They were posted over 5 years ago, before yuku took over EZboard.  Shortly after that happened, the URLs for all the archived discussions changed, and the original URLs all give those infinite redirect error messages.

Man, I don’t miss wordgeek.

What an interesting, thought-provoking thread!  It never occurrred to me, until now, that many centuries ago, some bored clerk with a touch of whimsy might have sat in his scriptorium, whiling away a tedious hour or two thinking up witty, even frivolous terms for groups of animals and birds --- and then putting them into a glossary, for duller people like us to take seriously. A sort of mediaeval Monty Python........I love the idea, and it’s going to affect my entire approach to anything written in the distant past --- or at any time at all, for that matter. One tends, I think, automatically to suppose that something written very long ago, and studied today by scholars, ought be taken in dead earnest. An incautious supposition, indeed.

Thanks, all of you contributors to this thread—you made my day.

EDIT: And a warm welcome to sfelizabeth, who brought the subject up (and appears to have been around, mute, for quite a while).

Well, if by “quite a while” you mean fourteen minutes:

Last Visit March 03, 2007 09:41 PM
Join Date March 03, 2007 09:27 PM

Hahahahaha!

well, latent, anyway

;-)

Tangent Alert (regarding Sfelizabeth, the original poster)

In the, “boy did I miss the boat” department:

My first thought when I saw the name “Sfelizabeth” was that this was a new member who picked the name based on a play on words involving her name and sitzfleisch, the wonderful word mentioned in the very recent “potential lexicographers” thread. 

But a 2007 join date (and a 2007 last visit date, until the current post) certainly puts the kibosh on that theory.  And it was a rather absurd piece of speculation in any event, as the two words aren’t really similar at all - part of what lead me astray was that I misremembered the spelling of sitzfleisch as something like seitzenflesh, which made the theory seem slightly more plausible than it really was (namely, utterly implausible).  (Although, even if the misremembered spelling had been correct, it would still be a quite unreasonable leap in logic.)

And then I realized that the origin of the name is almost certainly “SF + Elizabeth”, as in, “Elizabeth is a fan of science fiction” (or she lives in San Francisco, or it is a reference to something else with the initials “SF").  A particularly silly example of folk etymology in action.

But a 2007 join date (and a 2007 last visit date, until the current post)

There is no “current” post by sfelizabeth.  She started this thread more than 5 years ago, and after a few responses (which I wonder if she ever read) it lay dormant until etym dub resurrected it with his “Tarnation of Varmints” post.

Wow.  I somehow managed to be even more off base in my musings than I thought I was (which I wouldn’t have thought was possible).

Ah, a zombie thread, as they’re styled on another board. I never even thought to check the date.

Kinda had a life of it’s own, there for awhile…

I never even thought to check the date.

Nor did I. --- I feel a bit of a simpleton (a not altogether unfamiliar feeling).

Never offered a zombie a warm welcome before. Brrrr-r-r-r-r.

She clearly didn’t read any of the responses, since the first one was posted after 9:41 PM (the last time she visited).  I have no idea why people post questions and then wander off never to return, although of course it’s possible she had a life crisis that evening and had to move to Inner Mongolia.

Maybe she read all of the responses but just didn’t bother to log back in. It’s just take take take with some people.

Ah, I guess that’s possible.

It’s not really fair to assume that sfelizabeth is a “she”. That username could mean “stand-in for Elizabeth”, “substitute for Elizabeth”, “send for Elizabeth”, “slowly forgetting Elizabeth”, “swine/scoundrel/sod forsaking Elizabeth”, “still fancying Elizabeth"- any number of masculine possibilities. In my experience, if it’s a case of irresponsibility, carelessness, shiftlessness, inconsistency, selfishness, or sheer all-round malignity, first of all --- cherchez l’homme. Look at 6000 years of history, look who’s running the world, and you’ll see what I mean. Oh, for a world governed by women! (I’ve got Robert Graves, John Wyndham, and Philip Wylie on my side, too).

;-)