send me your daffynitions by PM or email to caterwaul1@hotmail.com

Tally ho!

Mine's in

I've heard from Kalleh, Hab and Arnie . . . come along, children and play!

Here are the proposed definitions for

GALIMATIAS

1. A kitchen mess.

2. Mineral deficiency suffered most often by those who eat few green vegetables.

3. The word was coined by Admiral Mathew Mark Lukenjohn to distinguish the galley-slave-powered ships of the Royal Navy from those that were powered solely by sails.

4. A jumbled mixture, potpourri.

5. Pan fried pork cutlets smothered in mushrooms.

6. A full understanding of a given situation.

7. Name given to that quality of proud "true French"-ness. The most prominent recent example is the effort on the part of the French Academy to preserve the integrity of the French language by banning "creeping English." ("Le sandwich" and "le ros-bif" were bad enough; "Le MacDonald's" was simply too much to allow.)

8. Nonsense; gibberish.

Oh, dear.

I'd pick either 1 or 4, but since they're both there I have to skip them both. I guess that 'liminates 8, too.

7 has a strange appeal, but I think - having finally attained galimatias - I'll take 6 !

My vote is for four (4).


~~~ jerry

I'll take #8... it certainly sounds like gibberish to me.

Think I'll take 8, 2 - er, too.

Anyone want to reconsider their vote? I think you're all being pulled by the similarity to gallimaufry. Which may or may not be the same thing...

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

Thanks for the chance to change. I'm changing to EIGHT.

Eight for me, please.

Sounds like 8 to me.

Tinman

Anyone else want to vote? where is Kalleh?

I'll be suckered into voting for four despite arnie's vote.

I'm back from my trip, and though I didn't contribute a daffynition, I will take 8.

Okay, by all my losses in this game, everyone must know that I don't cheat, right? I suppose I could be a very bad cheater!

Honest, I looked at none of your answers before picking mine. In fact, I read the one that I had made up (forgetting it was mine) and said to myself, "Oh, for heaven's sake no!" Sheesh!

I pick number eight.

After all that, it probably won't be 8 after all!

Well, I guess this wasn't as obscure as I'd hoped! Here are the answers, with the person who gave the daffynition in parenthesis behind each entry.

GALIMATIAS

1. A kitchen mess. (CW)

2. Mineral deficiency suffered most often by those who eat few green vegetables. (Asa)

3. The word was coined by Admiral Mathew Mark Lukenjohn to distinguish the galley-slave-powered ships of the Royal Navy from those that were powered solely by sails. (Jerry)

4. A jumbled mixture, potpourri. (Arnie)

5. Pan fried pork cutlets smothered in mushrooms. (Kalleh)

6. A full understanding of a given situation. (Cat)

7. Name given to that quality of proud "true French"-ness. The most prominent recent example is the effort on the part of the French Academy to preserve the integrity of the French language by banning "creeping English." ("Le sandwich" and "le ros-bif" were bad enough; "Le MacDonald's" was simply too much to allow.) (Hab)

8. Nonsense; gibberish. (Dictionary.com)

Thanks for playing! Who's next?

It was a great word, CW! I just guessed. Thanks...and hopefully someone will come up with another fun word!

Boo!

I had jerry fooled when he picked 4. at first, but he switched to 8. when Hab suggested changing!

Since #4 and #8 both have a certain similar sense, it seems to me that your daffynition was at least in part correct. Were I still the Grand Poobah of this game, I'd award you half credit for your daffynition.

Yeahbut...

The idea of the daffynition is to give a false but believable definition, not the correct one. I did, in fact, hope that its similarity to gallimaufry would lend it some believability. The words do, in fact, share a common root, but I didn't know that.

Go back a bit - Caterwauler: can you tell us more about the word itself? Where did you come across the word? How should it be used?

My daffynition was flawed in that were the word what I suggested, it would NEVER have been Latin(-oid) like that, but French! So it couldn't be like "gravitas," for example...

Has it been seen/heard recently?

I seldom have an inkling what a word means in this game. Once in a while I have an educated guess, which is usually wrong, but usually I have no idea and just make a wild guess or no guess at all. Most of the words are nonsense to me, so when I saw that as a definition, I just had to guess it. I didn't really think it would be the right definition. I was just lucky.

Tinman

I just did some browsing through dictionaries online and found it, Hab. Here's more info . . .

From the OED online (courtesy of my library):

galimatias
(gælmæts, gælme()s)
Also 7 galimatia, 8 gallimatia(s, galimathias. [a. F. galimatias, a word of unknown origin, first found in the 16th century; cf. galimafrée GALLIMAUFRY, and see conjectures in Littré.]

Confused language, meaningless talk, nonsense.


1653 URQUHART Rabelais I. ii, A Galimatia of extravagant conceits. 1712 ADDISON Spect. No. 275 6 The great Cavity was filled with a kind of Spongy Substance, which the French Anatomists call Galimatias and the English, Nonsense. 1728 LD. HERVEY Let. to Lady M. W. Montagu 28 Oct. in Lady M.'s Lett., If you do not dislike long letters, and an unstudied galimatias of tout ce qui se trouve au bout de la plume (comme dit Madame de Sévigné), let me know it. 1824 H. C. ROBINSON Diary 10 June (1869) II. x. 274 Now it seemed to me that Mr. C had no opinions, only words, for his assertions seemed a mere galimatias. 1860 FARRAR Orig. Lang. vi. 144 Simple thoughts overlaid with galimatias.



b. transf. A mixture, medley.

1762 H. WALPOLE Lett. to Montagu clxv, Her dress, like her language, is a galimatias of several countries.

quote:

...which the French Anatomists call Galimatias and the English, Nonsense
... an unstudied galimatias of tout ce qui se trouve au bout de la plume (comme dit Madame de Sévigné)

You mean it really IS French?!

No takers for next up? Shall we take a break?

Break? Heresy!

Next word is an anagram of BANGER. Find it here.