dmy (11/04/82)
Thanks again for all the responses to these wordlist info requests.
>From your comments, this is a popular activity, so as long as I keep finding
new "words", I'll keep posting my old results and new questions.
Here are the results from the last list:
Alphaville -- A 1965 science fiction movie directed by Jean-Luc Godard.
Also possibly a town/city in Pennsylvania.
Or possibly a generic town name (frannistatville...)
Fireclown -- A book by Michael Moorcock.
allescence -- Conjecture: the quality or state of being whole (from its
similarity to the word coalescence).
--I doubt it. It's probably coalescence misspelled, with
the "co" being lost on a previous line.--
arcology -- Combination of "architecture" and "ecology". Coined by
architect/ecologist Paulo Soleri (Paolo Solari?). Refers to
a futuristic "massive, complete environment", essentially
an entire city/community in one large building/super-structure.
He or his followers are currently building a prototype
somewhere in the southwest/Arizona/desert.
Popularized in science fiction, particularly in "Oath of Fealty"
by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle.
dagobah -- A planet in Star Wars V: "The Empire Strikes Back", where Luke
meets Yoda and is trained in the ways of the Jedi. For more
details, see the discussion in net.misc.
dolata -- A personal name (Ted Dolata, of BTL or Interactive Systems,
author? of PWB).
gygax -- A personal name (E. Gary Gygax of TSR, Inc., author?/inventor?
of D&D (Dungeons and Dragons) and AD&D (Advanced ...).
kashtan -- A personal name (David Kashtan of SRI, developer? of Eunice,
a UNIX-on-top-of-VMS system).
kos -- Possibly acronym KOS for Kernelized Operating System.
Also a login id and name of someone at uiucdcs (U. of Il.)
octothorp -- A name for the sharp/pound/number sign, used particularly by
the phone company to refer to the # on touch-tone keypads.
Possibly "an eight-winged flying thing", etymologically.
pollless -- Of course this is a word, if you hyphenate it. I was just
wondering whether I could get away with dropping the hyphen.
pronet -- A local-area network offered by Proteon, Inc. This is an
implementation of a ring network developed at MIT.
thelonious or thelonius -- Thelonious or Thelonius Monk, (great) jazz
pianist/musician/composer/(trumpeter?),
died recently.
vitastics -- Neat blending of "vital statistics", net.med or net.singles.
crgnytwfix -- I quote: " trb's name on his home planet ".
--Actually, I'm pretty sure this is some encrypted "dirty word"
from net.jokes.dontoffendanyone. Any takers?--
Some corrections and comments on earlier entries:
bo-sticks -- Apparently, what I described last time are actually called
"nunchuka" or "nunchuks", not bo-sticks, which are fighting
staffs, short usually wooden cylinders, used in swordplay.
anabdallah -- A personal login id (Areski Nait-Abdalla(sp?) at watmath)
japlaice -- A personal login id (John A. Plaice at watmath)
gafiate -- A sci-fi fannish verb from "gafia": "get away from it all".
frannistat -- Gizmo.
spangiafora -- (?) A new health-food craze, some kind of algae.
Also, short for "Orchid Spangiafora", a record or
musical composition by carey!yale-comix.
Frizzbox -- (Repeated by request) An electronic device used to alter the
way an electric guitar, synthesizer, or keyboard sounds.
And now for what you've all been waiting for ........
I constructed a wordlist, using net traffic (among other things), and
can't identify the following as words (I don't know them and they're
not in my dictionary). I no longer have the sources at hand.
Can anyone define/identify any of the following "words"?
Dynabooks
Electrolert
Gazzania
Neotectonics
Nortronics
Tectonophysics
cassoulet
castenada (sp?)
chuqui
clonidine
comitatum
crosstable
copyfast
demiglace
elphinstone
fantods
gustibus
quadracall
timonium
spelling?:
jalapeno
kielbasa
Short explanations are plenty.
If I have the time, I'll post another summary to the net.
A lot of you have made favorable comments about this entire activity,
from both your side and mine, so I'll try to "keep it up", but
the volume of responses is pretty high, so reading and summarizing
is taking more time than I intended. Anyway, my eventual reward will be
a more accurate wordlist (my original goal).
--dmy--sjt@sri-unix (11/11/82)
Identifications for four of the words on the new list: fantods -- "the fidgets" gustibus -- part of the Latin phrase "de gustibus non disputandum est", "there's no disputing (or accounting for) taste" jalapeno -- a small, HOT, red pepper (don't you watch Lite Beer commercials?) kielbasa -- Polish sausage Steve Tolopka