Increase your word power

I really don't like the 'meme' trend, that started with bloggers. Love obfuscation - we have all been charged with it recently!

Thanks elegran, I wondered what Sillion was.

I seem to be suffering with self obfuscation of late.

To be honest, I feel obfuscated about the whole meme concept.

I do like some examples of memes. But I'm not convinced the whole concept isn't a made-up thing.

The meme was first described by Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene, "as a concept for discussion of evolutionary principles in explaining the spread of ideas and cultural phenomena".

Hmm...right.

I always puzzled over the words 'huckleberry friend' in the song 'Moon River'. I knew Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn, and I thought he had made up the name. Also I knew there was a 'huckleberry' which was a small berry found in America. I then found out that it meant a small or insignificant person like the berry. Recently though, I discovered the explanation that your huckleberry friends are people who've known you for years and have stuck by you and love you no matter what. Yes ... that makes sense to me. I have a few of those. Whatever anyone else says I will stick with that definition!!!

"Nesh is a good Yorkshire word. It means a bit wimpy"
Big girl's blouse was the phrase when I was a kid. Some other Yorkshire words that I remember from my childhood, but never hear elsewhere are:

Maither (pester)
Brey (hit)
Pump (fart)
Chin (hit/beat up)
Muscles like knots in cotton (self explanatory really)
Muscles like sparrows kneecaps (ditto)

"How did you reach this advanced age without coming across the word Lothario ?"

I was 29 before I discovered the word prophylactic. I discovered it when I was watching somebody in the lab playing a computer game called "Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards".

I still remember the morning when our English teacher walked into the class and wrote on the board:

___________________ continuous
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ continual

Now that's a great little trick your teacher used crun!

Mewling - seem to remember this from school, Shakespeare I think (mewling and puking!)

Mewling means feeble crying.