Job Discussion Forums

[fluffyhamster]

You know when you're looking something up in a dictionary and your eye falls on some other word or phrase that strikes you as amusing and possibly quite unusual (in the sense that other dictionaries may well not list it)? I thought it would be fun to start a thread listing such examples. Here goes then with a couple I noted over the Christmas holiday. The dictionaries won't necessarily always be monolingual English ones.

1) dirty weekend noun (BrE, humorous) a WEEKEND spent away with a sexual partner, often in secret. Also the title of a film by the much-lauded British film director Michael Winner. (Listed in the OALD, but not in e.g. the Chambers 21st Century)

2) mummer n. mugongeki-yakusha 無言劇役者(from the Sanseido Roomaji E-J/J-E Dictionary, a small, almost pocket-sized dictionary. I doubt this word is in any ELT dictionaries!)
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[johnslat]

Dear fluffyhamster,

Here's one I came across recently:

Vidiot
1. A person habitually consumed in video or computer games to the point of losing contact with the world around him, often evidenced by a blank or glazed look and disheveled appearance.
5. A person whose main source of knowledge, be it scientific, historic etc., comes from TV, video games and Movies.
A vidiot is one who seriously demonstrates the following:

Everything they know about science they learned from Star Trek, The X-Files and Fringe etc..
Or,
Everything they know about WWII for example comes from watching WWII movies."

I had to go to the Urban Dictionary for meanings

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Vidiot

Regards,
John

[johnslat]

Here's another:

poecilonym

Can you think of a synonym for it?

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/poecilonym

Regards,
John

[fluffyhamster]

Hi John, Happy New Year!

I like urbandictionary-like stuff as much as the next guy (have you ever seen Roger's Profanisaurus, from the publishers of Viz magazine? I used to have the original booklet, but now have only the Magna Farta edition. Sasha would prefer the current Das Krapital edition though, I'm sure! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger%27s_Profanisaurus ), but I'm more interested in those items that certain print dictionaries (but not others) have seen fit to include in spite of the potential ephemeral or slang nature of the items.

As further examples, I recall certain members over on the Teacher Discussion forums arguing that "perfectly logical" items from Indian English should start being included in ELT dictionaries. This was around the time the OALD was going from a 6th to a 7th edition, with Henry Widdowson for one apparently screaming, wailing and generally carrying on until the token inclusion of prepone (cf. postpone). There were also items like fakie (a snowboarding term) that I thought were pretty bogus, but then, I'm not a snowboarder.

Anyway, keep the entries coming!

[fluffyhamster]