YSaC, Vol. 459: When the moon hits your eye …
Words borrowed from other languages can be confusing, y’all. I mean, they don’t sound like they look — or is that they don’t look like they sound?
Take armoire, for example. Oh, it looks so innocent just sitting there, but don’t let it fool you. It is an evil, evil word. Witness the mayhem it causes on Craigslist — and these are just from the titles of posts!
Armor
Amour – $250
ARMORIES – $500
2 Amoure, excellent condition (thats’s storage things for guys) – $40
1950’s antique mirrored amoir – $100
Entertainment Center/Armwour
NICE ARMOUR AND DRESSER
TV Armwaure – $50
Armory and Piers
Aromora and Chest of Drawes : Must Go – $10
Armwor – $500
(later misspelled again as “aourmor”)
These listings are courtesy of Jenny, Dani, Sara, Ciera, Cynzano, Ethan, hdickie, Chelsea, KCBlueGal, Steve, and dakota.
And then there’s Jess, the patron saint of armoire misspellings, who submitted these armoronic treasures:
Mahogany Amoire
TV armiore/entertainment center
Armoir – TV Entertainment Center – $125
Mirror Armore for sale – $150
Armoure with drawers and hanging rack
Pier 1 Imports Amore’ – $250
Cabinet Admoir closet – $225
I think my favorites are the armwaure (just keep adding letters, you’ll get there eventually!) and Amore’. (It’s foreign, it must require an accent, right? But don’t bother figuring out how to actually make an accent, just use an apostrophe.)
I also like the condescending yet misspelled and ungrammatical “thats’s storage thing for guys” — I’m unclear on whether this person thinks that only males may use an armoire, or whether they think that guys are too uncultured to know what an armoire is. Dan thinks that it means that that’s where one stores one’s guys … um, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go clean out my armoire before Dan looks in there.
Some of these folks obviously belong to a medieval recreation group, like the Society for Creative Anachronism. They use just about anything for an armory. And stick jocks don’t learn to spell until they want to be knighted.
Along the same line: I came across an ad for a “doxin” yesterday. The funniest part of the ad was when the poster actually corrected herself later and said, “sorry, I meant daxin.”
For a giggle I copied the post and plugged it into a blank text document and ran spell-check. With the exception of those spelled correctly but not a word normally used to describe a piece of furniture, all of them had the top suggestion of ‘armoire’ except for three that showed up as ‘armyworm'(Armwour,Armwaure and Armwor) and “Aromora” which the program suggested was ‘remora’.
I’ve often had a problem where I go out furniture-shopping and come home with a tank full or remoras or a bucket full of armyworms.
Now I know why!
Armyworms: Be all that you can be.
Armyworms: See the world and eat a large portion of it.
I like “admoir” the best. I mean, at least the other ones are relatively close phonetic approximations…but ADMOIR? Huh?
Mine’s “Aromora and Chest of Drawes”. Sounds like the title to a dirty movie. I’d pony up the ten spot just to see what the heck they were trying to sell.
I’m enough of a Brit lit geek and yet not so serious about it that I think “Armory and Piers” sounds like some sort of mediaeval buddy movie, Armory being a person’s name in this instance …
I kind of thought of them as possible place names in Ye Ole Monopoly. You’d have the Piers instead of the railways, and the Armory along with the Tavern, the Smithy, the Alehouse and…I don’t know, the Jousting Arena? The Apothecary? Of course, you’d put up shacks and inns instead of houses and hotels, and instead of going to jail you’d be transported to Australia and potentially die en route from scurvy and/or consumption…ok, this doesn’t sound like a fun game.
The buddy movie idea was better.
I think they already made the game that lareina mentioned. It was called Oregon Trail…
“You have died of dysentery.”
I remember playing that in grade school! I seem to remember that if you did die and decided to play again, the game would tell you when you passed the grave of your previous character. And they say games are too violent these days.
Really?? I’ve never heard of Oregon Trail, but I’m from India, so maybe that explains that. They seriously had a permutation that allowed a player to die of dysentery in a game??
Looking this up right now!
The statement “You Have Died of Dysentery” is so iconic in classic games that you can actually get it on a T-shirt.
I am curious about the listing for the armory and piers, is the listing selling an armory on a small island or perhaps a penisula and the piers would be an important strategic additions to one’s (hopefully) well stocked armory?
I’ve heard of a mirror being referred to as a ‘pier glass’, so maybe the armory is mirrored? That or they make really, REALLY shiny suits of armor.
Guess which of Igor’s little friends is really, REALLY shiny sometimes and always wears his suit of transparent armor? 😉
-Runs away giggling-
All my friends like to stand on top of mountains during thunderstorms, wearing wet copper armour and shouting “ALL GODS ARE BASTARDS!”
Blah, something tells me we tread in the same circles.
What – no French prudential ahrmwoures?
*giggle* I read that as “French Prudential armwhores” the first time I saw it.
French Prudential armwhores are French prostitutes who are very prudent about STIs, and therefore only give handjobs – but they give very thorough ones, using their whole arm.
That’s a fabulous mental image at bedtime. Thanks, Maureen!
I have that porno on DVD.
I came across one a few months ago spelled Ummwah. I SO wanted to contact the seller to ask more about it to see if I’d get some other gems back in response.
I think Ummwah is the precise sound my brain makes when it tries to parse some of these spelling choices.
I can picture that.
*Irregular Fractal tries to read post*
Irregular Fractal’s brain – “Ummmm…Waaah…BOOM!!!”
*sound of blaring car alarms, crying babies, howling dogs, and falling glass from shattered windows*
*Irregular Fractal fetches auxillary brain from storage jar and makes witty and insightful comment*
My head’s a bad neighborhood to be in late at night.
Seconded.
Gosh, I see my mistake now. I’ve been looking for amore in coffee shops, bookstores, even a singles bar or two. I need to start hanging out at Pier 1.
If you really want to import your amore’, they have websites for that 😉
Sounds like you’ve been looking for armoire in all the wrong places…
Wow, I feel better about my spelling now. Although I would like that storage thing for guys. They’re starting to pile up around the house and the backyard is full.
Sarajean is now starring in her own personal production of Arsenic and Old Lace.
Can I interest you in a glass of elderberry wine, Isaac? I made it myself.
I hear a good dirt-floored basement can help with this sort of situation if you can’t get a storage thing …
Maybe I should see if CraigsList has any chipper/shredders for sale.
Marry me, Isaac. I can cook! And I have ‘Kind Hearts and Coronets’ on DVD for afterwards!
I’m already happily hitched.
But I’m happy to receive baked goods. (I am configured to accept cookies.)
I’m single, and would LOVE to eat your food.
Pft.
I sound like one of these m4w ads!
Ah well, it was worth a shot. Perhaps it’s for the best, I’m crap at baking. Indians don’t really bake, sadly. I do make a mean chicken kadhai, though, and my biriyani isn’t too shabby either.
Lareina,
I’ll trade you all my baking secrets for biriyani lessons. I only have two Indian dishes I’m still trying to learn; biriyani and gulab jamun.
Whadda say? I’m talking 6th generation Southern baking secrets, just in time for baking season! 🙂
SJ, you need one of those bags that have a valve to suck out all the air with a vacuum. Store your guys in 1/3 of the space, and keeps them fresh at the same time!
“Aromora and Chest of Drawes : Must Go – $10”
I’m so amused that this listing spelled both drawers and armwoir… armuire… armwahr… damn armoire incorrectly.
Well at least it wasn’t an “Aromora and Chesterdrawers”.
No, but that would be a great name for a band.
I’m partial to “Droors” myself. Sounds like a Jim Morrison tribute band.
…from when he was high and drooling.
i second that. and i would pernt out that chesta draws is kinda nyc pronunciation of said object.
and i love armoronic. egggg-selent!!!
I was wondering if anyone would catch that. I was inordinately proud of that one.
Aromora and Chester Drawers? I know them! You won’t find them on Craigslist any more, though. They left after one of their kids became one of the missing Drawers.
Are they any kin to Snow White and the Seven Drawers?
ICENAY ARMOURAY ANDAY ESSERDRAY
My favorite is “Cabinet Admoir closet.” This person may not be able to spell armoire, but he or she is determined to keep plugging until someone gets the idea. Too bad “wardrobe” was missed.
Of course, being me, I get this odd image of a matryoshka (Russian nested doll) style piece of furniture—within the Cabinet one finds the Armoire, and, opening that, behold the closet!
How long till we reach Narnia?
My favorite bit in this whole post might actually be the word thats’s.
It’s like an answer to the question posed by the word whatsis.
Whatsis?
Thats’s.
Whosis?
Hersis.
TV Armwaure sounds like some kind of fancy Tupperware to me. I picture it being used for upscale TV dinners.
I think the “Aromora” might need Febreeze.
Actually, using an apostrophe instead of an accent mark at the end of a word is common and accepted in written Italian, though most often done when the word is in all caps.
Is it really that hard to make an é?
How, exactly does one do it, drmk?
I’ve been avoiding french homework on the computer for years to save time.
I’ve asked my friends, but they are computer-stupid and use macs.
My other computer buddies don’t take french, either. 😛
I’m hoping that “are computer stupid” and “use macs” are two different things in your world … because I’m rather computer savvy myself and use a Mac. I know plenty of people who are not particularly computer savvy, and use a Mac, but I also know plenty of people who are not particularly computer savvy and use a PC.
Dan and I are a mixed marriage; he’s a PC, and I’m a Mac.
So anyway, to make the diacritical on a Mac, it’s Option+e, then the e.
They’re two different things, but I spend most of my time in classes filled with teachers and students who use the school-standard (extremely useless for all purposes) apple computers, so they’ve become somewhat associated in my mind- that said, there are plenty of computer-savvy Mac users-it just seems that someone who is computer stupid is more likely to use a Mac because of the ease of basic program running, whereas Windows is less newbie-friendly.
If you two have kids, do they use a Linux like I do?
Although, the basic OS for this laptop is a VERY modified Vista- I dual boot into Ubuntu.
On a PC the é is made by holding the alt key and pressing 0233 on the number key pad. I know there is a shortcut as well… but I’ve always done it this way.
If you’re on Windows and you frequently need little diacritical marks, then you can set your language setting to “US-International”. When you’re in that setting, then Ctrl-‘ will put an acute accent over the next letter (if possible), Ctrl-` will do an accent grave, Ctrl-~ will do a tilde, Ctrl-: an umlaut, Ctrl-, a cedilla, and there’s probably a few others.
You can even set your computer to toggle back and forth between standard US and US-International by pressing Alt-Shift. Google on “US-International keyboard” for lots of tutorials and info and stuff.
drmk: Is it really that hard to make an é?
I most often see this in e-mails that were written by Italians in Italian on a so-called qwerty “International” (ha!) or an English keyboard. For someone who learned to use e-mail when everything was plain text and who is not any more interested in the finer points of using a computer than they are in the innards of their telephone, it’s good enough.
But I also saw the letter-apostrophe in Italy on signboards.
P.S. I’m at the office now so I could check my Italian dictionary. It’s even worse than we thought: amore is written without any accent at all.
I thought that was obvious. The diacritical accent indicates the accented syllable, and in amore that’s a-MOR-e. (As per the post title.) Which was another reason I was laughing at the use of the apostrophe for the accent — it wasn’t needed anyway!
Dang, I was reading YSAC to procrastinate but now I learned something useful, which destroys the effectiveness of my procrastination. Curse you, Alex! Curse you!
eye no its relly snobee off mi butt eye lyk th spelin poastz
Did you seriously just provide a link to your blog as your name?
Go.
NOW.
Meh, they’re not a troll (the poor spelling’s a joke, after all!). Play nice, that’s a good Igor. 🙂
I meant go modify the name, Lola, not to leave the site…. though if I click that link one more time because I forget what it is I might mean it soon.. 😛
Now, I know that this will unmask the complete and utter nerd in me (or my armoire), but this just makes me think of the fabled armoire of invincibility from 8-Bit Theatre… It’s heavy… with invincibility.
Win! Gotta love some 8-Bit Theatre.
And don’t be ashamed to unmask that nerd. Rip off the mask and do the Napoleon Dynamite dance with me. 😛
Hahaha thank goodness, I thought the only response possible would be an overly loud cricket. High five to the 8-Bit! Name the place, I’ll ride there on my liger.
“… an overly loud cricket.”
I read this as overly loud cricketeer and thought, “I know huh? You’d think for a gentleman’s sport they’d be quieter.” Then I caught myself and… never mind.
You should do a follow up post on variations of “ottoman”. One of my favorite antique store finds ever was a replica Eames chair with matching automine. That’s what the tag said. Yes, I kept the tag.
wow…that was quite an education for this early in the day!