Peculiarities of the English language.

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swee'pea99

Legendary Member
Gorm is axle grease. To be gormless is to be dumb to the extent that you neglect your cart to the point of self-destruction. A lesson there for us all...

One that used to fool me (and I note occasionally does fool other people) is 'enervate', which sounds like it means something like to stimulate or enliven, when it actually means the exact opposite: to weaken, to destroy vitality.
 

snakehips

Well-Known Member
ColinJ said:
Those of us old enough to have watched 'Candid Camera' in black and white might recall the time that one of the cast posed as a foreign student whose English girlfriend had chucked him because she thought he was 'gormless'. He wandered about asking old ladies where he could buy a 'gorm'. They tried to explain the concept to him and he pretended not to understand...

Missed that one.
I remember a similar one in which a young girl walked up to people and said .......
'My boyfriend he say to me 'Go to blazes'
Plees , you can tell me where is blazes , I must go there to meet heem.

Ahh , simpler times !

Snake

My Library
 

radger

Veteran
Location
Bristol

Mad Doug Biker

Just a damaged guy.
Location
Craggy Island
I have worked with a Polish woman before and she used to tell me just how downright daft and confusing the English language was in relation to having umpteen words with exactly the same pronounciation (or spelling), but different meanings.

For example: Two, to too.

That said I once read about someone who tried to learn Polish and they described a schematic they saw for all of the grammer as looking more like the wiring diagram for Concorde.
 

Andy in Sig

Vice President in Exile
I just dug this up on the net:

whelm (hwlm, wlm)
tr.v. whelmed, whelm·ing, whelms
1. To cover with water; submerge.
2. To overwhelm.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Middle English whelmen, to overturn, probably alteration (influenced by helmen, to cover) of whelven, from Old English -hwelfan (as in hwelfan, to cover over).]

Whelm is actually a fitting word for what it means. Shame that we're only left with the "over-" variant.
 

Andy in Sig

Vice President in Exile
Mad Doug Biker said:
I have worked with a Polish woman before and she used to tell me just how downright daft and confusing the English language was in relation to having umpteen words with exactly the same pronounciation, but different meanings.

For example: Two, to too.

The thing is that the pronunciations of the words would have differed in the past. For instance "two" is still pronounced as "twa" in some dialects, I believe.
 

Haitch

Flim Flormally
Location
Netherlands
Andy in Sig said:
Middle English whelmen, to overturn, probably alteration (influenced by helmen, to cover) of whelven, from Old English -hwelfan (as in hwelfan, to cover over).


Compare the German überwallen.
 

Mad Doug Biker

Just a damaged guy.
Location
Craggy Island
Andy in Sig said:
The thing is that the pronunciations of the words would have differed in the past. For instance "two" is still pronounced as "twa" in some dialects, I believe.

Yes I guess so, but this would have been of little consolation for her!

And talking of local dialects, you get the likes of Twenty in this particular area being pronounced more like

Twi'y

Twi'y wan, twi'y too ..... ;)
 

BrumJim

Forum Stalwart (won't take the hint and leave...)
zimzum42 said:
I'm proper gruntled with this thread!

Apparently "Gruntled" means mild displeasure, whereas disgruntled is a harsher analysis - dis in this case meaning "much".

However Gruntled has entered the dictionary as the opposite of disgruntled due to PG Woodhouse (Jeeves and Wooster). I love the word (used often to describe our purring cat, but seems wrong to use it since the etymology is all wrong.
 

marinyork

Resting in suspended Animation
Location
Logopolis
Andy in Sig said:
I just dug this up on the net:

whelm (hwlm, wlm)
tr.v. whelmed, whelm·ing, whelms
1. To cover with water; submerge.
2. To overwhelm.

You've been watching too many 1990s teen high school movies ;);).
 

mcr

Veteran
Location
North Bucks
[quote name='swee'pea99']
One that used to fool me (and I note occasionally does fool other people) is 'enervate', which sounds like it means something like to stimulate or enliven, when it actually means the exact opposite: to weaken, to destroy vitality.[/QUOTE]

A similar one is 'fulsome' - it's often used to praise something when it actually means 'excessive, insincere, disgusting, loathsome'.
 
mcr said:
A similar one is 'fulsome' - it's often used to praise something when it actually means 'excessive, insincere, disgusting, loathsome'.
Now there's a poser. I've heard of 'gusting', true, but only in connection with the Shipping Forecast ("Gale force winds gusting to 80 knots" etc. etc.) Something tells me that's not the opposite of 'disgusting'. ;)
 

mcr

Veteran
Location
North Bucks
661-Pete said:
Now there's a poser. I've heard of 'gusting', true, but only in connection with the Shipping Forecast ("Gale force winds gusting to 80 knots" etc. etc.) Something tells me that's not the opposite of 'disgusting'. ;)

Apparently from French goust - taste; so suppose it's opposite of tasteful
 
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