The English language/vocabulary/verbal phrases

Dean wrote: Dayvenkirq wrote: ^ Which part? Mistell (not in Merriam-Webster), apathetic. Both. 1) Mistell appears in the 1913 edition of Websters and it's certainly in my 1981 (printed) edition of Chambers 2) apathetic, apathy and pathetic are all derived from pathos.

1) How odd. It does not appear on the M-W website. ... I better get a book.

Edited by Dayvenkirq - April 02 2015 at 11:31

Mistell (not in Merriam-Webster), apathetic.

Edited by Dayvenkirq - April 02 2015 at 11:07

No such word as "mistell", ... but there is "apathetic" (coming from "apathy", not "pathetic").

Edited by Dayvenkirq - April 02 2015 at 10:53

Bagatelle, supernal, demotic, apropos.

Edited by Dayvenkirq - February 16 2015 at 04:22

Extra fly (slang, originally learned about from a Person Of Interest  FB post with Kevin Chapman and Superbowl XLIX).

A corpus delicti, to abet.

Edited by Dayvenkirq - January 30 2015 at 05:32

Aye. That's why he didn't call it My Fair Lady ...

We often assume that these old sayings and idioms are "as old as the hills" but this isn't always the case, especially when it involves some exotic animal that is not native to the country of the mother tongue such as a camel or a dodo. Of course many people living in rural England in the 18th century would have known what a camel was from references in the bible (the old "eye of a needle" parable), but they would never have seen one and certainly would not have associated it with a beast of burden. This makes me think that perhaps this phrase was an import from another language, possibly from the Middle East where camel-related idioms were more commonplace, so I wonder whether this phrase entered into the English language from the Jewish community.

Edited by Dean - January 28 2015 at 11:40

Edited by Dayvenkirq - January 22 2015 at 14:33

I was genuinely surprised with the origins of this expression:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumping_the_shark

(Probably because I loathed the TV show so never watched it)