The Reading Room

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verbose

00:09

@Loong who's pops?

Henry WH Hack v3.0b

00:29

@verbose Former community manger of Stack Exchange.

verbose

Henry WH Hack v3.0b

Pops, Eastern United States

68.6k 34 222 356

corrections: *community manager and not community manger.

5 hours later…

Rand al'Thor

05:32

@Spagirl This might be the first time I've seen someone say "Britisher" who's not from the Indian subcontinent.

1 hour later…

CowperKettle

06:37

I recall reading somewhere that Shakespeare used some self-invented words with foreign roots mockingly, to mock the borrowing of words, but some of these actually became part of the English language. I wonder if that's true, or just of funny hearsay.

CowperKettle

06:59

Trumbull Stickney

Joseph Trumbull Stickney (June 20, 1874 – October 11, 1904) was an American classical scholar and poet. == Biography == He was born in Geneva and spent much of his early life in Europe. He attended Harvard University from 1891, when he became editor of the Harvard Monthly and a member of Signet Society, to 1895, when he graduated magna cum laude. He then studied for seven years in Paris, taking a doctorate at the Sorbonne. He wrote there two dissertations, a Latin one on the Venetian humanist Ermolao Barbaro, and the other on Les Sentences dans la Poésie Grecque d'Homère à Euripide. The latter...

Such a tiny article, and only two interwikis.

Yet his poems are nice.

2 hours later…

verbose

08:36

(sigh) I never know what's going on

Bookworm

09:17

Q: Island of Doctor Moreau -- is it about colonialism?

It is, certainly the first time you are told of it, inescapable to see the parallels between converting beasts into men and England's "attempts" (Did the spreaders of the British empire actually care about "civilizing" India? Forgive me for this -- I sure do not think India needed the British to ...

the-island-of-doctor-moreau

5 hours later…

Spagirl

13:50

@Randal'Thor Do you know for sure that I’m not?

2 hours later…

Tsundoku

15:58

@CowperKettle That sounds like something that could refer to Love's Labour's Lost, which contains the word honorificabilitudinitatibus.

Worth reading in this connection: Small Latin and Less Greek: A Look at the Inkhorn Controversy.

Tsundoku

16:20

If you've run out of things to put on your flashcards: 10 Shakespearean Insults to Use Instead of Modern Swear Words.

@HenryWHHackv3.0b Manager: apparently a word coined by Shakespeare.

(I'm not saying that manager is a swear word, though.)

Mithical

16:46

@Randal'Thor the last remaining benevolent dictator ;)

Tsundoku

@Randal'Thor Savory biscuits from a 17th-century recipe (Folger Shakespeare Library): no lemon involved.

@Mithical Have you been taking lessons from Shakespeare? ;-)

Mithical

not unless reading Hamlet counts

Tsundoku

Sounds good enough. There's Claudius in that play.

@verbose Goings On About Town. (Wrong town?)

2 hours later…

Tsundoku

18:43

So, I'm looking for a specific book in an online (German) bookshop and I find one by "Robert Black". I click on the author's name because I want to see if they sell other books by him. That gives me a list of books by ... Robert Schwarz. Because Schwarz is German for Black. Impeccable logic.

Bookworm

19:29

Q: “O Where Are You Going” / “The Three Companions” by W. H. Auden

Here is a poem by W. H. Auden called “O Where Are You Going” or “The Three Companions”: "O where are you going?" said reader to rider, "That valley is fatal where furnaces burn, Yonder's the midden whose odours will madden, That gap is the grave where the tall return." "O do you imagine," said f...

poetry wystan-hugh-auden

verbose

@Spagirl I was wondering the same myself

Whether Randolph could be sure, I mean

verbose