Polysemous homonyms

 Polysemy  is the capacity for a sign (e.g., a word, phrase, etc.) or signs to have multiple related meanings.  Polysemes are usually regarded as distinct from homonyns, in which the multiple meanings of a word may be unconnected or unrelated.  The state of being a homonym is called homonymy. Polysemous is the adjective from polysemy and means ‘having multiple meanings’.   Its earliest documented use was in 1884.

In linguistics, a homonym is, in the strict sense, one of a group of words that share the same spelling and pronunciation but may have different meanings. Thus homonyms are simultaneously homographs (words that share the same spelling, regardless of their pronunciation) and homophones (words that share the same pronunciation, regardless of their spelling).

Examples of homonyms are stalk (part of a plant) and stalk (follow/harass a person), and left (past tense of leave) and left (opposite of right).

A distinction is sometimes made between "true" homonyms, which are unrelated in origin, such as skate (glide on ice) and skate (the fish), and polysemous homonyms, or polysemes, which have a shared origin, such as mouth (of a river) and mouth (of an animal).

Pumpkin Positive

There are a  number of ‘medical’ terms for patients believed to be somewhat intellectually challenged.   Some are well known like LOBNH (Lights On But Nobody Home); some less so like CNS-QNS (Central Nervous System - Quantity Not Sufficient).  But one reader of this blog recently referred me to the delightful term "pumpkin positive".    This refers to the implication that a penlight shone into the patient's mouth would encounter a brain so small that the whole head would light up.  That had to go on this blog!

  

Wabble

Wabble is a lovely version of a wobble - the action or an act of wobbling; an unsteady rocking motion or movement. 

(P.S. Wabble is also a free online multi-player word game.)

Witling

   A witling is (or rather 'was' since, regrettably, the term is no longer used) a person who fancies himself a wit, but isn't.  This term for an utterer of light or feeble witticisms was first used in 1693.  Please may we bring it back into use? 

(According to the spellchecker I have invented the word 'utterer'.  It seems to me to be quite an acceptable word for one who utters!)

More about Shanks' Pony

   When I wrote the last post I had forgotten this postcard which was lurking in my collection.

This was a Second World War British poster by Jan Lewitt and George Him, published in 1943.  Note that the spelling was different.  They used Shanks' Pony rather then Shanks's Pony.

Shanks's Mare, Shanks’s Nag or Shanks's Pony

   These terms are used to refer to using one's own legs and the action of walking as a means of conveyance.  "He went by Shanks's Pony" is often used as being a slightly derogatory way of saying he had no better means of conveyance.

The origins of the saying are obscure but it is believed to be Scottish, the earliest known reference being to shanks’s nag in 1774.  That was said to refer to the use of the shank, that part of the human leg between the knee and the ankle. 

One popular theory cites "shank's mare" as deriving from a horse-drawn lawn mower, manufactured by Shanks & Co. Ltd. (founded 1853) which required that the human operator walk behind the device to guide the horse. However, delightful though that idea is, references to the phrase in Scottish literature pre-date the existence of the Shanks lawn mower.