Re: Mot du jour, etc.
Posted: Tue Jan 22, 2013 8:02 pm
Ohhhh! Mico was kind of close.Giovanni Schwartz wrote:Nope!
It's actually a hearse.
Humor will not be tolerated!! -Portia
Your Questions...Your Answers
https://www.theboardboard.org/
Mot du jour, etc.
Page 3 of 7
Re: Mot du jour, etc.
Posted: Tue Jan 22, 2013 8:32 pm
I didn't guess, but I can take the credit! ^_- Dead Cat was pretty close. 
Re: Mot du jour, etc.
Posted: Tue Jan 22, 2013 8:54 pm
Oops. Sorry, Dead Cat!mic0 wrote:I didn't guess, but I can take the credit! ^_- Dead Cat was pretty close.
Re: Mot du jour, etc.
Posted: Tue Jan 22, 2013 8:59 pm
If I'm going to get confused with someone, I'm flattered that it was MicoKatya wrote:Oops. Sorry, Dead Cat!mic0 wrote:I didn't guess, but I can take the credit! ^_- Dead Cat was pretty close.
.Re: Mot du jour, etc.
Posted: Wed Jan 23, 2013 7:56 am
That's a very gracious response.Dead Cat wrote:If I'm going to get confused with someone, I'm flattered that it was MicoKatya wrote:Oops. Sorry, Dead Cat!mic0 wrote:I didn't guess, but I can take the credit! ^_- Dead Cat was pretty close.
Re: Mot du jour, etc.
Posted: Wed Jan 23, 2013 7:56 am
rongeur (nm) - rodent
Re: Mot du jour, etc.
Posted: Thu Jan 24, 2013 1:20 pm
envergure (nf) - wingspan; stature, calibre; scope, scale, range
Re: Mot du jour, etc.
Posted: Thu Jan 24, 2013 8:49 pm
тля - aphid
I was playing a ladybug board game with my daughter and decided to use Russian. I knew all the bugs except for this one.
Apparently, if you want to call someone "a nobody" in Russian, you can call them an aphid. I'll have to try it out sometime and see how it goes.
I was playing a ladybug board game with my daughter and decided to use Russian. I knew all the bugs except for this one.
Apparently, if you want to call someone "a nobody" in Russian, you can call them an aphid. I'll have to try it out sometime and see how it goes.
Re: Mot du jour, etc.
Posted: Thu Jan 24, 2013 11:04 pm
Random statement of fact: I started a choir with some friends, and for a warm-up piece yesterday, we all sang a Russian (actually, Ukrainian) song. Except since none of us speak Ukrainian, we're doing it on la for now.
Re: Mot du jour, etc.
Posted: Fri Jan 25, 2013 2:43 pm
One of my favorite Finnish words is "yksikertainen" which translates literally to "one time" and means "simple". The opposite, "difficult" is "monimutkainen" which literally means "many turns/twists".
Re: Mot du jour, etc.
Posted: Mon Jan 28, 2013 12:11 am
abricotier - p. 271, Notre-Dame de Paris - apricot tree
I was excited that this was likely to appear in the French Children's Songbook, but find no evidence that this is so.
Alors, my submission:
I was excited that this was likely to appear in the French Children's Songbook, but find no evidence that this is so.
Alors, my submission:
Par la fenêtre qu'est-ce que vous voyez?
Pop-corn éclatant sur l'abricotier.
Printemps m'a apporté une bonne surprise!
Toutes les fleurs fleurissent sous la brise.
Je prendrais une brassée, une gâterie,
Flocon de pop-corn qui sent si gentil.
Ce n'était pas le cas, mais il me semblait
Pop-corn éclatant sur l'abricotier!
Re: Mot du jour, etc.
Posted: Mon Jan 28, 2013 12:37 am
I love exploding rice flower! #Chinese #爆米花
Re: Mot du jour, etc.
Posted: Mon Jan 28, 2013 1:23 am
Katya wrote:Are you going to deign to define any of those?Portia wrote:molles collines
mailles redoublées
la roideur
Oh, Hugo, the back page of your book makes me question my major.
Finally got to the section of the book from which this was extracted. Translations are in bold, from Project Gutenberg.There he stood, grave, motionless, absorbed in one look and one thought. All Paris lay at his feet, with the thousand spires of its edifices and its circular horizon of gentle hills—with its river winding under its bridges, and its people moving to and fro through its streets,—with the clouds of its smoke,—with the mountainous chain of its roofs which presses Notre-Dame in its doubled folds; but out of all the city, the archdeacon gazed at one corner only of the pavement, the Place du Parvis; in all that throng at but one figure,—the gypsy.
It would have been difficult to say what was the nature of this look, and whence proceeded the flame that flashed from it. It was a fixed gaze, which was, nevertheless, full of trouble and tumult. And, from the profound immobility of his whole body, barely agitated at intervals by an involuntary shiver, as a tree is moved by the wind; from the stiffness of his elbows, more marble than the balustrade on which they leaned; or the sight of the petrified smile which contracted his face,—one would have said that nothing living was left about Claude Frollo except his eyes.
Re: Mot du jour, etc.
Posted: Tue Jan 29, 2013 3:06 pm
souche (nf) - stump
source: Wikipedia article on vultures. (They like to lay their eggs on flat surfaces, such as on a souche.)
source: Wikipedia article on vultures. (They like to lay their eggs on flat surfaces, such as on a souche.)
Re: Mot du jour, etc.
Posted: Wed Jan 30, 2013 1:04 pm
chevalier (nm) - The word usually means "knight" but it can also mean "sandpiper."
Re: Mot du jour, etc.
Posted: Wed Jan 30, 2013 2:20 pm
手ぶら
（てぶら, tebura）
bra-less. Literally "hand bra" (like, you have no bra so you have to use your hands to cover them). I'm not sure if it means naked as well.
I found it while I was trying to look up "tebukuro" which means mitten or gauntlet (same hand kanji for "te").
（てぶら, tebura）
bra-less. Literally "hand bra" (like, you have no bra so you have to use your hands to cover them). I'm not sure if it means naked as well.
I found it while I was trying to look up "tebukuro" which means mitten or gauntlet (same hand kanji for "te").
Re: Mot du jour, etc.
Posted: Thu Jan 31, 2013 10:06 am
côtoyer - to rub shoulders with, to mix with; to stand alongside
This word comes from the French word côté, meaning "side," so the verb's meanings are related to that.
As an aside, I'm wondering if all verbs ending "-oyer" are derived from other words in the same way. The one that comes first to mind is nettoyer, meaning "to clean," which probably comes from net, meaning "clean" (among other things). Also plaidoyer, "to plead or defend," apparently from plaid, meaning "court." I'm also wondering what the closest English equivalent would be. Maybe "-ify"? ("Cleanify"? Sure.
)
This word comes from the French word côté, meaning "side," so the verb's meanings are related to that.
As an aside, I'm wondering if all verbs ending "-oyer" are derived from other words in the same way. The one that comes first to mind is nettoyer, meaning "to clean," which probably comes from net, meaning "clean" (among other things). Also plaidoyer, "to plead or defend," apparently from plaid, meaning "court." I'm also wondering what the closest English equivalent would be. Maybe "-ify"? ("Cleanify"? Sure.
)Re: Mot du jour, etc.
Posted: Thu Jan 31, 2013 11:26 am
That's similar to Spanish, Katya, but I think far more widespread. Tons of verbs' infinitive forms you can truncate to get a noun. The difference in English is that the infinitive forms aren't single words, they require the addition of a preposition, so it loses that ability.
Re: Mot du jour, etc.
Posted: Thu Jan 31, 2013 12:14 pm
Yeah, I suppose it's also pretty widespread in French (danser/la danse), it's just that something feels a bit different about the "-oyer" ending that I can't quite put my finger on. (It's like when I learned that the "-ir" verb ending generally indicates a change of state, so "blanchir" is "to whiten" and "rougir" is "to redden," etc.) I'll have to think more about it.Marduk wrote:That's similar to Spanish, Katya, but I think far more widespread. Tons of verbs' infinitive forms you can truncate to get a noun.
Re: Mot du jour, etc.
Posted: Thu Jan 31, 2013 10:37 pm
Hugo uses a synonym for this. I'll edit when I find it.Katya wrote:côtoyer - to rub shoulders with, to mix with; to stand alongside
This word comes from the French word côté, meaning "side," so the verb's meanings are related to that.