Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2011 August 4

= August 4 =

Tenerifian Spanish
On a recent trip to Tenerife, my wife and I enjoyed a delicious meal of Leg of Lamb in a local restaurant. It was described on the menu as "Pato de Cordero". But from my limited knowledge of Castellano, I had always called a leg a pierna. But I was told that a different noun is used on Tenerife for an animal's leg as against a human leg. But yesterday whilst meeting up with a friend from mainland Spain I described that wonderful dish of Pato de Cordero and she laughed out loud saying that I had eaten "Lamb Duck" and that she had never heard of Pato de Cordero. I know that in Tenerife they call an "Autobus" a "Guagua", as they also do on Cuba. But can someone explain why a "Leg" in one part of Spain can become a "Duck" in another? Thanks 94.172.117.205 (talk) 14:34, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Are you sure your word wasn't pata? Look here: (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/pata#Spanish). Pata means both duck and leg of an animal in standard Spanish.--151.41.138.181 (talk) 17:49, 4 August 2011 (UTC)


 * French for 'paw' is patte, incidentally. —76.28.213.53 (talk) 00:52, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

"well up herself"
I've come across what is apparently a British English idiom: to say that someone is "well up herself" (or himself) and I'm not quite sure what it means. A google search found some more examples, but no explicit explanation and I can't tell exactly from context. Rckrone (talk) 17:57, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
 * In London at any rate, the full phrase would be "up her (or his) own arsehole" meaning pretentious or with an inflated opinion of her (or his) own importance. Not for use in polite society, one understands. A Google search gives many variants such as "the man is so far up his own arsehole, he comes out the other side" and "so far up his own arsehole he could perform fellatio on himself". Alansplodge (talk) 18:16, 4 August 2011 (UTC)


 * I believe it's nominally equivalent to the American idiom "full of oneself". See this page also.  -- LarryMac  | Talk  18:22, 4 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Yup. In possession of an over-inflated ego. Think of Miss Piggy at her most pretentious... AndyTheGrump (talk) 18:23, 4 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Ok it's much clearer now that I know what it is that she is well up. Thanks everyone for your help. Rckrone (talk) 18:34, 4 August 2011 (UTC)


 * You read the construction as equivalent to "she, herself, is well up"? I might do so too. —76.28.213.53 (talk) 00:53, 7 August 2011 (UTC)


 * No, nobody ever says "she is well up", not even with the reflexive pronoun. That would instantly mark you as a foreigner, and one probably not to be trusted.  :)  If someone was asking you whether she was out of bed yet, you could make a distinction between her being just out of bed a second ago ("she's only just up") and having been up for 3 hours ("she's well up"), but that's somewhat contrived.  One has to be up oneself for the expression we're talking about to work its particular magic.  --   Jack of Oz   [your turn]  19:54, 7 August 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure how you expect 76.28.213.53 or me to recognize what is and is not some strange idiomatic British English construction that we've perhaps never heard before. The correct reading is itself idiomatic since it doesn't make any literal sense for an object to be up itself. Rckrone (talk) 23:17, 7 August 2011 (UTC)


 * I'm not at all sure what your issue is, Rckrone. It was not clear to me whom 76.28.213.53 was addressing, so I ignored that and just addressed the substance of their post.  I don't know where they got the idea that anyone had read it as "she, herself, is well up", but since they said they were going to be following suit, I thought it was my duty to disabuse them of that idea.  Nowhere was I expecting you or 76.28 or anyone else to recognise anything as idiomatic.  If that had been my expectation, I wouldn't have gone to the trouble of explaining exactly why their proffered interpretation was inappropriate, would I?  If you were put off my apparently xenophobic comment, I have now marked it as the humour it was always intended to be.  --   Jack of Oz   [your turn]  11:08, 8 August 2011 (UTC)
 * But what I haven't seen made clear is that the original phrase is not one idiom, but two: "well" = "very" (particularly associated with 'yoof' (youth) culture) and "up herself" = "full of herself". --ColinFine (talk) 20:35, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

meaning of a word
I would like the definition of the word melisma. Thank you Kimberly deOliveira — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kimberly85 (talk • contribs) 19:34, 4 August 2011 (UTC)


 * See Melisma. Bielle (talk) 19:47, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
 * You can find this in any online dictionary (e.g., http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/melisma), or by searching Wikipedia (as Bielle suggested), or on our sister project Wiktionary (see http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/melisma). r ʨ anaɢ (talk) 19:48, 4 August 2011 (UTC)