I think it's CJ's dementia talking!

DamnDamnDamnDamnDamnDamnDamn!!!

Lewis Carroll - 2 R's & 2 L's.
Occasion - 2 C's & 1 S.
Stationery - E for "envelope" at the end.
Entrepreneur - no bread in the middle.


(...and I try so hard!)

quote:

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Originally posted by Chris J. Strolin:
(...and I try so hard!)

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Yes, CJ, we know you're trying.

Tinman

As a newcomer (from Distributed Proofreaders, you should give us a look at www.pgdp.net), one of my favourite verbs:

maffick: to mooch around, seeing what might turn up.

"Mother may I go and 'maffick',
Run in the street and frighten the traffic?"

Hillaire Belloc


Word comes from the seige of Mafeking during the Boer War, when some defendants would sortie out and cruise the neighbourhood.

Vasa (whose grandfather was a kid at Mafeking, and whose use as runners led to his creation of the Boy Scouts)

Welcome to you, Vasa, and thanks again for your help over there.

Warning: This site can be addicting. Welcome to the mad-house.

Welcome, Vasa!

As you can see we are a relatively small board...but we are mighty! We love newcomers and I especially enjoy hearing about new words. I hadn't heard of "maffick," but it sounds very useful to me!

Tell us about your interest in "parrots" (from your profile). Are there any "parrot" words that you could introduce us to?

Now, I think I am going to maffick a bit on wordcraft....

Way back on Sept. 13, wordcrafter wrote, "deracinate - 1. to pull out by the roots 2. to displace from one's native or accustomed environment
The first meaning of deracinate invites metaphorical use.

Today, while proofreading for the Gutenberg Project, I was working on The Pretty Lady (1918) by E. Arnold Bennett -- a novel set near the end of WWI -- and ran across this word. It says, "Lastly the close prospect of the resistless Allied Western offensive which would deracinate Prussian militarism was uplifting men's minds.

It also gave an interesting word, new to me.
"Gilbert had tried to induce her to accept more attractive investments. But she would not. Never! These were her consols, part of her religion. Bonds of the City of Paris had fallen in value, but not in her dogmatic esteem."

quote:

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Originally posted by Vasa:
maffick: to mooch around, seeing what might turn up.

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Odd. I always understood that "to maffick" meant "to celebrate boisterously", after the wild celebrations in London when news that the seige of Mafeking was relieved arrived home. The online dictionaries seem to agree with me: none give the "mooch around" definition. See for example http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=maffick