Welcome to the New Day Cafe! This is an open thread.
Linguist Susie Dent has a list of “Top Ten Things You Didn’t Know Had a Name”.
I’m quoting just a few with copyright protections in mind, but you can click over to see the rest of the list.
exsibilate
The Romans liked to show their disapproval if a stage performer failed to excite them. To ‘explode’ was originally to slow hand clap a poor actor from the stage – it is the sibling of ‘applaud’. Clearly the noise they made in dispatching the poor individual was such that ‘explode’ came to describe a different kind of detonation altogether. If meanwhile those same audiences decided to hiss their disapproval, then they were ‘exisibilating’.
throttlebottom
‘Throttlebottom’ does what it says on the tin, for this 19th-century insult describes an inept person in public office. It was inspired by Alexander Throttlebottom, a character in an American musical who was clearly shuffingly incompetent.
groak
All dogs always do it, and humans tend to do it around a plate of chips – to groak is to stare at someone else’s plate with intense longing, in the hope that its contents might be shared.
Grab a cup of coffee,
groak a treat,
and share what’s on your mind this morning.
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