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Sat Nov 05, 2011 7:58 am  |
I love languages and love to learn cool and interesting things about them. While I'm mostly fluent in English, I have dabbled in a few others but I started this thread with just English in mind. I hope to add any fun things that have to do with English here and hope others can do the same.
Today I learned a new word that sounds like a word I know and I thought it funny how the word could be used on someone and they not be sure which of the two is meant.  Thought I'd share:
Word of the Day for Saturday, November 5, 2011
quean \kween\, noun:
1. An overly forward, impudent woman; shrew; hussy.
2. A prostitute.
3. British Dialect. A girl or young woman, especially a robust one.
I answer thee, thou art a beggar, a quean, and a bawd.
-- Thomas Middleton, Five Plays
Had I had my own will, I would have had her to Bridewell, to flog the wild blood out of her--a cutty quean, to think of wearing the breeches, and not so much as married yet!
-- Sir Walter Scott, Waverley Novels
Quean, predictably, is rooted in the same Old English word that queen comes from, the word cwen which meant woman.
(This info came to me courtesy of Dictionary.com's Word of the Day ) |
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Sat Nov 05, 2011 5:55 pm |
OK, I hope there are verbivores (lovers of words) on the forum coz I just hafta share these puns I got a few years ago in an email:
1) A vulture boards an airplane, carrying two dead raccoons. The Stewardess looks at him and says, 'I'm sorry, sir, only one carrion allowed per passenger.
2) Two fish swim into a concrete wall. The one turns to the other and says, 'Dam!'
3) Two Eskimos sitting in a kayak were chilly, so they lit a fire in the craft. Unsurprisingly, it sank, proving once again that you can't have your kayak and heat it, too.
4) Two hydrogen atoms meet. One says, 'I've lost my electron.' The other says, 'Are you sure?' The first replies, 'Yes, I'm positive.'
5) Did you hear about the Buddhist who refused Novocain during a root canal? His goal: transcend dental medication.
6) A group of chess enthusiasts checked into a hotel and were standing in the lobby discussing their recent tournament victories. After about an hour, the manager came out of the office and asked them to disperse. But why they asked, as they moved off. 'Because,' he said, 'I can't stand chess-nuts boasting in an open foyer.'
7) A woman has twins and gives them up for adoption. One of them goes to a family in Egypt and is named Ahmal. The other goes to a family in Spain; they name him Juan. Years later, Juan sends a picture of himself to his birth mother. Upon receiving the picture, she tells her husband that she wishes she also had a picture of Ahmal. Her husband responds, 'They're twins! If you've seen Juan, you've seen Ahmal.'
8 ) A group of friars were behind on their belfry payments, so they opened a small florist shop to raise funds. Since everyone liked to buy flowers from the men of God, a rival florist across town thought the competition was unfair. He asked the good fathers to close down, but they would not. He went back and begged the friars to close. They ignored him. So, the rival florist hired Hugh MacTaggart, the roughest and most vicious thug in town to 'persuade' them to close. Hugh beat up the friars and trashed their store, saying he'd be back if they didn't close up shop. Terrified, they did so, thereby proving that only Hugh can prevent florist friars.
9) Mahatma Gandhi, as you know, walked barefoot most of the time, which produced an impressive set of calluses on his feet. He also ate very little, which made him rather frail and, with his odd diet, he suffered from bad breath. This made him [Oh, man, this is SO BAD, it's good] a super calloused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis.
10) And, finally, there was the person who sent ten different puns to friends, with the hope that at least one of the puns would make them laugh. No pun in ten did.
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Fri Dec 02, 2011 4:58 am |
| They're all really good - but No. 9 is priceless!!! |
_________________
Born 1950. There's a new cream on the market that gets rid of wrinkles - you smear it on the mirror!! |
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Fri Dec 02, 2011 7:49 am |
| Loved them, thanks for sharing! |
_________________
Joined the 50 club several years back, blonde w/ fair/sensitive skin, Texas humidity and prone to rosacea, light breakouts and sunburns, combo skin type, starting to see sundamage and fine lines |
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Sat Dec 03, 2011 7:50 am |
| These are great, Nonie! Would love to read more if you have any! |
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Sat Nov 23, 2013 8:19 pm |
Another treat for lexiphiles...
Acupuncture: a jab well done.
To write with a broken pencil is pointless.
When fish are in schools they sometimes take debate.
A thief who stole a calendar got twelve months.
When the smog lifts in Los Angeles , U.C.L.A.
The professor discovered that her theory of earthquakes was on shaky ground.
The batteries were given out free of charge.
A dentist and a manicurist married. They fought tooth and nail.
A will is a dead giveaway.
If you don't pay your exorcist you can get repossessed.
With her marriage, she got a new name and a dress.
Show me a piano falling down a mineshaft and I'll show you A-flat miner.
You are stuck with your debt if you can't budge it.
Local Area Network in Australia : The LAN down under.
A boiled egg is hard to beat.
When you've seen one shopping centre you've seen a mall.
Police were called to a day care where a three-year-old was resisting a rest.
Did you hear about the fellow whose whole left side was cut off? He's all right now.
If you take a laptop computer for a run you could jog your memory.
A bicycle can't stand alone; it is two tired.
In a democracy it's your vote that counts; in feudalism, it's your Count that votes.
When a clock is hungry it goes back four seconds.
The guy who fell onto an upholstery machine was fully recovered.
He had a photographic memory which was never developed.
Those who get too big for their britches will be exposed in the end.
When she saw her first strands of grey hair, she thought she'd dye. |
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Sun Nov 24, 2013 3:19 am |
Nonie, thank you so much for this. These puns a very good. No 9 is hilarious .
The word quean was very familiar to me, I was brought up in a small Scottish village and this was used all the time took me a ages to work out what it meant!! ( I am mixed back ground not scottish and frequently felt like I was lost in translation!) this really took me back years! |
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46 got (PMD,Caci,QuasarMD,Tria , skin spatula) Using, environ , myfawnie serums, lacsal, retinol, GHk probably more but too embarrased to say |
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Fri Nov 29, 2013 9:14 am |
| Btw.....it is , more accurately, "quean" that is applied to a certain type of histrionic gay man. It is habitually mispelled and consequently misunderstood! |
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Fri Nov 29, 2013 10:53 pm |
| catski wrote: |
| Btw.....it is , more accurately, "quean" that is applied to a certain type of histrionic gay man. It is habitually mispelled and consequently misunderstood! |
catski are you sure about this? Where did you get this info from, if you don't mind my asking?
My understanding is they both are from the same Middle English word and "queen" was first used to mean a histrionic effeminate man in 1924. While the first use of "quean" to mean the same thing was recorded in 1935. I suspect people who knew one and not the other assumed it was a misspelling when it is really just a variant. "Queen" is the more well-known spelling/word for this type of gay guy. And IMO it is fitting coz I remember as a kid when someone started acting all cutesy and as if she thought she were better than everyone, we would say she thinks she's a queen. Usually they would be acting flamboyant and extra showy, feigning an attitude of high maintenance and need to be the center of attraction...kinda like a gay guy deserving of the title would act. |
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Fri Nov 29, 2013 11:13 pm |
From the Urban Dictionary:
Queen
A flamboyant homosexual, usually male, always FABULOUS.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Queen
From the Oxford Dictionary:
1. the female ruler of an independent state, especially one who inherits the position by right of birth:
[as title]:
Queen Victoria
[as complement]:
he insisted the princess could be crowned queen
(also Queen Consort) a king’s wife.
a woman or thing regarded as the finest or most outstanding in a particular sphere or group:
the queen of the social columns
a woman or girl chosen to hold the most important position in a festival or event:
she’s the official carnival queen
(the Queen) dated (in the UK) the national anthem when there is a female sovereign.
informal a man’s wife or girlfriend.
2. the most powerful chess piece that each player has, able to move in any direction along a rank, file, or diagonal on which it stands.
3. a playing card bearing a representation of a queen, normally ranking next below a king and above a jack.
4. Entomology a reproductive female in a colony of social ants, bees, wasps, or termites, frequently the only one present in a colony.
5. an adult female cat that has not been spayed.
6. informal a male homosexual, typically one regarded as ostentatiously effeminate.
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/queen |
_________________
Born 1950. There's a new cream on the market that gets rid of wrinkles - you smear it on the mirror!! |
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Sat Nov 30, 2013 3:21 am |
This thread is hilarious  |
_________________
We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. |
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Mon Dec 09, 2013 6:01 am |
From my Cassell's English Dictionary, which I've had for years...
Quean: (Anglo-Saxon - cwene) A slut, a hussy, a jade, a strumpet; Scottish - a young or unmarried woman, a lass.
It says 'quean' is cognate with 'queen' - under 'queen', none of the above is listed. Neither is 'gay', unsurprisingly, as my dictionary is from 1962 - the law was changed in 1967 in the UK. |
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