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AWADmail Issue 710

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From: Anu Garg (words at wordsmith.org)
Subject: Interesting stories from the Net

Fury as France Changes 2,000 Spellings and Drops Some Accents
The Guardian
WebCite

Romani Language and People
Pune Mirror
WebCite

More four-letter words: iron, cook, oven, sink.

From: Lynn Goodman (lrcgoodman gmail.com)
Subject: Four-letter Words

Q. What’s a four-letter word ending in ‘k’ meaning intercourse?
A. No need to fear - it’s TALK.

From: G.D. Zorzanello (zorzanello_gd hotmail.com)
Subject: Four-letter words

Through my life, I have often encountered, with hindsight’s 100% accuracy, seller’s remorse. I lamented the departure of a mid-fifties Chevrolet, a canoe, an old brass Boy Scout compass, and a sweet but ditzy Siberian Husky. Revealing these lamentations to my older son once, he replied, “Dad, for you ‘sell’ is a four-letter word.”

From: James Hutchinson (james hutch.org.uk)
Subject: Four-letter words

My favourite four-letter word is ‘time’, because of its great flexibility. It can describe fractions of seconds, minutes, days, years, through to the history of the known universe. It can describe the past, present, and future. It can refer to a specific hour of the day on a clock or watch, an occasion, the number of beats in a bar of music, a period served in prison, or (in the UK) last orders in a bar.

From: Jerry Alfred (jerry73 frontier.com)
Subject: yerk

As the Swede said, “I yust learned to say job instead of yob, and now they call it a proyect.”

From: Sunil Badami (sunil sunilbadami.com)
Subject: Re: A.Word.A.Day--unco

I thought I’d add this “Strine-ism” -- in Australia, “unco” also means “unco-ordinated” -- a charge this ball-dropping boy was often guilty of. It’s used as an adjective and an epithet -- “you’re so unco” or “Unco!” (when someone like me drops the ball).

From: Henry Willis (hmw ssdslaw.com)
Subject: Unco

I had always thought that “unco” was a bit of Scottish English found only in Burns’s poetry, but I’m glad to see it out in the wider world. I came across it in Burns’s; Address to the Unco Guid, his denunciation of all those who are not only holier than us, but insist on telling us too. Here are the first few lines for those who don’t know it:

My Son, these maxims make a rule,
An’ lump them aye thegither;
The Rigid Righteous is a fool,
The Rigid Wise another:
The cleanest corn that ere was dight
May hae some pyles o’ caff in;
So ne’er a fellow creature slight
For random fits o’ daffin.

From: Michael Chirico (michaelchirico4 gmail.com)
Subject: Re: A.Word.A.Day--unco

I must admit I laughed out loud at today’s word, given the theme of four letter words that aren’t dirty. In fact unco is a lightly uncouth word in Japanese (うんこ)! When you type it on your phone, one autocomplete suggestion is a certain emoji: 💩

From: Karen Herron (karen.bloggs gmx.net)
Subject: Four-letter words ‘unco’

I have used the word unco together with guid while translating a German text containing the word Moralapostel (apostle of morals, one who feels himself ranking higher than others owing to his good behaviour).

Unco guid is explained in the Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary as: those who profess a strict morality.

And a quotation from the LEO forum says:

“unco guid, the Scottish term for those who are professedly strict in matters of morals and religion; unco (an alteration of uncouth) means ‘extremely, remarkably’, and the expression comes from the title of Robert Burns’s ‘Address to the Unco Guid, or the Rigidly Righteous’ (1786).”

From: Beth Ullman (bethullman gmail.com)
Subject: alar

Alar was the chemical used primarily on apples (but also peaches, cherries, and other fruits) starting in 1963 to regulate their growth and development. Supposedly safe, it was finally banned in 1989 as being a strong carcinogen.

From: Brett Matheson (bjmatheson earthlink.net)
Subject: alar

The little sausage-shaped part on either side of the lower part of your nose is called the ala. You have a left and a right nasal ala. I’ve never thought this part of the nose much resembled a wing, but obviously early anatomists did. As a skin cancer surgeon I frequently operate on the alar part of the nose, a common site for non-melanoma skin cancer such as basal cell carcinoma.

From: Burt Humburg (humburg.burt gmail.com)
Subject: Ala

This word reminds me of the longest name for a muscle in the human body: Levator labii superioris alaeque nasi. Literally, the “lifter of both the upper lip and of the wing of the nose.” It’s the muscle you use when you flare your nostrils out.

From: Dharam Khalsa (dharamkk2 windstream.net)
Subject: Anagrams of this week’s words

From: Anu Garg (words at wordsmith.org)
Subject: Limericks

Cried the puppet, increasingly irked
by incessant rough handling and yerks,
“It’s becoming so bad
that I’m placing an ad
in the paper for alternate work.”

Your riches can truly be unco
In an Internet startup or young co
Sell IPO shares
Before anyone cares
That your scheme was at one time called bunko.

His intention was only to blog a
few lines to extol Lady Gaga.
With too much to say,
he got carried away-
wrote a sonnet, an ode, and a saga.

This job ain’t exactly genteel.
It’s twenty-four hours at the wheel.
Lotsa coffee and pills,
And just mileage for thrills.
Gotta say, it’s a pretty raw diel.

We know Elizabeth Taylor,
Never claimed an angel’s alar.
She was many times wed,
A risqué life, it’s said,
And she cursed, just like a sailor.

From: Phil Graham (pgraham1946 cox.net)
Subject: Puns to make YOU say four-letter words

“Does a lama lurk or does a llama yerk in the alley?” (Or does the lama dalai?)

The spy was an unco operative person.

If you drive from Toronto to Hamilton, you’ll miss a saga.

Awaking from a coma, the patient asked, “What’s the diel?”

“Waiter, my date will have a Sierra Nevada. Alar, please.”