Pedants' Paradise

[kernelbogey]

That brings us on to another question: the verb "to google". It's a bit like tannoy, hoover and biro - the user of the word accidentally advertises a product.
Personally, I use Yahoo, so I'm just off to yahoo "Fuji xPro 1 camera".

You can hoover with a Dyson, but you can't google with Yahoo, can you?

[amateur51]

Aren't we getting dangerously close to flagpoling here?

[amateur51]

The excitement is in tents...

The sound you can hear is Lord Baden-Powell rotating in his grave

I found his volume "Scouting For Boys" a marked disappointment, but I guess that's just me ...

[amateur51]

You can hoover with a Dyson, but you can't google with Yahoo, can you?

I'll ask Dean Swift the next time he pops in

[Nick Armstrong]

The sound you can hear is Lord Baden-Powell rotating in his grave

I found his volume "Scouting For Boys" a marked disappointment, but I guess that's just me ...

[jean]

1. Not clear or transparent because of stirred-up sediment or the like....

2. Thick or dense, as smoke or clouds.

3. Confused; muddled; disturbed.


...Which seems to cover (3) what you said, and (1 & 2) what I said.

I think what I said is there in (1) as well.

I would never use turbid without something of the sense stirred up. The clue is in the element -turb-, present in disturb, perturb, turbulent and the like.

.

[vinteuil]

I see that torpid while often meaning inactive has a similar derivation to torpedo. That word often implies movement and speed. The connection between the two, derivation wise, is stiffness or numbness. Would you agree that these things can work on a number of contradictory levels?

'Torpedo' was (originally) the electric ray fish Torpedo nobiliana*, which had the ability to destroy its prey by paralysing them with an electric shock. Wiki tells us : "The naval weapon known as the torpedo was named after this genus, whose own name is derived from the Latin word meaning "numb" or "paralysed", presumably the sensation one would feel after experiencing the ray's electric shock."

In Balzac's Comédie Humaine, Esther van Gobseck has the nickname 'la torpille' because of her ability to paralyse and ruin her 'clients' ; modern translators of Balzac into English are wary of calling her 'the torpedo' because we now more associate that with the high-speed underwater missile; quite the wrong connotation....

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torpedinidae

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_torpedo

[french frank]

I think what I said is there in (1) as well.

I would never use turbid without something of the sense stirred up. The clue is in the element -turb-, present in disturb, perturb, turbulent and the like.

.

Yes. 'Turbid' is etymologically connected with the word 'trouble' (the Old French forms were 'torble' and 'torbler' which derived from Latin turbulare. It's not hard to work out how, phonetically, OF torbler became trobler, troubler. That is/was the essence of the meaning. I'm not sure why the OED regards this as a 'figurative' meaning of turbid ("2. fig. Characterized by or producing confusion or obscurity of thought, feeling, etc.; mentally confused, perplexed, muddled; disturbed, troubled."). To me it seems closer to the literal meaning. 'Muddy, opaque' seems to be the figurative meaning, though it appears to have prevailed, meaning lacking clarity (visually).

Turgid means, of style, overblown, exaggerated, grandiloquent, as in purple prose. That may also make it - incidentally - hard to get through, but it is stodgy rather than confused or muddled.

[Serial_Apologist]

I understand the term "cottageing" is no longer necessitated?

[Serial_Apologist]

Has "bedding" come up?

It seems to have at least three applications.

"Did you bed that girl I saw you with?"
"No"
"How come?"
"She was a plant"

Would a bedding shop be where Americans go to obtain a duvet?

[Nick Armstrong]

I understand the term "cottageing" is no longer necessitated?

Stick with the tent, S_A

[jean]

Yes. 'Turbid' is etymologically connected with the word 'trouble' (the Old French forms were 'torble' and 'torbler' which derived from Latin turbulare. It's not hard to work out how, phonetically, OF torbler became trobler, troubler. That is/was the essence of the meaning. I'm not sure why the OED regards this as a 'figurative' meaning of turbid ("2. fig. Characterized by or producing confusion or obscurity of thought, feeling, etc.; mentally confused, perplexed, muddled; disturbed, troubled."). To me it seems closer to the literal meaning. 'Muddy, opaque' seems to be the figurative meaning, though it appears to have prevailed, meaning lacking clarity (visually)...

Interesting; I didn't know of the etymological connexion with troubled. There's metathesis at work there, presumably.

The OED always strictly follows the historical development of a word's meaning, however little the earlier meanings are used in modern English. The original, literal meaning of turbidus was physical; the earliest citations in Lewis and Short put it with tempestas (a storm), scaturex (a gushing spring), caligine atra pulvis (a swirling dust of black fog), turbidus caeno gurges (a raging whirlpool of mud). (Very Virgilian, those last two!)

.

[Serial_Apologist]

Stick with the tent, S_A

Only suitable for our dear friend participating in Occupy the Steps of St Pauls, Malcolm Tense, Caliban - evicted for loitering within tent.

[amateur51]

Interesting; I didn't know of the etymological connexion with troubled. There's metathesis at work there, presumably.

The OED always strictly follows the historical development of a word's meaning, however little the earlier meanings are used in modern English. The original, literal meaning of turbidus was physical; the earliest citations in Lewis and Short put it with tempestas (a storm), scaturex (a gushing spring), caligine atra pulvis (a swirling dust of black fog), turbidus caeno gurges (a raging whirlpool of mud). (Very Virgilian, those last two!)

.

Virgil you say?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RzCB3VRruE

He flew Number Two, the green bulbous one

Sorry jean

[amateur51]

Only suitable for our dear friend participating in Occupy the Steps of St Pauls, Malcolm Tense, Caliban - evicted for loitering within tent.