[net.misc] Wordlist Info Request Continued

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