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Word Of The Day ... Or Week Or Whatever


Steph

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Some records have my grandmother's name listed as Eugene.  

I'm quite sure that her French-Canadian mother meant that to have a soft, beautiful sound, with three syllables and a gentle "g".  

But she ended up as just Gene or Jean.  Makes me think maybe her family got tired of correcting people's pronunciation after they moved from the French-friendly population of Wisconsin down to the Wild West of Oklahoma.  

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3 hours ago, Steph said:

:)

 

English has many names which started out male but are mostly female now.

Got this list from Wikipedia: Ashley, Beverly, Evelyn, Hilary, Jocelyn, Joyce, Kelly, Lynn, Meredith, Shannon, Shirley, Sidney, Vivian, and Whitney

Supposedly all those were once masculine names but most of them sound completely feminine to my American ears.  

Not only to your American ears. I never supposed them to be male names in their origin.

Your grandmother's name is somewhat special. I know that French people add 'e' to a male name to indicate it is the female version (Yvon => Yvonne for example). But Eugene to my ears sounds as a male name at first for I do not consider it to be Eugen => Eugene.

But this topic is really, really interesting. What was the search entry to get the informations out of wikipedia?

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Ric, some records said Eugene Louisa and some records said Eugenia Louise.

And probably there were variations on those.  Those are just the two I remember from when I was doing my genealogy as a teen. 

Took me until a few years ago to realize which name my great-grandmother probably whispered over her as she rocked her. :)

 

 

 

Hoody,  I started plugging in some of the names I knew which used to be for men and now are for women, starting with Evelyn and Meridith, and eventually I plugged in enough to come up with this page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unisex_name 

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  • 4 weeks later...

What's a 'Scrabble word'?  

Don't they just have to be in 'The Dictionary'?  (I haven't played in a real long time.)   dunno.gif

Here's a catalogue shot from 1914.  I'm not sure how to make the 'today's dollars'

conversion, but I'm guessing you'd have to be pretty rich to get one of these.  ( :

historyjpgs_steinwaypla_zpsemuwwtjr.jpg

 

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Love!

 

P.s. $29,614.50

http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/

 

P.p.s., basically a dictionary word, but for my games it means a word in the official English Tournament Word List.  One of the other options for the version of the Scrabble available on Facebook is to use the Merriam Webster Dictionary.  Another option is the Collins Official Scrabble Word List, which has a British flag beside it.  

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  • 2 weeks later...

I'm going to leave it to you to look at the image below and decide to which

word I'm referring and whether or not you want to look further into its definition.

This was a brand new one to me, although its concept has been used in many

movies and television situation comedies over the years.  ( :

tontine_zpsrggrqngk.jpg

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  • 3 weeks later...

I've been binge-watching some hilarious Canadian television, and learned about

Loonies and Toonies!

These are the popular names for the Canadian one and two dollar coins.

A little further research taught me that Canada has no paper money smaller
than a fiver.  They used to have one and two dollar bills, but these were
phased out in the eighties and nineties respectively. 

The Toonie is pretty cool-looking, with its two differently colored metals.
I've never actually seen one, which sort of surprises me.  ( :

toonie_-_front_zpsw0k0lbfe.png

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  • 5 weeks later...

Words which could be their own opposites.  I know there are some better known examples, but this one struck me today:  "resigned"

 

That could mean you quit ... or you signed back up.  We have a different word for sign back up   ... "reenlist" ... but I am still not sure that "resign" couldn't mean "sign again".  

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On ‎5‎/‎22‎/‎2016 at 1:38 PM, Steph said:

Words which could be their own opposites.  I know there are some better known examples . . . .  

My father was an LP gas man, so "flammable" and Inflammable" started bothering me early . . .

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