The word for this round is chalot.

Please send me your daffynitions via PM!

Wordmatic

Thanks, WM. I am glad you revitalized this game! Mine's on the way...

You're welcome. It was way past time for me to take a turn.

I've got two absolutely great ones, people. Please send yours to me via PM so that we can fool everybody!

Wordmatic

I've heard from Kalleh, Arnie, Asa, Bethree, Jerry...So I'll keep the game open until Wednesday for all the rest of you lexicographers out there, and then post the answers, real and imaginary.

Wordmatic

Post a note in the Q&A forum asking for more daffynitions! We gotta have more, MORE, MORE!!!

You have mine now

. . . and mine, too.

All right, voters: here are the defi-and-daffynitions. Only one is the correct meaning. Please cast your vote here for the one you think is correct, and all will be revealed soon!

Chalot

1. A state of melancholy.

2. Item of medieval armour designed to protect the wrist but leave the fingers free and flexible.

3. A character in French pantomime, dressed as a cat.

4. Primitive bedwarmer, predating the use of copper pans full of embers with or without wooden frames to protect the sheets. Chalots were simply bricks or stones heated on the hearth and placed in the bedclothes.

5. Loaves of yeast-leavened egg bread, usually braided, traditionally eaten by Jews on the Sabbath, holidays, and other ceremonial occasions.

6. The abbreviated Latin name for the three-toed tree toad Tripedaldigitouschalot chalot.

7. Small Belgian onion.

8. A slatternly woman; one given to crude speech.

9. A magical being said to live alone on an enchanted island near Camelot.

10. A French antique chair with fine hand-carved, beaded decor and pilaster-shaped legs.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: wordmatic,

Experienced chefs know that almost all Belgian recipes begin "First, you take a leek ..."

Except, of course, when a small Belgian onion is called for, as in this case .... Voila ! Number Seven !! "

I'll take a guess at number 8.

It's a melancholic, slatternly small magical being who eats Belgian onions and Jewish bread while dressed in armour and pantomiming a cat in bed with a bedwarmer and a toad.

Uhhh, well, I'll take a guess at # 5

I'll guess at 1.

2, please.

But what happened to mine? It was one of my favorites. Heck, I might have even guessed it.

What happened to yours? Shucks, I though I guessed yours!

Oh, Kalleh, I am so sorry! instead of collecting the responses from my PMs, I plucked them out of my personal email, where I had filed yours neatly in another folder.

I owe you an extra beer, wine or whatever in Columbus.

Mea Culpa!

Wordmatic

No problem! But I will take that beer!

It's a deal, then!

Any more votes? Not everyone who submitted an answer has stated an opinion--AND, it is not necessary to have done so to vote!

WM

CW? Bethree?

OK already, what's the real one? Is arnie right as usual? Did I guess right by pronouncing "ch" in the back of my throat? Orrrr.....?

Oops, dropped the ball again! I'll cast another vote for #2 if there's still time.

Yes, still time Miz Three!

Well, I was waiting for CW, but she doesn't seem to be around anywhere.....Woo hoo! CW! Tell ya what, Asa, after work today I'll post 'em no matter what. Mind you, I'll probably be working late, but then you are in the extreme left half of the time zones, so you won't notice.

WM

Extreme left half? There are only two time zones? Gosh, that's news to me!

Sorry - I've been having computer trouble and have had to spend all kinds of extra time trying to solve it. It's solved now!

Ok - I guess #2

And I lied, Asa--I forgot I was going to a play on campus last night, so I was a no-show. Yes, the world is divided into two time zones: Greenwich Mean Time and Pacific Standard Time. The rest is all a confused muddle.

And now for the answers:

1. A state of melancholy--Caterwauller's happy offering tripped up Arnie.

2. Item of medieval armour designed to protect the wrist but leave the fingers free and flexible. --BobHale's flexible flier, guessed by Kalleh, bethree and Caterwauller!

3. A character in French pantomime, dressed as a cat. --Arnie's contribution made me smile, but nobody bit.

4. Primitive bedwarmer, predating the use of copper pans full of embers with or without wooden frames to protect the sheets. Chalots were simply bricks or stones heated on the hearth and placed in the bedclothes. This was bethree5's daff, and, again, no takers.

5. Loaves of yeast-leavened egg bread, usually braided, traditionally eaten by Jews on the Sabbath, holidays, and other ceremonial occasions. The actual definition, it is the plural of challah. Guessed correctly, yes, only by Asa!

6. The abbreviated Latin name for the three-toed tree toad Tripedaldigitouschalot chalot --Jerry's daft answer drew no votes.

7. Small Belgian onion. --bethree5's root vegetable entrapped Jerry.

8. A slatternly woman; one given to crude speech. -- Asa's fallen femme fooled Bob.

9. A magical being who lives alone on a mythical island. Something I threw in to fill out the list, which nobody even considered.

10. A French antique chair with fine hand-carved, beaded decor and pilaster-shaped legs. Kalleh's answer, which I slipped in after she pointed out my lapse! No one guessed, but they might have had the host been more careful.

I encountered the word "chalot" while playing Scrabulous (the pirated version of Scrabble) on Facebook. The board is engineered such that if a letter combination goes through, it means it is on The (official Scrabble) Word List. I have found many unusual and unheard of words in this way. I looked it up and was surprised to find it wasn't some kind of Swiss ski lodge. Even my Jewish colleagues who had heard of the plural of challah all their lives and never seen it spelled and were surprised at it. I could not find anything about the origin of that spelling, though. It is from the Yiddish.

Wordmatic

DAMN!!! This is an historic moment. It is the first time arnie, who almost always gets them right, has missed two in a row! Arnie, have you been ill?

Hey, don't make Arnie feel bad for being 0.00001 times as "bad" as the rest of us!

No, I mean that he must be feeling bad already, and is off his game as a result. Arnie is amazing!!!

I cannot believe I didn't get that. I buy challah all the time! However, I've not had a course in Hebrew, and I thought the answer was one of those obvious distractors. What a stupid fool I can be! I am not even going to tell Shu!

Is "chalot" a transliteration from the Hebrew or is Yiddish written in the Roman alphabet? I think in this alphabet the word looks so French that you are naturally thrown off. (Do you think there's actually a chance that Shu might not read this?)

Wordmatic

I've seen lots of Hebrew transliterations using "ch" for an "h" spoken in the back of the throat, so I guessed that such was the case here. For once I appear to have been right!

In English we don't use many sounds that other languages do.

Asa is right. And the worst part is that the spelling of each word can be different. For example, had you spelled it "challot," I probably would have gotten it correct (though I'd not bet the farm on it!). I'd just never seen "chalot." Here is an example of the "challot" spelling. To be honest, though, I think the better spelling is "challot."

Found this OED reference (probably you already saw it) which I guess makes it official. Unfortunately all they say is "from Hebrew". They show "chaloth" as an alternate spelling for the plural-- THAT would have given it away, I think.

I am not disputing that the spelling is acceptable, and you've just proved me wrong about the "best" spelling of "challot," I suppose. I am just saying that I've only seen it spelled with one "L." On the other hand, since it is transliteration, the spelling of words is often quite varied (another example being "Hanukkah" or "Chanukkah" or "Hanukah" or "Chanukah," etc.) and I absolutely should have known that! I could kick myself...thankfully the prize for winning wasn't $1M.

At any rate, Wordmatic is correct that it's all transliteration anyway. The correct word is written with Hebrew letters.

Some authorities might say the original was transcribed in a group of knots tied in strings, threads, cords, and twine by Inca scribes. In the processes of translation from Inca knots to Maya pictographs to Babylonic cuneform, thence to ancient Hebrew and so on, phonetic differences might have become pronounced. Thus "esteemed contributor" can sound a lot like "smartass."

This message has been edited. Last edited by: jerry thomas,

Since I backed into this one through a scrabble game, I was mostly uninformed when I put the word out there for this round, so all of these explanations help me make sense of it.

And Kalleh, I am so glad I don't have to come up with a $1 million prize!

WM

I feel like I just won a big prize because I fooled Arnie! Woohoo!

"tosses chalot in the air"

Kalleh is right. Oxford is wrong. The plural challah is challot. Neither chalot nor chaloth is even an acceptable alternate form.

I’m not pontificating. I’m relying on actual usage. Almost all usage is Kalleh’s way.

For example, here’s what you get from Google’s news-archive, 1990-2008 (a Google book-search was simlar):

• chaloth yields no hits at all.
  
• one-l chalot yields no valid hits. (The overwhelming majority use it as a proper name; of the rest, one is the dictionary already cited, one means “shallot”, and two give no context.)
  
• two-l challot yields 25 valid hits (out of 32), many of which are from Israeli or Jewish publications.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: shufitz,

Shu, I found this word during an online Scrabble game. The word, which I assembled from the tiles on my rack, not knowing if it were a word, went through, which meant it was on TWL, the official Scrabble acceptable word list, I went searching for a definition in Onelook, and I found only one, in the Free Online Dictionary. Then I searched "challah or chalot" and came up with over 300 hits, and many of them on Jewish sites like this one.. And this one from the Jerusalem Post. Also the Oxford one that bethree5 found.

Certainly it met the test of obscurity for this game, and now I'll go and search for some more candidates

And yeah, CW, that was a really good one. You have absolutely no reason for melancholy at all!

Wordmatic

Shu is just upset that Asa won the $1 M, instead of our sharing it.

I'll split it among all who played so I won't have to pay taxes on all of it! Besides, I only guessed right because I didn't know enough about Yiddish to see what was wrong!

Don't even mention taxes today! Grrrr!

Ah,came up for air from taxes & see we're still at it! I'm not surprised challot gets more hits than chalot. As Kalleh says, it's really more about how we choose to spell the translation into our alphabet. "all-" is a time-honored way to convey "ahll-" (as opposed to the flat "short a" as in 'Al'). Maybe if I saw "chaloth" I would be clued in from the ending that it's not English, & therefore vowel is likely said "ah". But when it's spelled "chalot", it doesn't compute for me as anything but... French!

Oops, sorry Kalleh! Let's just call it The Bite.

"Chalot" does look a bit like "salot," hence my daffynition!

quote:

Originally posted by shufitz:
Kalleh is right. Oxford is wrong. The plural challah is challot. Neither chalot nor chaloth is even an acceptable alternate form.

I’m not pontificating. I’m relying on actual usage. Almost all usage is Kalleh’s way.

For example, here’s what you get from Google’s news-archive, 1990-2008 (a Google book-search was simlar):

• chaloth yields no hits at all.
  
• one-l chalot yields no valid hits. (The overwhelming majority use it as a proper name; of the rest, one is the dictionary already cited, one means “shallot”, and two give no context.)
  
• two-l challot yields 25 valid hits (out of 32), many of which are from Israeli or Jewish publications.

...I'd'ha' bit, too, if I'd been playing. It's a clear case of "Who ya gonna believe, me or some strange dictionary?" The bottom line is that it's dangerous to transliterate and expect consensus. And equally dangerous to assume anything about word origin based on orthography.Caveat logophilii, -ae (or whatever...)