DIALECT AND WORD MEANINGS

[Stanley]

They were called 'mouldywarp'. I looked it up on Wiki: "By the era of Early Modern English, the mole was also known in English as mouldywarp, a word having cognates in other Germanic languages such as German (Maulwurf), and Danish, Norwegian, Swedish and Icelandic (muldvarp, mullvad, moldvarpa), where the muld/mull/mold part of the word means soil and the varp/vad/varpa part means throw, hence "one who throws soil" or "dirt tosser". Male moles are called "boars", females are called "sows". A group of moles is called a "labour"
Webster suggests that torpedoes were called mouldies after moles because they burrowed under the water.

[hartley353]

I have heard the word spoken many times in the north but never seen it in print, think i'll stick to Mole. A mouldie skin waistcoat or trousers just doesn't have the ring.

[Tizer]

.. the muld/mull/mold part of the word means soil..

This is related to our use of the term `leaf mould', fallen leaves turning into soil.
There's a mention of `squirting mouldies' in this book on the history of the submarine:
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=RTL7 ... sh&f=false

[Stanley]

Have a look at this LINK for an exhaustive examination of the word 'mole' including a reference to Alison Uttley who used 'mouldywarp' in one of her stories. I knew I had seen it in print somewhere!

[hartley353]

I have a distant memory of Mcewans beers in scotland doing a series of beermats that explained the meaning of scottish dialect words, the word for Mole may have been one of them, for example Jenny hen for Heron, and Whaup for curlew.

[Tripps]

" In one mole, there are 6.022 x 1023 atoms. (There are 6.022 x 1023 atoms of carbon in 12 grams of carbon-12; 6.022 x 1023 is known as the Avogrado constant, or, as a pure number with no specific units, 'Avogadro's Number'. It has the symbol N.) "

Thanks for bringing back all those memories of why I failed O level Chemistry. Like a tonne of CO2 - I find it impossible to visualise.

[chinatyke]

" In one mole, there are 6.022 x 1023 atoms. (There are 6.022 x 1023 atoms of carbon in 12 grams of carbon-12; 6.022 x 1023 is known as the Avogrado constant, or, as a pure number with no specific units, 'Avogadro's Number'. It has the symbol N.) "

Thanks for bringing back all those memories of why I failed O level Chemistry. Like a tonne of CO2 - I find it impossible to visualise.

Or more correctly:

In one mole, there are 6.022 x 10²³ atoms. (There are 6.022 x 10²³ atoms of carbon in 12 grams of carbon-12; 6.022 x 10²³ is known as the Avogadro constant, or, as a pure number with no specific units, 'Avogadro's Number'. It has the symbol N_A)

Lot of difference between 1023 and 10²³.

Sorry for being pedantic.

[Tripps]

I think the 10 to the power of 23 was as it was written, and became lost in the copy and paste process. Good of you to point it out.

[Stanley]

And there was me thinking I was the site pedant.....

[Stanley]

I came across an archaic usage for 'haggard' in Irish short stories. Looked it up and found a reference to hawking but not an explanation for the archaic meaning. Did a bit more digging and found that it was an archaic reference to a farm stack-yard in Manx and Irish dialect. Lovely things words......

[hartley353]

From an earlier interest in falconry I have several books on the shelf. Haggard was a medieval term for an adult bird over one year old taken from the wild to be trained in hunting for man.

[Tizer]

Like a tonne of CO₂ - I find it impossible to visualise.

It depends whether you want to visualise it as solid or gas. The same volume (approximately) is occupied by 1 ton of water, 0.9 tons of `water ice' (normal ice), and 1.5 tons of CO<sub>2</sub> ice (solid CO<sub>2</sub>, `dry ice'). The density of CO₂ as a gas is about 2 kg/m³ therefore each metric ton (1000 kg) of the gas would occupy 500 m³. An Olympic size swimming pool is generally stated to have a volume of 2500 m³, so 5 tons of CO₂ gas would fill the pool (in theory you could test this calculation because CO₂ is lighter heavier than air and you could fill an empty pool with the gas). The per capita CO² emissions figure for the UK is therefore 1.7 Olympic-size swimming pools per year (from the burning of fossil fuels and the manufacture of cement, 2008 data) and the overall UK CO₂ emissions total at about 100 million Olympic-size swimming pools per year.

[chinatyke]

(in theory you could test this calculation because CO₂ is lighter than air and you could fill an empty pool with the gas).

I know you really mean CO₂ is heavier than air....

[Tizer]

Thanks, Chinatyke, I do wonder about the quality of this Somerset cider! Perhaps you'd better look over my calculations too, I've just added a bit more.

[David Whipp]

Sorry to be pedantic...

But you use 'tonnes' and 'tons'... too sloppy!

[Tripps]

David - never apologise for pedantry on here. Being ancient- I was going to put tons, then had a rethink and put tonnes. Which is correct? I see from the back of my ruler that 1ton = 1016 kg whereas of course 1 tonne = 1000 kg. Not really a big difference between friends.

Back to pedantry - there was a guy on here a few years ago called Dean (I think) who posted on the steeplejack thread. He was hopeless at spelling, but I never criticised him, and he never mentioned that I get nervous cleaning the gutters of my bungalow.

[Stanley]

Tiz, you're right about Dean! But there you are, the correct target for pedantic corrections is those who you know should be able to do better. There are posts on this site that are incomprehensible as well as being badly spelt. Best in most cases to ignore them..... Nice thing is that some of us see it as a game. See Dr Broughton's response to me when I pounced on his apostrophe!

[Cathy]

Thank goodness that we don't all have to be educated in the same way or to the same level, or had the same experiences in life or even be interested in exactly the same things or have the same reactions to be allowed to interact on this site. It would be a lonely place for some.

[David Whipp]

Referencing another topic; I try to have lots of iron in my diet, and my tongue in my cheek...

[Stanley]

Cathy, you are quite right and your posts are as valuable as anybody else's. Unfortunately I like to prick pretentious bubbles and mis-information. Never directed at you..... XXX

[Tizer]

Sorry to be pedantic...But you use 'tonnes' and 'tons'... too sloppy!

David, I'm always willing to be corrected and always welcome advice...but in my defence I would point out that I try to `keep it simple' in order to get over the point rather than confuse with detail. In this case my comparison of water, water ice and dry ice could have been in any units of weight because that's what it is, only a comparison. I wrote that bit then came back to the post and added the rest. Perhaps I should have used tonne in the first place, but when I mention that unit a lot of folk give me blank looks. When I switched to the density of CO2 gas I needed to use metric and therefore referred to metric ton which is an accepted term for 1000 kg (equivalent to tonne). That was followed with "so 5 tons of CO2 gas would fill the pool" and I assumed the reader would understand I was still referring to a metric ton(ne). Also, Tripps is right, that a ton is only 16 kg more than a tonne (1.6% difference) and therefore for many purposes of general discussion we can use the units interchangeably.

One of the problems with choosing units of measurement in Britain is that we botched it when we made the change to metric and have never got it right since. We should have bitten the bullet, changed completely to the Continental system and it all would have been much easier. Now we have a mixture of systems and we're always using the wrong units - like asking for 1800 mm for the length of what used to be a 6 ft plank (using 4 digits when only 1 used to be needed).

But hey, what's a millimetre between friends! (The difference between life and death, I hear the engineers mutter!) But I don't need to be told my car is four thousand two hundred and seven millimetres long.

Now then, back to words, both Imperial and Metric...why don't we use the word glee any more? As in `filled with glee'. Has it been stolen by a minority group?

[David Whipp]

Now then, back to words, both Imperial and Metric...why don't we use the word glee any more? As in `filled with glee'.

Maybe getting long in the tooth, but this is an expression I hear (and maybe use) from time to time.

I worked in the timber trade for the best part of 30 years; I daresay timberyard workers today are still merrily converting from Standards to m3 in their heads. My favourite is the oxymoron 'metric foot'.

Which brings me back to the metric ton, Tizer! My mind gave up on computing the difference in Olympic size pools of the UK CO2 output if using metric instead of imperial...

[plaques]

To go into a Molly. or similar phrase. Childish tantrum. Is this actually based on the 18 century "Molly House" or "Molly" effeminate boy?

[LizG]

I had never heard of this expression so I googled it. I got a long list of why I shouldn't take the new drug 'Molly'. Just one more thing I hadn't heard of. I am beginning to think I also live in my own little world Cathy!

[Stanley]

I've heard 'mollycoddled'. I think we discussed it in a previous thread.....