The Idler

[haha]

Quote:

Originally Posted by HaHa This is excellent! Now I understand where our very own monitor, Cutthroat, gets his name...

Oops! On further reading, I realize that I have unwittingly employed a dysphemism.

"Dysphemism and its antonym, euphemism, are often two sides of the same coin.
A guerrilla in neutral language might be called freedom-fighter by some
while a terrorist by others. Novelist and story-writer Nathaniel Hawthorne
summed it well when he wrote, "Words - so innocent and powerless as they are,
as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the
hands of one who knows how to combine them."
http://wordsmith.org/awad/archives/0103

This can get very intense. I think I may have a fatal attraction for dysphemistic discourse.

Ha

[Martha]

Maybe so Ha, but at least you aren't a snoot.*

Hey, I just figured out that HaHa is Mikey's Nom de Guerre.

[deserat]

Happy belated birthday Astromeria and a BIG thanks for that web site - oh wow - very interesting - I love the examples - umm, sometimes I'll sit down with a dictionary and roam - start with a word, look at its synonym/homonym/antonym and see its meaning - see the different nuances, etc. Sting is one of my favorite singers/songwriters and one of his early songs had a line: "Poets, Priests and Politicians use words that ask for you submission...." How one uses words is very important and can be very powerful.

Language is very interesting - and the different languages around the world are very interesting as well. When one thinks how ideas are formed from the aggregation of words and the choices one has for words - how ones' language allows one to form ones' ideas changes how they perceive the world because the brain is 'plastic' and is affected by both its input and output.....I could go on and on....and am probably going too far here! In any case, thanks!

Bridget

[astromeria]

Thanks for the well-wishes--I'm having a great birthday week. My daughter took us both out for pedicures--I am now the proud? owner of pearly orange toenails that almost match the luscious leather purse I bought in Italy. As for DH--I got dibs on several DVDs to be named later (I'm currently thinking King Solomon's Mines and Mogambo, and maybe some Cadfael).

Consider the rhetorical link a gift to my fellow word-geeks on the forum