and “grey”. I was shocked to find out that there were people who see these two vocables in different hues… (Apart from those suffering from syn(a)esthesia.)

Ahliana Byrd
23
2008/03/19 - 9:41am

For me, in the U.S., I still use grey, since that is how I learned to spell the word when I was kid coloring with my Crayola crayons. They may have changed it since, but I learned it then and have no inclination to change the spelling I use.

Guest
24
2008/03/19 - 1:21pm

Granted, I don't usually distinguish between the two in terms of luminosity, but since the subject was brought up on the show, my first thought was of grey as being darker.

I personally settled on the "grey" spelling sometime around college.

Pirat
25
2008/03/22 - 10:12am

re: eat the covers

I first heard this as "You buy them books and you buy them books and all they do is eat the pages."

This was when I got out of high school in 1975. My partner on the truck I worked on used to tell me that after I did something stupid.

Fred in RI
26
2008/03/22 - 7:43pm

I prefer grey because it seems more ... grey. To me A seems happier than E.

As far as the cover eating phrase, back in the '80s I remember the phrase "You can send a kid to college but you can't make them think." A clever way of saying the exact same thing. And, yes, that's when I was in college.

On the topic of Donk, in the poker community (at least locally) a Donk (also short for Donkey) is a stupid (and frequently lucky) card player.

AND as far as optional spellings, maybe one would use ketchup as a condiment and catsup as an ingredient. I don't know. I like mustard.

Mary in MS
27
2008/03/24 - 8:49am

When I got out of the Navy in 1983, I went to work for an old radio guy in Chicago IL (he was native to the area). He used to say, "You buy them books, you send them to school, and what do they do? They eat the books." It was always that exact form. He wasn't the kind of fellow to be plugged into popular culture, either. Hope you can pin this one down - I've always liked this expression!

Joie de Vivienne
28
2008/05/07 - 12:22am

Andy said:

Hi Martha and Grant,
I get clasics to read on my Palm from the Project Gutenberg collection http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page. Project Gutenberg is a free repository of thousands of electonic books that are no longer copywritten.


I have been reading War and Peace for the last year-and-a-half. You see, I only read it in lines (or queues as some call them). If I am waiting for the grocery checkout, I pull out my palm and am transported to 19th century Russia.


Andy


I love "copywritten"--it's evokes a much more visual idea than copyrighted 😀

Roro
29
2008/08/20 - 8:20am

Two replies here...
My gran always said "Layers for Meddlers" when I was a child and asked a question......usually because either she didn't know the answer' or couldn't be bothered to stop and tell me!
'Tow Headed'......used to describe the hair of a 'mousy' blond!....'Tow' is rough sheeps wool.....believe it or not, we used to use it to pack the orifices of bodies on the ward before they were taken to the mortuary. Not a lot of people know that, unless you were a nurse in the 60's like me.
So, there you have it.

Martha Barnette
San Diego, CA
820 Posts
(Offline)
30
2008/08/21 - 8:36pm

>>>>'Tow' is rough sheeps wool…..believe it or not, we used to use it to pack the orifices of bodies on the ward before they were taken to the mortuary. Not a lot of people know that, unless you were a nurse in the 60's like me.
So, there you have it.<<<

Wow, Roro. Never heard that use of the word. In what part of the world were you a nurse?

EmmettRedd
859 Posts
(Offline)
31
2008/08/22 - 3:46pm

Roro's 'tow' is a specific use of OED's fourth denotation of first (of five) noun.

"4. A bundle of untwisted natural or manmade fibres."

That word is common in many manufacturing industries.

Emmett

Guest
32
2009/08/19 - 10:52am

Hey guys.

Listening to the podcast and I heard your explanation of the word "donk". I think you were close but just a little off. Although donk may have started as just a "beater" type car, it has evolved into much more.

According to the Urban Dictionary:

"Any POS late 80's or early 90's American heap (preferably an Impala) that has large enough wheels installed until it resembles (and rides and handles like) a Conestoga wagon. This is done so it sits up high enough so as to be at the same eye level as the Playas with real juice ridin in their Escalades. Adding in a bad candy paint job and Wal-Mart sub box completes the transformation. With no money left over for necessary suspension and brake upgrades, the lifespan is limited to a few drug runs or the first Police chase, whichever occurs first."

There are even car shows dedicated to these cars. A Google image search will bring up some great examples

http://www.google.com/images?hl=en&q=donk&sourceid=navclient-ff&rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS327US322&ie=UTF-8

Thanks for a great show.

Guest
33
2011/03/06 - 9:24am

I had thought that "badonkadonk" was related to the word "donkey", which is often used as a synonym for a word that is also used as an often vulgar synonym of the word "buttocks". I had also heard that "donk" usually refers to fifth generation Chevrolet Impalas with giant wheels. I think I have heard the Impala logo referred to as a "donkey", which may reinforce what Grant said about an old car being stubborn as a mule/donkey.

Forum Timezone: UTC -7
Show Stats
Administrators:
Martha Barnette
Grant Barrett
Moderators:
Grant Barrett
Top Posters:
Newest Members:
A Conversation with Dr Astein Osei
Forum Stats:
Groups: 1
Forums: 1
Topics: 3647
Posts: 18912

 

Member Stats:
Guest Posters: 618
Members: 1268
Moderators: 1
Admins: 2
Most Users Ever Online: 1147
Currently Online:
Guest(s) 107
Currently Browsing this Page:
2 Guest(s)

Recent posts