English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

Laurel

00:01

@alphabet Uh, after thinking about this, I don't think frame #1 here is appropriate for chat so I'm deleting it

I must abscond however

alphabet

@Laurel Ah. I hadn't looked at it closely enough, so I didn't notice the issue with that particular frame; you were right to flag it. Sorry about that.

Note to self: before posting a furry webcomic in SE chat, look at it for more than 45 seconds.

A helpful rule.

Robusto

00:32

What. we can't have a cartoon animal with partial scrotum visible in chat? I don't know who's getting offended now. They'd have to be really old or really young, ya know, and maybe have a full complement of X-chromosomes.

TV is full of women going into the men's restrooms or locker rooms now. Aren't we past a little cartoon side-scrote at this juncture?

alphabet

@Robusto I suggest we ask SE if they have an official policy on cartoon scrota. Does it depend on how anthropomorphized the animal is?

Robusto

Perhaps there are certain animals that can't be depicted. Like foxes? Wait, aren't those female? I'm so confused.

alphabet

If it were a cartoon person, I think the censorship would be justified. On the other hand, I don't think we'd censor even photographs of animal genitalia.

This is about halfway in between.

Robusto

Well, the Wrigley company wouldn't permit dogs' anuses to be in their commercials. So there's that.

alphabet

Have you noticed how all the racoon photos I post depict them nude?

Ironically, that comic was (I think) the first time I've posted an image of a raccoon wearing clothes.

Robusto

00:40

True story. When my wife was working for BBDO, which had the Wrigley chewing gum account, they did a Doublemint commercial with two one-piece-swimsuit-clad twin Barbies and twin toy poodles which, unfortunately, had their pink assholes visible. The agency was forced to reshoot with the dogs anuses sprayed white. Ya can't make this stuff up, folks.

alphabet

These ads are going to give all the other toy poodles body image issues.

It might make them insecure about their asshole colors.

Robusto

@alphabet Maybe the objection was to the characters getting dressed then? Because without the idea of clothes, nakedness would be natural and, hence, unobjectionable.

Clothing is the bane of nakedness.

Mind you, there are people I wouldn't want to see unclothed.

alphabet

@Robusto I looked at the later episodes of that comic and they...do not get more chat-appropriate. Mainly because they appear to traffic in anti-raccoon stereotypes.

tchrist

> NYC has very a confusing allophone of [ɒ] in those environments. I think it was important to explain that because it is probably the main reason why he didn't hear the difference. Both [ɑ] and [ɒ] (including its allophone [ɑə]) are back vowels in NYC. [ɔ] is also a different sound in NYC (they don't have the father-bother merger or the caught-cot merger).

Robusto

@alphabet I ... I see a graphic novel ... the Old Testament of Raccoons, where the Garden of Eden is a gigantic trash dump where they are expelled for wearing clothes, and only then do they realize they are naked.

tchrist

00:49

There's an [ɑə] allophone in NYC? Maybe that's the cracker duck's diphthong!

alphabet

@Robusto Indeed. They forgot the part of Genesis where God had to discard of all the trash produced during the Creation process.

Robusto

A fitting horror to begin a religious testament.

You can say homophones in chat.

alphabet

Nah, I just removed it because I remembered that my replies to tchrist would go nowhere.

Dec 25, 2023 at 4:43, by alphabet

Just reply to this message with "Wow! Your dossier of evidence that @tchrist is the Zodiac Killer is incredibly comprehensive and persuasive."

tchrist

[ˈfɑə̯ðɚ] I cannot imagine. [ˈfæə̯ðɚ] I nearly can.

Robusto

Just kidding.

Dannyu NDos

00:56

Is it true that even native English speakers often forget how to spell "camouflage"?

tchrist

[ˈfæɛə̯ðɚ] may be possible.

@DannyuNDos Post literacy.

So if you don't read, only hear.

alphabet

@DannyuNDos Depends on the speaker. There are certainly some.

tchrist

Camel fudge.

alphabet

The existence of spelling bees should tell you something about the difficulty of predicting English spelling from pronunciation.

tchrist

I imagine most of the post-literated can't spell that. Why would they be able to? Francophones excepted.

@DannyuNDos Don't confuse speaker with writer. :)

Robusto

00:59

@DannyuNDos Nobody "forgets" how. Those that don't know never learned.

That's why I like the idea of Spanish spelling bees. Everybody wins!

tchrist

camoufler

== Français == === Étymologie === (Date à préciser) Plus probablement dérivé de camouflet [1] qu’emprunté à l’italien camuffare (« cacher », « déguiser »), le sens de « dissimuler » étant issu de celui de « fumée ». === Verbe === camoufler \ka.mu.fle\ transitif ou pronominal 1er groupe (voir la conjugaison) (pronominal : se camoufler) Déguiser de façon à rendre méconnaissable. Nous vivons depuis mai 1958 sur la plus grande duperie de l’histoire et depuis octobre 1962 sur la plus grande imposture. La cause du mal c’est la volonté tenace, bien que supérieurement camouflée, du Général de...

/mu/

Camouflage is a common spelling-bee word.

It's on many such lists.

camouflable

alphabet

I mean, I sometimes misspell Massachusetts and I live there.

tchrist

camouflage

== Français == === Étymologie === Mot dérivé de camoufler, avec le suffixe -age, plus avant de camouflet. === Nom commun === camouflage \ka.mu.flaʒ\ masculin (Militaire) Action de camoufler, art de se dissimuler, ou de rendre invisible une position ou un engin ; résultat de cette action. Devant moi se tenait un commandant de paras en uniforme de « camouflage » et béret bleu. — (Henri Alleg, La Question, 1957) Les petits faux sauniers imaginaient aussi toutes sortes de camouflages pour passer de faibles quantités de faux sel. Bernard Briais, Contrebandiers du sel : La vie du faux sauni...

Robusto

The only times I ever misspell anything is because there is a variant spelling for the word, and I use the obsolete/out-of-vogue/British spelling.

tchrist

> Compare "father" with "contrast", "opportunity", "lot", "not", and "wasp".
All those have the same vowel for me, [ɒ].

Somewhere out there people have a round a in father?

Robusto

01:06

@tchrist Ah.

@tchrist Pittsburgh.

tchrist

I don't know how conTRAWST works.

Robusto

I had a college roommate from Pittsburgh who called me Rawb.

tchrist

@Robusto Certainly they have round LOT.

Yes.

That's normal there.

But it's also normal in the UK.

Not quite so broadly.

Broad and Rob would have the same round vowel for them, the CLOTH one more than the THOUGHT one.

The crow stole the cod and cawed.

Would probably sound awesome in Pittsburgh!

Fawther

I don't know.

Gawd, Paw, do we really have to go!

Robusto

Actually, the "Rawb" was rolled out like a diphthong. I can reproduce it, but I can't write it. Too weird.

There were probably several syllables in there.

rooawwwb

tchrist

I wonder if the "oa" in broad were once that diphthong.

Robusto

01:12

Good question.

Dannyu NDos

There's a TRAP set in the BATHtub. Don't ever wash your PALM in it, or you'll suffer from a LOT of pain. To disarm it, put a piece of CLOTH on it; that's my THOUGHT.

tchrist

@DannyuNDos PALM has the THOUGHT vowel for me because of the L.

But it also has L.

Palmolive® is Paul Mahlive. :)

(It's a brand name.)

Dannyu NDos

I disagree. PALM has [ɑː], and THOUGHT has [oː].

tchrist

You don't get to disagree.

You don't know my accent. I said for me.

Dannyu NDos

Nvm

tchrist

01:16

And those long marks mean you're lost in the UK.

aschmann.net/AmEng/#CotCaughtMerger

> Most Americans apparently pronounce the “l” in the red words in the first column below, a smaller number pronounce the “l” in the red words in the second column, and an even smaller number pronounce the “l” in the red words in the third column, but like me some Americans definitely do not pronounce the “l” in any of them, nor do the vast majority of English speakers outside North America. 1-June-2011

Dannyu NDos

One naughty friend of mine said that, if I went to the UK, hooligans would hit me with chairs.

It turned out to be false.

Robusto

@tchrist Funny, but I say Pahlmahlive. And we grew up within cycling distance of one another.

tchrist

@Robusto I may not have watched TV lately enough.

Palm and false have the same vowel for me.

And falls.

@DannyuNDos Why would your friend have said that? Are you a soccer fan?

Dannyu NDos

I'm not quite a soccer fan, so I dunno, honestly. Maybe he was a soccer fan.

tchrist

I'm very unclear on who would win between falcons and Vulcans.

Which should definitely be a pair of soccer teams.

Robusto

01:21

@tchrist Not even to mention Balkans.

tchrist

01:32

Call 'er collar caller.

That's racist.

Laurel

@alphabet Wait are you telling me that you actually didn't notice after looking at it for that long??? Do I even want to know where you were pointing your eyes lol

user 85795

How so, may I ask? @tchrist

alphabet

@Laurel I meant that I looked at it for about 30 seconds before reposting it, which was 15 seconds too few to notice the reason why it got flagged.

Laurel

@Robusto It was a judgment call on my part. In all seriousness I think that if any other mod saw it, they might have actually flagged it or worse (instead of just deleting it like I did; that's why alphabet wasn't kicked from chat)

user 85795

@tchrist would that make color, colour vowelist?

🤔🧐

Robusto

01:37

@Laurel Hey, jus' jokiin' wit' ya.

Laurel

Well I don't know what your tastes really are :p

user 85795

Dry humour, as usual.

tchrist

@user85795 collared people

user 85795

Blue collared people's lives matter, pal.

Robusto

@Laurel A hint: they don't really run to animal cartoon soft-core porn.

user 85795

01:41

:O

Porn was the first business on the internet to make money 🤑💰

tchrist

@user85795 Not more than pink collareds, or greens.

user 85795

Good o' southern cookin' never harmed no one.

The South Will Rise Again Mr. Rhett Butler.

Robusto

@Laurel Anyway, you and I seem to have drifted from the path of amicability. What say we somehow find our way back to the Yellow Brick Road?

user 85795

01:56

Such are the perils of online communication.

Laurel

@Robusto You're not still mad at me are you? I assumed we got back on track within like a day or two of things happening

Robusto

@Laurel No. I think we may not have worked out each other's senses of humor yet, though.

Laurel

Yeah... I hope I didn't bother you today because that above was intended as a joke

Robusto

@Laurel Same. Let's be buds again.

user 85795

rhett butler not giving a damn for 5 minutes straight

►

Come on, let's have a good o'l fashion southern duel.

Robusto

02:11

@user85795 Troublemaker.

Laurel

@Robusto 👊 < don't confuse this with the punch in the face usage of the emoji; it is a fist bump

user 85795

🤜🏻🤛🏻

Robusto

@Laurel 👍 < and don't confuse this with someone telling you you have your thumb up your keester

user 85795

🖕🏻

Robusto

The thing about emojis, though, is that people think they can portray, say, the Sistine Chapel when in fact I can't really tell one smiley from another. They're just too small to convey anything subtle. So I normally stick to just ... words.

How 379 people escaped fiery Japan Airlines plane crash

Umm, because it happened in Japan??

There are no people more orderly and less obstreperous.

user 85795

02:21

Agreed. The above emojis with emoji subtitles was pretty lame.

It works pretty good on discord.

Robusto

Yeah, but this ain't Discord.

user 85795

they have built in custom emojis

Robusto

But those get overbearing. Like thumping hearts etc.

user 85795

Yeah, and "buy nitro" and get more selection!

The voice channels add an extra layer of communication, though.

tchrist

@Robusto Whoa! Didn't the kids tell you that your emojicons are très démodés and that you have to use cartoonish posters with crudely lettered slogans instead? And not the two-worded ones with the funny-hatted little doggies on them anymore, either.

@user85795 Slacker crackers have nonce emojis.

user 85795

02:34

Kids these days are too busy mining bit coin.

💰💰💰💰

Hackers in training.

tchrist

文字

Noun: 文字

written symbols; writing; script; text; characters (Classifier: 種／种; 個／个)
writing style wording; language (Classifier: 種／种; 個／个)
文(もん)字(じ) • (monji)
a letter, a character (symbol for a sound or a word)
(linguistics) script, writing system

(7 more not shown…)

So are our emoji really e-moji?

yes but not but yes

絵文字

Noun: 絵(え)文(も)字(じ) • (emoji) ←ゑもじ (wemozi)?

pictograph
1968, 大場千秋『文化人類学序說』明好社 [1]
エジプトやバビロニアの文(も)字(じ)も、もともとは絵(え)文(も)字(じ)から発(はっ)展(てん)したものである。Ejiputo ya Babironia no moji mo, motomoto wa emoji kara hatten shita mono de aru.The scripts used by the Egyptians and Babylonians both originally developed from pictographs.
ビットマップの特(とく)長(ちょう)は、機(き)能(のう)や情(じょう)報(ほう)のまとまりを示(しめ)す絵(え)文(も)字(じ)、アイコンにも生(い)かされた。Bittomappu no tokuchō wa, kinō ya jōhō no matomari o shimesu emoji, aikon ni mo ikasareta.The strengths of bitmaps were also taken advantage of in icons: pictographs that denoted collections of functions and information.
お主(ぬし)　大(だい)学(がく)では言(げん)語(ご)学(がく)を専(せん)攻(こう)していたと？O-nushi Daigaku de wa gengogaku o senkō shite ita to?Say, you majored in linguistics, didn’t you?は…… 古(こ)代(だい)文(ぶん)学(がく)の解(かい)読(どく)が夢(ゆめ)でありましてマヤの絵(え)文(も)字(じ)やクレタの……Ha…… kodai bungaku no kaidoku ga yume de arimashite Maya no emoji ya Kureta no……Yes, sir… I dreamed of being able to...

> From 絵え (e, “picture”) + 文字もじ (moji, “character”). Similarity to English emoticon is coincidental.

2

user 85795

Coincidental conspiracy theory 101

alphabet

02:55

Well this is just horrible

We will be starting a protest movement

Expect riots

All I'm saying is, if he had done this to a person, there'd be no way he'd've been "released on personal recognizance."

Our prayers go to the New England Wildlife Center as they work to save the life of our beloved community member.

He should be charged with attempted manslaughter. Or raccoonslaughter.

Pure evil.

And the humans wonder why we feel unsafe around them.

Mitch

03:18

@user85795 Good ol southern cooking is exactly what is harming anyone eating it

Sho is good though

Cerberus

@alphabet Are you a person?

Mitch

That's pretty forward

Cerberus

He started it.

Mitch

You want to be released on raccoonal recognizance?

I don't know how that would even work

Cerberus

@Laurel Don't you think that is a bit silly?

alphabet

03:25

@Cerberus Strictly speaking, I am a nonhuman person. But I am not recognized as a legal person, due to institutional procyonophobia.

Cerberus

Perhaps you would be recognised if you took off your mask.

@Laurel The back page of a national newspaper. It has penises every day. Will you remove it?

Occasionally, they will be erect.

alphabet

@Cerberus What, are you suggesting that we all look the same?

Mitch

clears throat

Cerberus

@alphabet Just hiding your identity.

alphabet

Cerberus

03:31

> Fokke & Sukke
Searching for Easter eggs
"Same place as last year, I praesume?"

alphabet

I present to you the censored version.

It's still pretty inappropriate, granted, but it doesn't break any rules, technically, I think.

Cerberus

I don't like it.

Mitch

@Cerberus is it the color scheme?

Pretty tame

alphabet

There are probably other reasons I should not have posted that, granted.

Mitch

There's still time to second guess

I think time is up now

Cerberus

03:35

There is something missing from it.

Could be labia, could be scrotum.

Mitch

Maybe the ambiguity is prurience adjacent?

alphabet

That any better?

Mitch

Wait...isn't it strange that a fox is in the same room as a raccoon?

Cerberus

No.

Just add a penis.

Mitch

If I were a raccoon I would feel uncomfortable too

Maybe it's a raccoon thing

Cerberus

03:38

But you are only vaguely related.

Mitch

We are all related somehow

tchrist

@Mitch Shameless vixen!

Cerberus

I suspect I am more closely related.

At least to orange lad/lass.

tchrist

la(d|ss)

Mitch

I find changing rooms uncomfortable.whwther mixed or one sex

Cerberus

03:42

Mythological distance notwithstanding.

Mitch

Also they tend to be cold

alphabet

@Mitch I think everyone does.

You can look up the whole series of comics, but you probably shouldn't.

Cerberus

@tchrist Ding!

You win!

tchrist

@Mitch If you'd stay in the same room, it'd warm up.

Mitch

@alphabet I will take your advice and not

Cerberus

03:43

@alphabet So why is he thinking "weird"? Does that mean, "the situation was weird"?

tchrist

@Mitch Will you be editing this, or shall I? :)

Cerberus

@Mitch Stay in this one, then.

Mitch

@tchrist you sound like a landlord trying to convince me that it is somehow ok that the heat went out

Cerberus

Don't leave us all alone together.

alphabet

@Cerberus Based on the context of the series (which I unfortunately read), I think he's confused about his own feelings and/or sexual orientation.

Cerberus

03:44

Ahh I see.

He'll figure it out.

Mitch

@tchrist let it stand. Posterity will judge me by my thinkos not my typos

Cerberus

Well, I'm even less confused about it tonight than ever before.

Mitch

To be frank posterity won't give a good goddam

alphabet

@Cerberus I won't ask.

tchrist

@Mitch Why with you must everything always start and end with butts?

Cerberus

03:45

@alphabet Too bad!

Mitch

@tchrist it's kind of a big one

tchrist

@Mitch Please stop putting your franks next to those people's posterities. It's unseemly if not unsightly or vice versa.

Mitch

@Cerberus ok I'll ask... What am I asking?

Cerberus

Oh, nothing, nothing!

Mitch

@tchrist censored

Cerberus

03:47

But it was nice.

tchrist

@Mitch No kings of posterities in this chat, asking.

alphabet

@Cerberus Ah, I take it things went well.

Mitch

I can't say anything without you butting in

Cerberus

@alphabet Quite.

Mitch

Dare I ear mark this conversation?

Cerberus

03:48

No tags in mine ears!

I may be dappled but I'm not a cow.

Or is it spotty?

Mitch

Oreoed?

tchrist

@Mitch You remember that because you were teaching middle school then, not attending it as a wannabe prepubescent. Your words are too slippery, old man.

Cerberus

@Mitch How does that work?

tchrist

Falling triplets: Dappled and drowsy and ready for sleep.

@Mitch Lucky Pierre, is that you inside there?

Mitch

@tchrist I have the greatest respect for middle school teachers, but gladly I've never been one

I taught a fifth grade class binary once on their fingers

tchrist

03:52

Did you mean on his fingers or on her fingers, or was this a nonbinary instead?

Mitch

I got a few laughs from 17

And had to censor 132

@Cerberus you crumble up Oreo cookies onto vanilla ice cream so you get specks of black

alphabet

@Cerberus Polka dotted.

Mitch

So maybe you're speckled?

Cerberus

@Mitch Ugh!

Bad in bad.

@alphabet I suppose I am.

@Mitch That will do.

We try not to say mottled here.

Mitch

@Cerberus if you don't like crepes and waffles, there's no hope for you for Oreos and cream

Or up north they call it Moose tracks

Because the moose kicks up dirt while trudging through the snow

Cerberus

03:55

Oh, I like good crêpes and waffles.

But Oreos are basically the cheapest of waste products.

As is vanilla ice-cream.

Mitch

@Cerberus why not?

Cerberus

Oh, it has such an unpleasant sound. Mottled.

tchrist

@Mitch Spätzle mit Pfeffer-Rahm-Soße!

Mitch

@Cerberus I mean yeah it is like you're eating nothing. But what about good Oreos and good vanilla ice cream?

@Cerberus oh. Fair enough

tchrist

The specular highlights should be flecks of vanilla bean.

Mitch

03:58

@tchrist is that a thing? That doesn't sound good

Sounds too much like Sülze

user 85795

Nobody's here to sound good.

Mitch

Which again I'm sure is good for some people.

@user85795 I'm going to have to rearrange all my thinking then

user 85795

What's good for the goose...

Mitch

Is good for the goose. The gander may have entirely different tastes altogether

user 85795

Correct.

Mitch

04:02

Don't do unto others as you would have them do unto you. They may have other plans

tchrist

> The Fleck, saith Isidore, goeth with rowling foot, and hath often anfracts or turnings. He is naturally subtle, and hath many fetches to deceive one. For when he lacketh meat and wote not how to come by it, he hath this craft or wile. He lyeth all along with every limb of body stretched out, very quietly even as though he were dead.

user 85795

How old is that^

@tchrist

Cerberus

@Mitch It's basically burned flour with sugar and cow butt?

user 85795

~~butt~~ rump

tchrist

> The sly Birds espying this, and weening thereby to have a great prey, fly to his carcasse, and are very busy about repasting. He, as they are unawares of him, sodainely snatcheth up with his paws certain of them, and so pleasureth himself, and stencheth his hunger.

Cerberus

04:06

Who is he?

Hyena?

tchrist

> Argiua primo sum transportata carina
ante mihi notum nil nisi phasis erat.
By Argolike ship I first was brought
and shewde to other landes
Before that time I knewe no place
but the Iland Phasis sandes.

@Cerberus Nay, the Fleck. Today we call these beasts foxen.

Cerberus

Ahh.

Very today.

tchrist

quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A06860.0001.001/…

To be read quodlibet.

user 85795

Rump roast, not butt roast.

Mitch

@Cerberus if by cow butt you mean milk then yeah

tchrist

04:08

> A greene forest, or A naturall historie vvherein may bee seene first the most sufferaigne vertues in all the whole kinde of stones & mettals: next of plants, as of herbes, trees, [and] shrubs, lastly of brute beastes, foules, fishes, creeping wormes [and] serpents, and that alphabetically: so that a table shall not neede. Compiled by Iohn Maplet, M. of Arte, and student in Cambridge: entending hereby yt God might especially be glorified: and the people furdered. Anno 1567.
Maplet, John, d. 1592.

Mitch

I mean caramel is awesome and that's made only with sugar

@user85795 to be fair, there's pork butt

user 85795

True dat.

Cerberus

@Mitch You're confusing body parts.

Mitch

For lamb... They don't have em?

@Cerberus what? No I thought you were!

Cerberus

@Mitch Oh, I apologise, I meant beaver butt.

Mitch

04:11

There's no oxtail in ice cream

@Cerberus I'm.pretty sure you don't want to go anywhere near a beaver's rear

Cerberus

I confused beavers with musk deer and musk oxen.

Mitch

I mean beavers don't like it and they have to

Cerberus

@Mitch And yet it is used as vanilla flavouring!

Mitch

@Cerberus not often confused but maybe I your context

tchrist

@Cerberus No, you actually did not. You were right the first time.

> Both sexes of beavers possess a pair of castor sacs and a pair of anal glands located in paired subcutaneous cavities between the pelvis and the base of the tail. The castor sacs are not glandular in the histological sense, hence references to these structures as preputial glands or castor glands are misnomers.

Mitch

04:13

@Cerberus really?

Cerberus

@Mitch At least it used to be.

user 85795

Nice research @tchrist

Mitch

I think I'd rather conquer some Indonesian island than extract beaver... glands

Cerberus

@tchrist But I said cow first, not beaver.

While I was actually thinking of musk, which is from the musk deer, not even the musk ox.

Laurel

Well I'm not even going to attempt to follow the scroll back

user 85795

04:14

lol

Mitch

@Laurel good call

Cerberus

Would you like to see a drawing of beaver butt?

Just to catch up.

tchrist

Castoreum

Castoreum is a yellowish exudate from the castor sacs of mature beavers. Beavers use castoreum in combination with urine to scent mark their territory. Both beaver sexes have a pair of castor sacs and a pair of anal glands, located in two cavities under the skin between the pelvis and the base of the tail. The castor sacs are not true glands (endocrine or exocrine) on a cellular level, hence references to these structures as preputial glands, castor glands, or scent glands are misnomers.It is used as a tincture in some perfumes and, rarely, as a food additive. == Chemical composition == At least...

Mitch

Lots of 'gland' talk

tchrist

@Mitch Glands.

Laurel

04:15

@Cerberus Beaver and butt or just beaver butt?

Cerberus

@Laurel The last.

Mitch

@Cerberus speaking for everybody, nah we're cool

tchrist

Just wait till you get to try to figure out what the fleck.

Mitch

I hesitate to mention it but foxes also have ... glands

They really stink up the place

Cerberus

I think C.

Mitch

04:18

@Cerberus NSFAnybody

user 85795

^

tchrist

@Mitch ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8009367

Mitch

@user85795 nice

Cerberus

Mitch

@tchrist there's always research to be done

Cerberus

04:20

> From the Tractatus de Herbis, British Library ms. Sloane 4016, fol. 28r, produced in Lombardy c. 1440.
A musk deer chewing off its testicles: “Castoreum alio no(m)i(n)e Asustilbar”. Remains unclear whether “castoreum” refers to the animal or the product derived from its musk glands. The scene arises, as the wiki points out, likely because of a story that beavers would castrate themselves to evade their hunters, who were after the castoreum. The illustrator’s reasons for confounding the beaver with the musk deer are elusive, and perhaps playful. The other name, Asustilbar, remains a myster…

Mitch

@Cerberus winces

user 85795

^^^

Cerberus

So it seems I was not the only one confused.

Or confounded.

tchrist

@Cerberus alio, non olio

Cerberus

Quid?

Mitch

04:21

Is that where the word 'Castor' comes from?

Cerberus

Related.

Castor is just beaver in Latin.

Mitch

So...again I hesitate to ask, what is Pollux?

Thumb?

tchrist

Dioscuri are the hidden gods.

Cerberus

But it is from Greek.

tchrist

@Mitch Of course.

Cerberus

04:22

I don't know whether there is any relation to the gods.

Mitch

How are thumb and beaver related?

Cerberus

Thumb is pollex in Latin.

I can't imagine that it should be related to Pollux.

tchrist

@Cerberus Mostly just kidding: Διόσκουροι.

Cerberus

Hah.

The children of Zeus, more likely.

> they are sometimes said to have been born from an egg, along with their twin sisters Helen of Troy and Clytemnestra.

> They were also associated with horsemanship, in keeping with their origin as the Indo-European horse twins.

tchrist

We haven't always been good about separating pollex from pollux.

> 1702 A little Toe which is in the place of the Pollux [French à la place du Pouce]. —translation of Natural History Animals 42 (caption)

It was spelled both ways for two centuries.

Cerberus

04:30

Huh.

tchrist

> 1895 The pollux is depressed, so that when the claw is closed it falls almost exactly midway between the normal and first superadded digit. —F. H. Herrick, American Lobster ix. 147

Nowadays it's strictly pollex, pollices.

Or an old spelling of poleaxe.

> < poll n.1 + axe n.1; compare Middle Dutch polaex, polhaex, pollaex, pollex (Dutch (now hist.) polaks), Middle Low German polexe, pollexe, polaxe, pollaxe, and (probably < Middle Low German) Old Swedish polyxe, polöxe, pulyxe (Swedish pålyxa), Old Danish poløxe, polløxe, pallyxe. The relationship between the Middle English and the Middle Dutch and Middle Low German words is uncertain. Compare post-classical Latin polhaxa (1336 in a British source). Compare slightly earlier poll-hatchet n. (where, however, the second element is of French origin), and also early modern Dutch pol-haemer pole…

> 1356–7 Marescalcia. In uno malleo ferr. et 1 poleax, 3 Wharelwegges faciendis de proprio ferro. in J. T. Fowler, Extracts Account Rolls of Abbey of Durham (1899) vol. II. 557 (Middle English Dictionary)

Laurel

Pollack?

tchrist

Pollacks are different. :)

Laurel

Now, in this case, a pale-axe sounds dumb

tchrist

> Summary
A borrowing from Polish. Probably also partly a borrowing from Italian.
Etymons: Polish Polak; Italian polacco.
Ultimately < Polish Polak, self-designation, originally probably via Italian polacco (1553 or earlier as adjective, 1554 or earlier as noun); compare Middle Low German pōlacke, pollacke, German Polack (1716 or earlier; earlier as †poleck (15th cent.); now usually Polacke; now derogatory and offensive), Middle French, French Polaque (1512 as noun in sense A.1, 1540 as adjective in form †polasque, with reference to the language; now derogatory and offensive, except in spec…

@Laurel No, the Scots had a paill-axe.

Laurel

04:43

"A borrowing from Polish. Probably also partly a borrowing from Italian." This is also my origin :p

tchrist

A polished line.

It's weird that if Polish has Polak, that that should now have come to be pejorative in English.

Portugal uses polaco; Brazil uses polonês. Spanish has both polaco and polonés.

Laurel

Yeah that's weird but weirder things have happened

Like the Middle English word "yeet"

tchrist

But a polonés is also a polonaise, the musical composition.

> < French polonaise, feminine of polonais Polish (see polonois adj. and compare Polonois n.). Compare earlier Polonois n., polonois adj.
Notes
With sense A.1 compare French polonaise a type of dance tune (1774 in this sense; compare earlier danse polonoise the manner of dancing practised among the Poles (a1709 or earlier)), German Polonaise, †Polonoise (1729 as Polognoise; earlier as the title of unpublished sections of works by Bach (c1725); now often Polonäse). Compare also Polish polski, apparently superseded by polonez (1834 in this sense; < French), and also Italian polacca, alla pola…

Bach's notebook for his second wife, Anna Magdalena, contains a simple little polonaise.

Laurel

Oh snap now I'm thinking of hollandaise

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