Increase your word power

Mewling - seem to remember this from school, Shakespeare I think (mewling and puking!)

Mewling means feeble crying.

Now that's a great little trick your teacher used crun!

"Nesh is a good Yorkshire word. It means a bit wimpy"
Big girl's blouse was the phrase when I was a kid. Some other Yorkshire words that I remember from my childhood, but never hear elsewhere are:

Maither (pester)
Brey (hit)
Pump (fart)
Chin (hit/beat up)
Muscles like knots in cotton (self explanatory really)
Muscles like sparrows kneecaps (ditto)

"How did you reach this advanced age without coming across the word Lothario ?"

I was 29 before I discovered the word prophylactic. I discovered it when I was watching somebody in the lab playing a computer game called "Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards".

I still remember the morning when our English teacher walked into the class and wrote on the board:

___________________ continuous
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ continual

I always puzzled over the words 'huckleberry friend' in the song 'Moon River'. I knew Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn, and I thought he had made up the name. Also I knew there was a 'huckleberry' which was a small berry found in America. I then found out that it meant a small or insignificant person like the berry. Recently though, I discovered the explanation that your huckleberry friends are people who've known you for years and have stuck by you and love you no matter what. Yes ... that makes sense to me. I have a few of those. Whatever anyone else says I will stick with that definition!!!

Hmm...right.

The meme was first described by Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene, "as a concept for discussion of evolutionary principles in explaining the spread of ideas and cultural phenomena".

I do like some examples of memes. But I'm not convinced the whole concept isn't a made-up thing.

To be honest, I feel obfuscated about the whole meme concept.

I seem to be suffering with self obfuscation of late.

I really don't like the 'meme' trend, that started with bloggers. Love obfuscation - we have all been charged with it recently!

Thanks elegran, I wondered what Sillion was.

Was trying to resist. Favourite, 2 words sorry, but belong together:
Eschew obfuscation.
Excellent bumper sticker.
But love 'windfucker' don't care what it means. Whole new bumper sticker.
And 'meme' would be a whole new thread.
X

Cor. More than I bargained for.
https://hokku.wordpress.com/2011/03/23/deciphering-hopkins-the-windhover/

The kestrel is a windhover in Gerard Manley Hopkins poem. (There are some words in it that I don't know. Off now to Google]

The Windhover

To Christ our Lord

I CAUGHT this morning morning’s minion, kingdom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird,—the achieve of; the mastery of the thing!

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.

I got it from the glossary for Sam Pepys diaries. Word dates from 1602.

When I search for the definition of windfucker, it says it is a name for a kestral.

By all means post more than one word a day, just prefer not to have lists of words.
I quite like trying to guess the meanings of words before looking them up.

Oh that's funny petallus, though I don't think I'll be introducing it into my everyday speech .
It reminds me of when we moved house when the children were around 10 and 11. One day they came home giggling because they'd seen a house nearby called Fartwinds. Of course, we told them they must have been mistaken, but no, they weren't, as we found out when we wandered round to have a sneaky look

Shouldn't we have the meanings of the word as well?

Windfucker (archaic)

Means talkative braggart.

Sorry, I was very bad there, it was me, me , me, I like new Spanish words! Madrugada is a nice word. I like Abogada too, a female lawyer. I like the idea of the dawn being feminine. Crepuscular is a lovely word, did you see 'A very Long Engagement'? In it, the trench inhabited by the hero of the film is called 'crepuscule'.

Maybe it is a meme with a stutter?

What does mememe mean? Is it a made up word?

I can't find it in any online dictionary.

Mememe! It's a nice word.

DBH and I are quite competitive, we have a 'word of the day' thing going on and have done for years. We use a word without even thinking, and if the other can't remember the precise meaning, it becomes WOTD.

I love crepuscular - twilight, either dawn or dusk.

The Spanish have a lovely word for the early morning, pre-crepuscular period, for which we don't have a direct translation, madrugada. (Sorry, not really going above the one-a-day quota, because no-one needs to add a Spanish word to their vocabulary )

Perhaps I need a thread called "Increase your memory power" so that I can remember some of these wonderful words.
My brother was a civil engineer, he showed me how to use a theodolite when I was a kid. I suspect GPS and lasers have replaced the optical theodolites.

My current favourite is 'juxtaposition'. I haven't always used it. It means when things are placed side by side for comparison.

I see what you are saying, but I don't think it applies to me, because I learn languages as a hobby. I really do love words, and whether they be Swedish or English, I still acquire them, like a magpie. They pop out when I lest expect them to, and some are very old English words that are no longer used, so I suspect I get more odd looks than I am aware of. I don't care! And I still remember the first time I heard 'theodolite'. 'Xenophobia'. Other such words. The thrill of a new word. Like elegran, I know what a theodolite is but haven't a clue how to use one. I suspect it may have been replaced by a laser now.