Re: Words, Words, Words

--- On Wed, 7/11/12, Sibyl Smirl <polycarpa3@ckt.net> wrote:
>
> I'm reading a British mystery novel right now, on my Kindle,
> "In the Blood", a genealogical mystery, by Steve
> Robinson.

Do note that Kindles (and other ebook readers) are prone to weird typos. I like my Kindle, but sometimes the typos are a bit blatant. They're getting better with them, though.

  The viewpoint character is (supposed to be)
> American, though most of the action takes place in
> Cornwall.

The author is from Kent and now lives in Essex; I was curious and looked him up.

>
> Jarring for me, because to me, hair that will behave would
> be _lying_ down, while hair that might be called "sitting
> down" would evoke a vertical appearance, like "standing up",
> that is, _not_ behaving, but straight out from the root, or,
> in the case of "sitting", out from the root, then a bent
> section, then out again...

It's more British colloquial than just the author. I had to get used to British students referring to the floor when talking about something outside; I would have called it the ground, unless I was talking about the floor of the forest, or something like that. Now I find myself calling the ground the floor sometimes. :)

The following is from an ad for Paul Mitchell hair products:
"Marlon says
"Use to fix and control specific areas of your hair like a sweeping fringe or those hairs that won't sit down" "

Our Earthly Pleasures, a band from Newcastle (England) has a song with these lyrics:
"There it is again that lock of hair that won't sit still
Our earthly pleasures distract us against our will."

>
> "_In_ his neck"?  That one is especially uncomfortable
> for me, because the story has just been describing, before
> that, a body with a cut throat.  I'm not even sure what
> it means-- a too-tight tie might be making a groove in his
> neck, and definitely not comfortable, but that doesn't seem
> to work.  An American might think "on" or "around", but
> not "in".

Okay, I'm saying the following from 19 years experience teaching American English (17 in Colorado and two at an American school outside of London) and ten years teaching British English: I think that's a typo. :) (I end my 29th year of teaching on Friday -- hallelujah!! Okay, technically, I ended the teaching last Friday, but we're having a week of meetings, trainings and lots of paperwork now. Year 30 starts on 23 August. This summer will go too fast.)
>
> And one for Leslie, a piece of horse equipment, like a
> feedbag, in an early Eighteenth Century setting, of which
> I've never heard before. This one isn't in the OED either,
> though specialized equipment might not be.  "His Shire
> mare, Ebryl, named after the Cornish for the month of April
> in which she was born, was happily eating her reward from
> the morral looped around her neck."

Yep, 'morral' is a real word -- it's a feedbag. From an American website: http://www.nrsworld.com/horse-morral.html. In Spanish, morral means just that, and can also mean something like a backpack or haversack, I believe.

Ellen