The Sword and Laser discussion

Took me a while to figure out what it meant!

Ahh... one of the wonders of starting out a new Neal Stephenson book! Figuring out what the frak all the words means.

I definitely read that as "both-avior" the first time over. After a couple of re-reads I finally pulled "bot-havior" out of it.

On another word can someone explain why creek is spelt crick. Thought it was a mistake until it kept repeating. Was bugging the heck out of me as were the hyphens everywhere.

Haha, I think crick is just a small creek or even just another word for creek. Its used more in the country. My wife spent a good amount of time on her grandparents farm growing up, and uses that word at times so I was familiar with it when it came up.

Matt's correct. My grandma had a crick out back, as it was too tiny to be a creek. It's just a colloquialism.

Ha, crick got me too.

I am reading it hardcover instead of kindle. I am missing my little inbuilt dictionary. "Amuse-bouches"?

I will say that I really want to work somewhere with a weird stuff department.

Well not the OED but the BeeDictionary echoed others;

http://www.beedictionary.com/common-e...

.. just the American’s botching the mother tongue ;)

Amuse bouches is french for "mouth amusers" and is a trendy way of saying hors d'ouvre. They are small dishes that are eaten in one bite.

Aeryn98 wrote: "Ha, crick got me too.

I am reading it hardcover instead of kindle. I am missing my little inbuilt dictionary. "Amuse-bouches"?

I will say that I really want to work somewhere with a weird stuff..."

An acquaintance of mine in secondary school used to sell whiskey he stole from work, at school. Another acquaintance ended up getting alcohol poisoning on school property, during school hours, had to be picked up by an ambulance and taken to the hospital. When the guy selling it finally got caught and his grandmother found out and she told him "You're up shit crick, boah!" We all found it terribly amusing and used to say it to him whenever he was around.

Anyway that was my experience with the word 'crick', until now. I have a good story about the word bothavior as well but I'll save that for another time.

Several years ago they changed the junior high I went to into a middle school. Apparently just changing "junior high" to "middle school" wouldn't work (Pecos Middle School has initials they wanted to avoid) so they called it Niver Creek Middle School. Even Niver Crick would have been too generous a name for the little trickle that runs past the school.

Remember that the main character grew up in backwoods Iowa (back.. Prairie? Back... Soybean field?) so to him it would be a crick!

Crick made me double-take a couple of times, too.

For some reason (unlike original words in other Stephenson books *stares at Anathem*), the meaning of bothavior clicked for me quickly. Maybe because I really liked the idea. It would be very cool to see actual MMORPGs implement official, automatic, low-level-but-still-productive behavior by your characters when you're offline (do any?).

Jlawrence wrote: "Maybe because I really liked the idea. It would be very cool to see actual MMORPGs implement official, automatic, low-level-but-still-productive behavior by your characters when you're offline (do any?).

Can't think of any off the top of my head, but it did put me in mind of those virtual pet style games where the pet continues to exist whilst your not there.

Funny, when I saw "bothavior" written, it took me awhile to figure it out. But hearing it read on the audiobook, it made perfect sense.

It's funny that I might have been a better WoW raider if I could have had a fishing bot-havior. It is expressly forbidden in the EULA for that game.

Crick is a Midwest term. My wife is from Pa and calls a basket a bushel, and us midwesterners know that a bushel is a unit of measure, not an object. There is a lot of these fun things in the first bit of the book.

Crick was something I knew from growing up in the midwest and living here all my life...wish he would have used "tump"....

Kris! Yes, "tump" would have been awesome - it's also a southern or at least Texan word. I'm from Texas, currently living in California, and don't have much of a southern accent, but one of the things that marks my origin is when I use the word "tump", get blank stares, and then have to explain it.

Jlawrence wrote: "Kris! Yes, "tump" would have been awesome - it's also a southern or at least Texan word. I'm from Texas, currently living in California, and don't have much of a southern accent, but one of the t..."

Well hello to a fellow Texan!...how about kitty corner?

Howdy! Yes, I use kitty corner too, but apparently I'm tumping things over more often. ;)

What about bbq vs. grill-out vs. ???

Pitch-in vs. covered dish vs. potluck?? (When I lived in the midwest it was a pitch-in)

I moved from NY to Texas and the one that always got me was ...
soda vs. pop

The first time someone asked me if I wanted a pop I didn't know if they meant my father, or if I wanted to be hit in the eye.

Still, I never heard tump before.

Jenny wrote: "What about bbq vs. grill-out vs. ???

Pitch-in vs. covered dish vs. potluck?? (When I lived in the midwest it was a pitch-in)"

I have always used grill...never heard anything but pot luck before which is interesting...

Aeryn98 wrote: "I moved from NY to Texas and the one that always got me was ...
soda vs. pop

The first time someone asked me if I wanted a pop I didn't know if they meant my father, or if I wanted to be hit in th..."

Or just asking for a coke which was a genric term for soda or pop...

It was always Coke, no matter what type of soda, here in Northern California. Also there is a difference between grilling and BBQ.