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Boots…

Don’t worry; I’m not going to read your mind. I’ll wait until they make it into a film!

Many moons ago, when I was footloose and fiancée free, I very nearly had a telepathic girlfriend… but she left me before we even met!

I was in Whitby stood outside Gypsy Rose Lee's Fortune Telling Booth...She said "Are you coming in love ", to which i replied, well if you don't know, then no I'm not...

Capitan .. The word 'grammarise' is growing on me and does rather nicely encapsulate the question I was asking of you .. ..

I like to lead occasionally and wonder (as a man of letters) where one starts to propose a new word be introduced into our language .. ?

Surely you'd agree with me its as meaningful as 'Hotcah' .. ? .. ..

Boots...

You can propose until you’re mauve in the mush, but that won’t do any good. The answer is usage.

Words that are widely used get into dictionaries. They can be regarded as ungrammatical, vulgar, unnecessary, racist, nonsensical, or ugly. Dictionaries aren't there to tell us how we should use words; they are there to show us how words are used, and if a word is used, it's likely to go in. But the question of frequency is not a simple one, and dictionaries have different standards.

“Hotcha”, does actually appear in some dictionaries, as a slang expression, dating from the early 1930s. It is an interjection, as are Zowie! Strewth!, and Caramba! The latter was used by Mexican bandits in popular comics of my childhood.

If you search your 606 archives, you will find I have already explained that it was a regular expression of one of my favourite comedians, the great Arthur Lucan, alias Old Mother Riley. It is similar to “Wocka! Wocka! Wocka!” used by Fozzie Bear... another of my heroes!

Some summers past, when I was a paid educator, the going rate was around £18.00 per hour. Allowing for inflation, you are running up quite a bill! To what address do I send my statement of indebtedness?

Anybody who has Fozzie bear as a hero is sound. I drink out of a mug with his (very faded) fizzog staring at me with his thumbs up!

FUNNEEE!

Many thanks Captain D for extending such valued thoughts on how "words get into dictionaries" .. fascinating .. ..

Your explanation of the expression "Hotcha" was however quite unnecessary as it was your use of the word "Hotcah" I drew the parallel on .. and your attention to .. ?

As Our Skipper of grammarisation by proxy we don't want to see you relaxing your site posting standards by slipping in spelling erratum
We rightfully look to you as a leader in the field to get those basics right .. ..

Boots...

You are to lexicography what Madonna is to theology!

When I was a member of the train spotting fraternity, we would sit in the fresh air by the railway lines, with a satchel-full of sandwiches, eagerly waiting for the next ‘namer’. My stamp album included pages headed ‘Bechuanaland’, ‘Ceylon’, ‘Persia’, and the like, so I learnt geography, as it was then. I have taken pleasant walks on the Great Orme, and other picturesque places, observing our feathered friends, but the attraction of collecting words that don’t exist has me baffled.

The number of combinations from a 26 letter alphabet (not forgetting that letters can be used more than once) must be verging on the infinite, and the only advantage I have been able to come up with is that whilst a person might run out of milk, petrol, or whacker wrappers at an inopportune moment, they would never be short of an unword, day or night!

You’d be better off starting Finnish... then at least, you could talk to fish!

"Talk to fish" .. I do it every morning Cpn to a selection of JapKnees Koi Konkers never short on Colorful bursts of Carping back at me ..

There are days when I swear they sing I'm forever blowing bubbles ..
You should see my Two Guppys~ Never fail to make my mind boggle

Minds't you Once fed they're fine .. ..

I used to wax lyrical (not the dubbin kind) with an indoor Goldfish I'd won at Yetton fair called Dystrophy .. Such atrophy is wasted on ere tho .. what .. ? .. ..

*%$!`¬@#~?/ !!

Yes.. I do believe thats the way fishes in little dishes chatter Jax Do you know their full Alpha .. Bet you do .. ..