[139] a meme, a poll, some vocabulaire :)

[aldehyde]

SHOW ME SOME FICTIONAL LOVE


MY THREAD HERE

y'know the nifty LJ NOTES feature? i have lj notes for everyone, but they're incredibly boring - they say things like "supernatural", "harry potter", "doctor who", "icons: jonas brothers", etc. i.e. they simply identify how i know the person/community in question.

therefore, i have decided to make a POLL! YOU tell me what i should include in your lj note. please include your name [or nickname], and any other details you might want me to include. the results will only be visible to me, of course.

Poll LJ NOTES
and now i will share some words i like very much, because i haven't done that in a long while:billingsgate \BIL-ingz-gayt; -git\
noun
1. Coarsely abusive, foul, or profane language

Named after Billingsgate, a former market in London celebrated for fish and foul language.

Example Sentence
Its style is an almost pure Army billingsgate that will offend many readers, although in no sense is it exaggerated: Mr. Mailer's soldiers are real persons, speaking the vernacular of human bitterness and agony.

-- David Dempsey, "The Dusty Answer of Modern War", New York Times
imbroglio \im-BROHL-yoh\
noun
1. A confused mass
2. a) A complicated situation
b) A painful or embarrassing misunderstanding
c) A violent or bitter altercation: embroilment

Example Sentence
The two motorists got into an imbroglio after both tried to make a move for the same parking spot.
Nimrod \NIM-rahd\
noun
1. A descendant of Ham represented in Genesis as a mighty hunter and a king of Shinar
2. not capitalized: Hunter
3. not capitalized, slang: Idiot, jerk

Nimrod is described in Genesis as "the first on earth to be a mighty man" and "a mighty hunter before the Lord". It's easy to see how people made the leap from one mighty hunter in the Bible to calling any hunter a nimrod. The legendary Nimrod is also sometimes associated with the attempt to build the Tower of Babel. Because the tower resulted in the wrath of the Lord and proved a disastrous idea, "nimrod" is sometimes used with yet another meaning: "a stupid person".

Example Sentence
Dad fancied himself a mighty nimrod after he captured the rabbit who had been eating our garden.
sastruga \SAS-truh-guh\
noun
1. A wavelike ridge of hard snow formed by the wind - usually used in plural

From zastruga, a word that comes from a dialect of Russian and means "groove", "small ridge", or "furrow".

Example Sentence
Over the sastrugi it is all up and down hill, and the covering of ice crystals prevents the sledge from gliding even on the down-grade.

-- Robert Falcon Scott, Captain Scott’s Last Expedition
Sturm und Drang \shtoorm-unt-DRAHNG\
noun
1. Turmoil

From German, where it literally means “storm and stress”. Although it is now a generic synonym of “turmoil”, the term was originally used in English to identify a late 18th-century German literary movement whose works were filled with rousing action and high emotionalism, and often dealt with an individual rebelling against the injustices of society.

Example Sentence
The new film deftly captures the Sturm und Drang of growing up as it chronicles the turbulent lives of two teens in postwar Germany.