Unofficial Christ's Hospital Forum

02 02 2020.

The same forwards and backwards. It doesn't happen that often.

Not only that, it’s the same here as in the countries that put the month first. Truly palindromic both sides of the Atlantic, these happen very rarely indeed.

It won't happen again until 12 Dec 2121 or 12.12.2121.

loringa wrote: ↑Sun Feb 02, 2020 4:39 pm It won't happen again until 12 Dec 2121 or 12.12.2121.

Hopedfully I'll still be around for that as well !

Further nice numbers about today, it is the 33rd day of the year, with 333 more days in 2020. See https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-51349158

Capicua

I had to look that up, John, in case you were being rude!

Katharine wrote: ↑Mon Feb 03, 2020 9:10 pm I had to look that up, John, in case you were being rude!

My wife’s Costa Rican niece was visiting and challenges her family to discover unusual words. This was one of them but I had to ask her to remind me what it was.
I believe that it was one of the possible names that Andersen Consulting looked at before changing to Accenture.

jhopgood wrote: ↑Mon Feb 03, 2020 10:30 pm
My wife’s Costa Rican niece was visiting and challenges her family to discover unusual words. This was one of them but I had to ask her to remind me what it was.

I had a survey sent to me a few days ago about telematics and car insurance. That had me lost. It was not in my very thick English dictionary, I couldn't be bothered with Google so I did find it in the Phroncistery's logorrhea of "weird words and unusual words". It's a marvelous source of words, some of which have not been used for 300 years! A separate section is headed "Sesquipedalian Words" and includes "eellogofusciouhipoppokunurious" - 30 letters** apparently meaning "good"
The author is a Canadian national who is/was a professor at a major US university. Did CH English teachers let us down?

** apparently that is two more than antidisestablishmentarianism which I had always thought was the longest word.

Certainly capicua will join my “Do we really need a word for this?” list. My current favorite is a pair of words with exactly the same meaning. Carphology and floccilation both mean “A nervous plucking at the sheet or blanket “

One of my list of special words is boustrophedon . This means alternately left to right and right to left, I first heard it referring to ploughing with oxen, but wiki has it with certain scripts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boustrophedon

It is obvious in church when there are special services, such a Remembrance Day that many of the congregation, not used to church methods, don’t know to pass the collection plate boustrophedonally!

Daba la zorra arroz al abad

Spanish capicua sentence I learnt once (The fox gave rice to the abbott or vice versa)

PS Plumley taught me antidisestablishmentarianism