Picture(s) of the Day

[aggienaut]

I've added pictures to my recent travelogues. Since all the pictures from my phone auto upload to google photos now and its easy to link to them there, but hard to embed them (I have to download them from google and re upload to flickr to do that), I'm probably doing more linking vs embedding nowadays.



And Now For Something Completely Different
Today I saw another Australian headline with the word "rort" in it (a word I'd only first noticed just the other day), and mentioned this funny word to my ever insightful friend Tiffany, and of course we both went down the wiktionary rabbithole to discover that this Australianism meaning "a scam or fraud, especially involving the misappropriation of public money or resources" a backformation of "rorty," which I'm sure will be familiar to all of you as "19th century British costermonger slang" (and meaning "boisterous, rowdy, saucy, dissipated, or risqué").

Which of course then led to the question of what exactly a costermonger is, and that answer is "A trader who sells fruit and vegetables from a cart or barrow in the street." -- so now you know what to call the farmer's market stallholders!

I then remarked that we need to apply the monger suffix to modern occupations. Like "digital content creators." I declared I would make a [facebook] post proclaiming they would henceforth be known as "contentmongers."

To which Tiffany pointed out that to make a post about contentmongers was to become a contentmonger. And then I attained great enlightenment.

Comments

[wpadmirer.livejournal.com]

Ooo, I like that. It's like adding "meister" to things.

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Meister is an interesting one because I think the connotation is good, but in a kind of whimsical way. Monger I have to admit sounds like you're insulting someone by calling them an anything monger.

[wpadmirer.livejournal.com]

True. I mean, there is the word whoremonger, for example. That's definitely not good in any way.

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Somoene who.. collects whores? The only modern usage I can think of is like "rumormonger." I think there's an ironmonger street in geelong here.

[wpadmirer.livejournal.com]

"a person who has dealings with prostitutes, especially a sexually promiscuous man."

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Ah.

[pondhopper.livejournal.com]

That is a really lovely perspective in the above photo.

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Thanks! (:

[gaeln.livejournal.com]

'To which Tiffany pointed out that to make a post about contentmongers was to become a contentmonger. And then I attained great enlightenment.'
I can see why you might. Pretty darned profound of her to make that connection. Lovely photo BTW. And I gotta say, I always enjoy a good linguistics discussion. Thank you!

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

I thought I had an "etymology" tag, because I think I posted at least once before about etymology (and I think you had also commented about your enthusiasm?) but I apparently have no such tag nor remember what the entry would have been about :-/

[gaeln.livejournal.com]

I remember a discussion we had once about the Star Trek work Fereng and how, I think, it meant something in some real language or other. Could that be it? Because, you are right, I do have an interest in etymology. g
Good remembering!

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Hmm I feel like it was something more recent? I don't think I've talked about Ferengi lately ;D

But yes, the Star Trek Ferengi also have a leader called the Grand Negus and I think there might be more borrowed words from Amharic. Negus means king and Ferengi means foreigner, from Arabic "Ferang" or some such meaning "Franks," meaning crusaders.

Ethiopia had an actual honest to goodness feudal absoluet monarchy until like the 80s, which seems adorably whimsical exceeept apparently the commoners didn't find it so great. DESPITE that as far as I can tell Haile Salassie came nearly as close to "enlightened despot" as any monarch, and the subsequent communist regime was truly awful, I noted the way the monarchy is portrayed in museums there is not quite "it was great!"

But yeah so Haile Salassie was the Negus e Negusi or some such, the king of kings. "Ras" was a title equivalent to duke, and before ascending to the throne, Haile Salassie was the duke of the house of Tafari, which is to say, he was the Ras Tafari ... which is where "rastafarian" comes from. A lower feudal rank equivalent to roughly count/earl was dejamach. I just love the sound of it. "I am the dejamach!!"

(: (:

[pundigrion.livejournal.com]

Costermonger I nknew, but rort is a new one to me!

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Apparently it's common in Australia. One Australian commented to my facebook post about it that she had no idea it wasn't a word everywhere.

[kk1raven.livejournal.com]

I've definitely seen content-monger used to refer to people whose job is to manage content at websites. It seems to me that there's a piece of software with that name too.

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Ah. Those namemongers!! ;D