Discussion Forum

Heckelphone

2009-09-24T17:22:35-08:00

Heckelphone - A woodwind instrument of the oboe family, developed by Wilhelm Heckel (1879-1952) and first introduced in 1904. It is larger than an oboe, and pitched an octave lower.

sounds like

2008-10-22T22:14:25-08:00

i would like to know what this word means but i do not know how to spell it in russian only what it sounds like. sounds like choochoondrik or chuchundrik. with rolling r

“inocular”.

2009-09-28T12:34:47-08:00

“Insterted in the corner of the eye”?
-Dictionary.com

Typed this in the site mainframe, and couldn’t find, yet dictionary.com had their own.

Snib

2009-04-28T08:12:11-08:00

Snib - the little lock on the inside of a car door. I think it is of Scottish origin and we used it all the time as children.

Margaret Rooney.

Funny,rare,obscure or uncommon words.

2008-04-01T12:04:42-08:00

Have you read (or said) any or many rare,uncommon,antiquated or unusual words?

library

2009-02-11T06:49:15-08:00

A page error is displayed, when we type library.

meatspace

2009-06-29T14:58:52-08:00

Meatspace is a word referring to real life or the physical world, and conceived as the opposite of cyberspace or virtuality.
The term has appeared in the Financial Times, and in science fiction literature, specifically the cyberpunk genre.
Some early uses of the term include a post to the Usenet newsgroup austin.public-net on Feb. 21, 1993 and an article in the Seattle Times about John Perry Barlow on October 30, 1995. The term entered the Oxford English Dictionary in 2000.

source: wikipedia.org

This is also computer related.

2009-09-05T10:51:19-08:00

Wetware. As opposed to hardware and software, wetware is the old grey matter between the ears that was used work things out before Ram and Rom came on the scene.

PURLIEU

2009-04-06T13:58:09-08:00

I don’t know if it is missing from any dictionary, but I like the word, and this thread is dead.
So, purlieu: In Medieval England, if you were fortunate to acquire a new piece of land you
would want to have as many ceremonies as possible to make it clear the land belonged to
you. To assert the extent of your land you might have a ceremony called a
“Perambulation” in which you would walk around and record the boundaries of your
property in the presence of witnesses. If your land bordered on a royal forest, you might
find there was some confusion as to where your land started and the royal forest ended.
Luckily the law stated that if you performed a perambulation you could gain at least some
degree of ownership over disputed forest tracts, although your use of them would be
restricted by forest laws and royals would probably still have the right to hunt on them.
Such regained forest property was called a purlewe (or later - purlieu) which derives from
the Anglo-French word for perambulation. So if I find myself running around in circles
some day, at least it has some historical background. {word from M-W word of day}.

Retronym

2009-08-27T10:53:10-08:00

A word for consideration: retronym (noun).
Example of use: “analogue watch” the kind of watch that was simply called “a watch” before the existence of digital watches. Due to technological developments it is no longer possible to understand exactly what is meant by “a watch” and so to differentiate we invent a new term to concisely define the original object (analogue watch). This newly invented term is a retronym.

Sourced from wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retronym