Wordwizard

In the Caisson Song, is there a story to the "high high he" in the lyrics? Line 7. Thank you, Hugh Gilmore (Incarnatus est) Here are the lyrics: Over hill, over dale, We will hit the dusty trail, And those Caissons go rolling along. Up and down, in and out, Counter march and left about, And those Ca...

Most excellent, indeed! I intend to use this information in a column and want to attribute it. I certainly will give the dictionary sources. And I certainly will mention the assistance I got from using Wordwizard. I feel I should mention you, too, Ken, but would you prefer that I not? I'm starting t...

Thanks Ken. I wonder if anyone might comment on its use in the movie "The Wolf of Wall Street." Leonardo Di Caprio uses it to mean something like a tax dodge, or a way of hiding ill-gained assets. Specifically, in the scene in the park where he talks to his wife's English aunt (herself a conniver) a...

Help! A member of the board that governs the newspaper I freelance for (The Chestnut Hill Local, Philadelphia, PA. USA) refused to vote to renew our budget. He claimed that the newspaper was "a content rat hole." And therefore losing advertisers. Many folks in our community are puzzled by this expre...

Erik:

Thanks very much.

Hugh Gilmore

Why does Dorothy Sayres, in her book, The NIne Tailors, refer to the tower bells was "9 Tailors" ?

I checked OED to see if toller/tellers/taylors, tailers might interrelate, but they do not.

So, please, one would appreciate knowing...

Hugh Gilmore

In Wendell Berry's "Andy Catlett" he describes frightened/irritated mules in a mule team sitting back in their britchings. I've been able to find a little, but not enough, info about this part of a mule's harness...including the use of the word "britching" as an anti-recoil device on a ship's cannon...

I enjoyed the responses to my question about the relationship between "chicane" and "chicanery." To the notion of chicanery reflecting tricks/deflections in a court of law: I remembered in Hamlet, that among his complaints was "the law's delay." A chicane is a delay. Chicanery is legal delayment. Pe...

I read the word "chicane" in an English memoir. It was used to refer to the island around which bumper cars race. Subsequently I learned that it's also a term used in auto traffic engineering -- an island inserted in traffic to slow it down. Fine and dandy. Curious, I tried to see its relation to "c...

Cheers to Jerry Smiles Thanks. I obtained a copy of the book you referenced about the New Yorker magazine. Sure enough, there was the reference to "elevens up." I encountered the phrase when it was quoted almost verbatim, from a New Yorker article, without citation or reference, by Anthony Bourdain ...

Found in a bio of "Typhoid Mary" Supposedly a common expression in 1902, in America. A sign of impending death, referring to a pair of cords visible in the back of the neck when someone has a "wasting disease." But is it true to anatomical fact? What anatomical structures are referred to here? And t...

Help please... I want to know as much as I can about how "aaarggh," or however you would spell it, has become the identifier for what Pirates say. As in, Ask a child what cows say, and he answers "moo." What cats say, she answers "meow." And what a pirate says: he/she answers "aarr." Or, reversed, W...

A friend said the word 'gleaner' was used in her childhood, (maybe 50 years ago? not nice to ask) in this way: "Oh, don't pick up that coin (on the street), save it for the gleaners." Meaning the people who depend on going around picking up coins. The meaning is obvious, but I wonder if anyone else ...

I've known for years about the so-called "greenhouse effect." I know that the phenomenon produces gases that warm the atmosphere, etc and cause "global warning." For years the bad gases coming from the factories, I thought, were variously referred to as "Industrial pollution" etc. Suddenly -so it se...

Thank you, zmjezhd...How does one get to that Google link you used?

HG