Our new word is extromit. Please send me your daffynitions!

You may guess the correct definition of this word, but I am 99.999999% sure that no one here really knows it. I'll tell you why at the end of the game.

I have two daffynitions now, How about a few more, please?

I've gotten a few more. How about the rest of you?

I will post the real definition, and all your daffys, tomorrow. How about a few more before I post them?

This game's just not popular anymore! :-( I'll send another

I've got enough, don't worry.

Here are the daffys, and the one true deffy. Select away!

1) The process of sampling the stomach contents during a gastroscopic procedure.

2) To launch something beyond the atmosphere, such as a satellite.

3) To separate the clinopyroxene group of inosilicates from dark green monoclinic prismatic crystals.

4) To throw out.

5) Name coined by Arthur C. Clarke for a remote controlled robot for working in hostile conditions.

6) To ban, send outside.

7) Term from audio engineering: the removal of certain extraneous noise from recordings with a combination of high and low pass filters.

8) To forget completely.

9) To grow outwards.

10) A glove of mail, worn in medieval times to protect the sword-hand.

Fortunately, the winner does not receive a grand prize. You'll realize why I've said this when I post the answers.

Good Luck on your million dollar reward!

I have no idea at all here. I have a feeling I knew the answer before, however - so I'll go for number 8.

Yesterday I officially passed into Old Fart status, a gastroenterologist having told me to add fiber to my diet. This is the sure sign of old farthood. Since #1 deals with a similar subject, I'll chyme in in favor of it.

Come one, come all. Guess!

I am missing Proof these days. I hope his eyes are better soon.

I'll go for 4.

I have to go with arnie, though the similarity of 2, 4, 6, and 9 makes me feel I should jettison the lot of them all together...

FORE !

I don't like any of the answers, but I'll pick 7.

...And the question is, will arnie be wrong this time?

A few more before I end this masquerade?

Okay...here's the story. I wanted to find a really good word for the Bluffing game...so I went to the OED. I found this button that randomly selects words for you. I did that for awhile, and most of them were incredibly easy, like "really." However, I came up with "extromit" and got really exciting when I couldn't find it in Onelook, it only appeared in foreign sites on Google, and on OED they called it "obscure," with one cite from 1711:

quote:

a1711 KEN Hymnotheo Poet. Wks. 1721 III. 36 Satan with Looks, which extromitted Spite. Ibid. 267 Eyes..extromitting lustful Flame.

Wow, this time I will really get them, I thought.

However, when both Hab and Geoff (Geoff technically won this game, too, since he really did figure it out) asked if it was the opposite of "intromission," I knew I was in trouble. Of course I didn't answer that question, but I knew I was a dead duck in this game, once again. I am sure arnie had that same thought since he got it right. I just didn't think about "intromission." Ugh!

However, I do feel confident that neither Hab, Geoff or arnie ever saw the word used or in print. That's one thing!

Here are the answers:

1) The process of sampling the stomach contents during a gastroscopic procedure - Michael Daws' submission; guessed by Geoff. I had to revise my original daffy because of Michael's; I had planned to use "projectile vomiting."

2) To launch something beyond the atmosphere, such as a satellite - Geoff's submission; no takers on this beauty.

3) To separate the clinopyroxene group of inosilicates from dark green monoclinic prismatic crystals - Kalleh's submission, but she fooled no one (not even herself!).

4) To throw out - OED The real thing; selected by Hab, arnie, and I have to give this one to Geoff, too.

5) Name coined by Arthur C. Clarke for a remote controlled robot for working in hostile conditions - Bob's creative daffy; unfortunately no takers, though I don't feel too bad because he won the limerick game.

6) To ban, send outside - arnie's submission, but banned by our players. I probably should have banned this one, as it was way too close to the real definition.

7) Term from audio engineering: the removal of certain extraneous noise from recordings with a combination of high and low pass filters - Bob's submission, and he caught Tinman.

8) To forget completely - arnie's submission, and of course he fooled someone because he's, well, he's arnie. He fooled Michael.

9) To grow outwards - Geoff's outgoing submission, and another I should probably have banned. It's way too close to the real thing...no one was fooled.

10) A glove of mail, worn in medieval times to protect the sword-hand - Hab's clever submission, which unfortunately fooled no one.

I'd never heard of the word but since it's obviously based on Latin I was able to guess at the meaning from the Latin roots extra, "outside" and mittere "to send, put". I tried to make my own daffynitions seem plausible Latin translations and was half-expecting Kalleh to rule out the first one, which is why I submitted* two.

* Also related.

I envy you your latin, Arnie. Unfortunately, the year of latin I had when I was twelve has been extromitted.

Just a small point, Kalleh - the Obs. in the OED stands for obsolete rather than obscure, I think. Not that that makes any difference to the fun we have guessing the meaning!

I see no reason to give me any credit since I picked a daffynition, not the real one. While logic (and four years of Latin way back when) told me what I PMed to you, I nevertheless ignored logic and picked #1.

Geoff, who got it wrong even though I knew better!

Just an observation: Most of us seem to do better with handling words of Latin origin. Conversely, other roots will be harder to identify or work out.

Now the question is, what other sources are there, and how do we find their progeny?

There are of course many words of Latin origin in English. Many are, like extromit, inkhorn words, coined by an academic for effect. Since Latin (and Greek to a lesser extent) was known to almost everyone who could read, they mined Latin in particular to create new words. To some extent this still goes on today, as the odd new word like television is based on the classics. Scientists also often use Latin in their naming conventions.

Television, by the way, comes from a Greek word tele, "far" and a Latin word video, "I see". Such a hybrid is looked upon with horror by some pedants, who feel that such an abomination should not be allowed.

I think that because English contains so many Latin roots those words that are obviously coined or descended from Latin are not really very suitable for the bluffing game. Many of us who were taught Latin at school will have an advantage, but even those without a classical education can often pick out Latin words used as affixes and take an informed guess at their meaning.

Hab asks what other sources there are. English is, of course, a huge melting pot, with words derived from a myriad of sources.

Old English was chiefly Scandinavian and Germanic in origin, with a smattering of Celtic (mainly place-names) and Latin (via the Church). After the Norman Conquest the language segued into Middle English, with an influx of Old French words (mostly themselves descended from Latin and Germanic roots). A little before Shakespeare's time the language had settled down into what is recognisably Modern English. Perhaps two main factors have also had an impact on English since then. One was the emergence of England as a trading and exploring nation, which brought in many words from foreign languages. Another was the Enlightenment, when there was an increase in interest in the arts and sciences, which needed new words to be coined or borrowed from other languages.

quote:

Television, by the way, comes from a Greek word tele, "far" and a Latin word video, "I see". Such a hybrid is looked upon with horror by some pedants, who feel that such an abomination should not be allowed.

It's not the mixing of Latin and Greek that makes television an abomination, IMHO.

Ah, but remember, in the UK we have the "least bad Television in the world" - or we used to have. Sadly, according to John Cleese, we no longer have that distinction - http://entertainment.timesonli...o/article6234702.ece

While I've not seen much TV from non-English-speaking countries, I can't help but think that the USA must have the most abominable TV. Watching fat people lose weight is entertaining? Watching boorish yokels fight one another is entertaining? Watching people catch crabs (both the kind you eat and the kind that eat you) is entertaining? Even the worst episode of Farty Towels was better than the best of current US mainstream TV, IMHO. Thanks one helluva lot, Rupert Merde-ock.

I don't believe that Rupert Murdoch can be blamed for the awful state of US television. After all, he owns much of the UK's media as well.

I have only been going to the USA since 1979 so don't know how their TV was prior to then - but it was pretty ghastly when I first saw it and Murdoch's influence couldn't have been much in those days.

Merde-och owns Fox, our first tabloid "news" network. Sensationalism sells, so all the rest have followed suit. I stand on my previous statement.

I agree that Fox is pretty dire - but back in 1979 Fox didn't exist and the other channels were also pretty dire.

I suspect than the modern trend for media (of all sorts) to pander to the public's taste for trivia and sensationalism is an ongoing societal change; Murdoch, being a very astute man, has simply pandered to that taste. He wouldn't sell his papers if people didn't like what they offers.

In point of fact, in the UK Murdoch owns both The Sun (the most popular newspaper in the country and very much aimed at the semi-literate) and The Times, probably the most authoritative and one of the oldest newspapers in the country. I read The Times and have to say that I don't think its editorial style has changed all that much over the past half-century - although clearly it has had to move to some extent to keep up with changes in taste amnd fashion.

As I wrote, if Murdoch were able to (and wanted to) manipulate people's tastes by manipulating the media, then UK TV and newspapers would be as dire as those in the USA - but this is simply not the case.

If the UK can no longer proudly claim the least-bad TV in the world, who now holds that accolade, I wonder? I see that the article made no mention of that.

[URL=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon's_Law]Sturgeon's_Law[/URL] (the second one) applies to TV all over the world.

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

That law says, "Ninety percent of everything is crud.", though, Bob; everything, not only TV. Are you saying that TV is no better or worse than any other medium?

Quite the reverse. I'm saying no other medium is any better or worse than television.

Incidentally why isn't my link displaying properly? I can't see anything wrong with it.

Probably the apostrophe in the URL. ISTR them giving problems in the past.

Bob, are you going to post a venue for the limerick game? Does anyone have a word for the Bluffing Game?

quote:

Originally posted by arnie:
If the UK can no longer proudly claim the least-bad TV in the world, who now holds that accolade, I wonder? I see that the article made no mention of that.

In fact my orginal search failed to reveal the orginator of this phrase - probably because I got it wrong

It was actually a book entitled "The least worst television in the world", written by Milton Shulman (1913-2004) in 1973. Sadly Milton is no longer around to tell us which, if any, TV service has taken over this mantle from ours.

I would say, however, that in my own experience of travelling the world, British TV is better overall than any other country's TV that I have ever seen. As I have mentioned previously, Al Jazeera is excellent for international news - but its output range is very limited even compared with the BBC's - let alone with that of all the UK-based broadcasters.

Well, John Cleese is one person who disagrees with you, Richard. His statement in the interview that we no longer hold that title didn't mention who has taken over.

New technology has meant that they way we watch TV is changing - cable, satellite, and Internet TV gives viewers more choice, although I appreciate not all can make use of it. We can see programmes from around the world and are no longer limited to the schedules decided by the main channels.

I've seen a lot of very good US and Canadian shows, as well as good British ones. There are even a couple of pretty good Australian programmes, which might surprise those who remember Home and Away, Neighbours, and Prisoner - Cell Block H.

I've seen plenty of dross, too, but the good thing is I can always try somewhere else. Anyway, pronouncements by those such as Cleese or Shulman can only be subjective. Their individual expectations almost certainly differ and are probably different again from any other person's.

Some people want an unremimitting diet of soaps and "reality" shows; others would want good drama, and so on. I haven't travelled much outside the UK so can't comment on the TV in other countries, apart from to say it's not so bad, especially since I've access to cable and Internet TV.

EDIT: Whether British TV is any worse or better than it was 30-40 years ago when Shulman was writing is a moot point, since it is a matter of personal opinion. The fact is though that there is more of it, with easier access to much of other countries' output, and, via the Internet, we can also watch programmes already broadcast using BBC iPlayer, 4OD, etc.

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

quote:

I haven't travelled much outside the UK so can't comment on the TV in other countries, apart from to say it's not so bad, especially since I've access to cable and Internet TV.

Trust me - the balance of programmes of broadcast TV in some countries is truly dire.

Plus the balance of programmes and advertsing is also truly foul in some countries. I was in Canada last year and tried to watch "The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe" on a broadcast from the USA. By the time the characters had reached Narnia for the second time the broadcast had been running for the best part of an hour, having been interrupted by lengthy advertising slots of unbelievable banality every few minutes (which slots are not properly deliniated as they are in the UK - they just suddenly appear). So I switched off and went to the pub!

I agree, of course, that the way in which we watch TV is very different now from the way it was watched back in the 1970s, when Milton Schulman wrote his book. The choice is greater by orders of magnitude from those times when we had only two or three channels, all British.

Good news / bad news

Good: I can read again.

Bad: I'm back!

Welcome back, proof. Glad to hear you're feeling better. The limericks have been much tamer in your absence ;-)

And probably a lot better!

quote:

Bad: I'm back!

No way. We've missed you so much!

Welcome back, Proof!

quote:

Originally posted by Richard English:

I would say, however, that in my own experience of travelling the world, British TV is better overall than any other country's TV that I have ever seen.

Our TV is full of pap American reality shows and interchangeable 4-letter crime shows too but, interestingly, the stand-out stuff I recall from the last few yrs is also mainly American – The Sopranos, The Wire, The West Wing, Band of Brothers (and the only show that I’ve actually made a point of watching this season - Nurse Jackie (heh heh, Kalleh), but then I love Edie Falco). We just don’t seem to get the good British drama that we did 10-15 years ago. Sunday nights here used to be great BBC TV watching (Francis Urquart in House of Cards!) Are they still making those shows?

In some ways I'm glad there’s so much rubbish on TV because that way I’m not tempted to spend a lot of time blobbing out in front of it - it's such a time-waster. And, as Arnie says, TV programmes per se are pretty irrelevant – if I really want to watch something I download it off the internet or buy, borrow or hire it on DVD and watch it without ads when it suits. TV’s for news and sport, and occasionally the History or Discovery channel.

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I’m not tempted to spend a lot of time blobbing out in front of it - it's such a time-waster.

Time-wasting is for limericks.

Stella, where have you been? Not wasting time here, alas...

That's sweet, Geoff. The truth is, though, that I find that life ticks along a bit more satisfactorily when I limit my time wasting here (and elsewhere). It's an unfortunate reality.

Well, then, I'll relish your presence all the more when it's here.

quote:

In some ways I'm glad there’s so much rubbish on TV because that way I’m not tempted to spend a lot of time blobbing out in front of it - it's such a time-waster.

That's a great point, Stella. I was at court today, possibly being selected for a jury. Fortunately, I didn't get selected. When querying the prospective jurors (I didn't get that far), the plaintiff's attorney asked them which their favorite magazines, TV shows, and newspapers were. I was planning what I'd say if I were called. I would have said the Smithsonian magazine and the New York Times, but I wasn't sure what I'd say for the TV show. I suppose, if push comes to shove, it would be Frasier, but that's so old now. Still, I love the repeats and laugh as hard as I ever did.

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the Smithsonian magazine and the New York Times

That's almost guaranteed to get you discharged from Jury service.