tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Jan 10 21:06:45 2002

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New words suffering pun-itis

I'm updating my digital dictionary with Maltz's new contributions, and I
just
can't resist sharing some suspected puns . . .






{notqa'} "a large black bird..."
{not} is the adverbial for "never", and *{qa'} is the verb suffix for "do
again, resume".
Putting these two together (ungrammatically), we could have "never again",
or "nevermore", a favorite saying of a Terran black bird-- Poe's raven.

{vem'eq} "a bird that feeds almost exclusively on the serpent worm..."
{vem}means to wake up or cease sleeping, and {'eq} means to be early.
Is our {vem'eq} the early bird who gets the worm?
(For our non-anglo friends on the list, it's a popular metaphor, somewhat
similar to {lumbe' tlhInganpu'}-- Klingons do not procrastinate.)

{waqboch} "a bird with a very long beak"
{waq} is the noun for shoe, and {boch} is the verb for to shine or to be
shiny.
And guess what? The long-beaked Kiwi bird has given his name to a popular
brand of shoeshine polish!

But don't get me started with {qaryoq} . . .

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