mastodon.ie is one of the many independent Mastodon servers you can use to participate in the fediverse.
Irish Mastodon - run from Ireland, we welcome all who respect the community rules and members.

Administered by:

Server stats:

1.8K
active users

Pleasantly surprised that my post on "coolth" has flushed out a couple of readers who regularly use this super-rare word

Stan Carey

More on "coolth" at Language Hat: languagehat.com/coolth-shorth/

I've updated my post with other marvellous -th words from the OED, including arghth,* blueth, frumth, gloomth, ortrowth, and rimth: stancarey.wordpress.com/2024/0

* which sadly does not mean what I hoped

Readers who get a kick out of unfashionable affixes may also enjoy this post on obsolete be- words, such as:

BEBUTTER: to cover with butter (1611)
BEDINNER: to give a dinner to (1837)
BEMISSIONARY: to pester with missionaries (1884)
BEMONSTER: to make a monster of (1692)
BEPAW: to befoul as with paws (1684)
BETHWACK: to thwack soundly (1598)
BEWIZARD: to influence by a wizard (1862)

stancarey.wordpress.com/2017/0

Sentence first · Bewondered by obsolete be- wordsThe prefix be- has a wide range of meanings and applications. It can be added, forming transitive verbs, to nouns (befriend), adjectives (belittle), and other verbs (bespeak) and it can help turn n…

@stancarey Oh man... this could be a lot of fun to play with... beburger, bepizza, bekiss, betickle... verbs and nouns galore to try out. 🤓 #FunWithWords

@mykl
I'm happy with "did you bedinner the cats?" (Also bebreakfast, beluncheon and besupper).
@stancarey

@SeaMonster @mykl It's so versatile! And a fun formula for becoining new words

@stancarey
I realise that written English would mean that "Begin" could have two meanings)spoken, the meaning would be clear)
@mykl

@stancarey
I'm wondering if French has an equivalent of the English be- (I'm off to French Polynesia and "be missionary" might come in useful).