Do you have 'moors' in the USA and Canada?
Ian Jackson
of course, in Scotland (many spelt "muir", of course). [I'm not too sure
about Wales and Ireland.]
But what about the USA and also Canada? Are there any? If there ARE what
the British would call moors, which word is used instead? Is there any
reason why such a common word as "moor" has disappeared from AmE?
--
Ian
tony cooper
According to the dictionary, a "moor" is (chiefly British) an expanse
of open rolling infertile land. Certainly, there are parts of the US
that meet this definition, but we don't use the word "moor" to
describe them. I don't know that "moor" was ever used in AmE to
describe land, so I wouldn't say that the word has disappeared. It
hasn't appeared yet.
A Yorkshireman visiting the American plains may see similarities to
the moors...open, rolling, and infertile (if "infertile" is used to
mean non-productive plant growth).
--
Tony Cooper - Orlando, Florida
Peter Duncanson (BrE)
<ianREMOVET...@g3ohx.demon.co.uk> wrote:
There may be a few clues in the following:
The Moorland Association
http://www.moorlandassociation.org/
75% of of the world's remaining heather moorland is found in Britain
- but this area declined alarmingly over the latter part of the last
century.
The (government) Department of Agriculure and Rural Development,
Northern Ireland
http://www.ruralni.gov.uk/heather_moorland_cmb.pdf
~ Unfenced upland areas, characterised by peat soil and plants such
as heather, bell heather and cross-leaved heath, are known as
heather moorland.
~ Moorland is an internationally important habitat under
considerable threat.
~ A large proportion of the remaining moorland in Europe is found in
the British Isles.
--
Peter Duncanson, UK
(in alt.usage.english)
Prai Jei
continuum:
"Moor" in Wales, which can also be a coastal marsh. (Didn't we have a
discussion about this here recently, cent(e)ring about what constitutes
a "marsh" or a "moor"?)
--
ξ:) Proud to be curly
Interchange the alphabetic letter groups to reply
Peter Duncanson (BrE)
<pvstownse...@ntlworld.com> wrote:
>Ian Jackson set the following eddies spiralling through the space-time
>continuum:
>
>> I don't know of any 'moors' in the USA. There are lots in England, and
>> of course, in Scotland (many spelt "muir", of course). [I'm not too sure
>> about Wales and Ireland.]
>>
>> But what about the USA and also Canada? Are there any? If there ARE what
>> the British would call moors, which word is used instead? Is there any
>> reason why such a common word as "moor" has disappeared from AmE?
>
>"Moor" in Wales, which can also be a coastal marsh. (Didn't we have a
>discussion about this here recently, cent(e)ring about what constitutes
>a "marsh" or a "moor"?)
We did. They may have been a few grouses included.
Paul Wolff
>Ian Jackson set the following eddies spiralling through the space-time
>continuum:
>
>> I don't know of any 'moors' in the USA. There are lots in England, and
>> of course, in Scotland (many spelt "muir", of course). [I'm not too sure
>> about Wales and Ireland.]
>>
>> But what about the USA and also Canada? Are there any? If there ARE what
>> the British would call moors, which word is used instead? Is there any
>> reason why such a common word as "moor" has disappeared from AmE?
>
>"Moor" in Wales, which can also be a coastal marsh. (Didn't we have a
>discussion about this here recently, cent(e)ring about what constitutes
>a "marsh" or a "moor"?)
I remember conjuring up a distinction between marsh and bog. I think I
was in the bog when nature called.
--
Paul
Robert Bannister
I seem to remember reading that the original meaning of "moor"
(swampland) is used, at least in place names, in parts of Somerset.
--
Rob Bannister
Steve Hayes
<ianREMOVET...@g3ohx.demon.co.uk> wrote:
I think in the USA they are called African-Americans.
--
Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa
Web: http://hayesfam.bravehost.com/stevesig.htm
Blog: http://methodius.blogspot.com
E-mail - see web page, or parse: shayes at dunelm full stop org full stop uk
Richard Bollard
<ma...@peterduncanson.net> wrote:
>On Wed, 24 Jun 2009 19:30:46 +0100, Ian Jackson
><ianREMOVET...@g3ohx.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>>I don't know of any 'moors' in the USA. There are lots in England, and
>>of course, in Scotland (many spelt "muir", of course). [I'm not too sure
>>about Wales and Ireland.]
>>
>>But what about the USA and also Canada? Are there any? If there ARE what
>>the British would call moors, which word is used instead? Is there any
>>reason why such a common word as "moor" has disappeared from AmE?
>
>There may be a few clues in the following:
>
>The Moorland Association
>http://www.moorlandassociation.org/
>
> 75% of of the world's remaining heather moorland is found in Britain
> - but this area declined alarmingly over the latter part of the last
> century.
...
So moor is less.
--
Richard Bollard
Canberra Australia
To email, I'm at AMT not spAMT.
Garrett Wollman
Ian Jackson <ianREMOVET...@g3ohx.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>But what about the USA and also Canada? Are there any [moors]?
Not that I know of. The term seems to me almost definitionally
British.
There is, however, a town and a CDP[1] of Mooers, New York, named
after Gen. Benjamin Mooers, who fought in the Revolutionary War, and
commanded the New York militia in the Battle of Plattsburgh in the War
of 1812.[2]
-GAWollman
[1] Census-Defined Place, which is the U.S. Census Bureau's way of
defining a community (a "geography" in their terminology) where either
no legal boundaries exist, or the Census refuses to recognize them.
[2] Or so says Wikipedia, and in this case I see no reason to doubt
it.
--
Garrett A. Wollman | The real tragedy of human existence is not that we are
wol...@csail.mit.edu| nasty by nature, but that a cruel structural asymmetry
Opinions not those | grants to rare events of meanness such power to shape
of MIT or CSAIL. | our history. - S.J. Gould, Ten Thousand Acts of Kindness
James Hogg
How pre-emptive of you to get to the bog before nature called.
--
James
Adam Funk
This doesn't answer your question, but that have "landes" in Brittany
(and perhaps other parts of France), which look just like moors to me.
I discovered the word a few years ago and noticed it because I had to
look it up; it had never come up in French classes (in the USA) or in
conversation in Picardy (where I lived for a year).
--
A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Maybe because some people are too annoyed by top-posting.
Q: Why do I not get an answer to my question(s)?
Robin Bignall
wrote:
There was probably much binding in the marsh. No wonder they called
Richard Murdoch "Stinker".
--
Robin
(BrE)
Herts, England
Prai Jei
continuum:
> I don't know of any 'moors' in the USA. There are lots in England, and
Didn't Shakespeare (or somebody else of the same name) write a play about
the Moor of Venice?
Peter Duncanson (BrE)
<ianREMOVET...@g3ohx.demon.co.uk> wrote:
Are/were there moors in North America?
If the word was not needed, it would not be used.
Pat Durkin
news:fqv745htk5160m4vl...@4ax.com
If and when it has been used, I am under the impression that the term
"moors" has referred to marshes and swamps. I can't think of places in
Wisconsin (which has considerable wetlands) in which the term "moor" has
been used or retained by any early settlers from the UK. Peat bogs
exist and in some areas are referred to as "peat bogs", but much of
their extent has been drained. In and around Madison, the margins of
rivers and lakes are "marshes", but when their growths of water plants
and reeds are raised by seasonal high waters, the "rafts" of such
growths break off and float down into the lakes here. Those reed rafts
are called "bogs" and are navigation hazards. (Not that Madison lakes
have heavy commercial traffic...but the parks departments issue warnings
for recreational boaters to be aware of the "bogs".)
Now the descriptions of the moors in England, and some of the "downs",
as well, bring to mind the steppes of Russia, and the Central Plains and
Great Plains of the central and west central parts of the US. But I
think we just call them the "plains", or "high plains".
tony cooper
wrote:
I drove through part of the moors in Yorkshire. Not boggy and wet at
all. Just kind of rolling terrain with low vegetation. The first
half-hour was interesting, and the rest of the drive was more, and
more, and more of the same.
They must shoot something out there. I stopped once to take a picture
and there were some shotgun shells on the ground. I still have one.
It's marked Oakleaf - Precision loaded by A. Ward Thompson, Stockton
On Tees - Tel 60 7060. Made in Great Britain.
The other marks are confusing. 67,5 mm in one place, 6 in another
place, and Eley 12 on the base.
John Varela
<ma...@peterduncanson.net> wrote:
> Are/were there moors in North America?
I've never seen a British moor, so if I saw one in the USA I
wouldn't recognize it, but reading the descriptions in this thread
I'm wondering how closely a North American "prairie" corresponds to
a British "moor". Before it was put under the plow Iowa would have
looked a lot like these descriptions of moors.
In Louisiana the word "prairie" is applied to grassy marshes, as
apparently is "moor" in some parts of Britain.
--
John Varela
Trade NEWlamps for OLDlamps for email
R H Draney
I found the following "populated places" at the US Geographic Survey's database:
The Moors, Kentucky (36 55'34"N, 88 13'04"W)
Moors, Missouri (39 43'10"N, 94 23'32"W)
Moor, Nevada (41 07'02"N, 114 48'54"W)
As well as an assortment of features with the following names:
Moors Creek, Alabama
Moors Cemetery, Delaware
Saint Benedict of the Moors Industrial School, Georgia
Moors Neighborhood, Kentucky
Moors Brook, Maine
Moors Island, Missouri
Moors Creek and Moors Mountain, Montana
Moors Gap, North Carolina
Moors Memorial Chapel and Moors Run, Ohio
Moors Mill, Pennsylvania
Van Moors Mill, Tennessee
most of which might well represent de-apostrophized possessives....
(Moors Run Ohio?...I guess that's where they went when they were kicked out of
the Alhambra)....r
--
A pessimist sees the glass as half empty.
An optometrist asks whether you see the glass
more full like this?...or like this?
the Omrud
> I drove through part of the moors in Yorkshire. Not boggy and wet at
> all. Just kind of rolling terrain with low vegetation. The first
> half-hour was interesting, and the rest of the drive was more, and
> more, and more of the same.
>
> They must shoot something out there. I stopped once to take a picture
> and there were some shotgun shells on the ground. I still have one.
> It's marked Oakleaf - Precision loaded by A. Ward Thompson, Stockton
> On Tees - Tel 60 7060. Made in Great Britain.
Grouse, on moors, mostly. Many a rich landowner owns a "grouse moor".
--
David
James Hogg
>On Thu, 25 Jun 2009 22:52:45 UTC, "Peter Duncanson (BrE)"
><ma...@peterduncanson.net> wrote:
>
>> Are/were there moors in North America?
>
>I've never seen a British moor, so if I saw one in the USA I
>wouldn't recognize it, but reading the descriptions in this thread
>I'm wondering how closely a North American "prairie" corresponds to
>a British "moor". Before it was put under the plow Iowa would have
>looked a lot like these descriptions of moors.
As I understand it, the prairies are treeless grassland. Moorland
in Britain consists of upland areas covered with heather and
other shrubs like bilberry (blueberry).
>In Louisiana the word "prairie" is applied to grassy marshes, as
>apparently is "moor" in some parts of Britain.
--
James
Steve Hayes
wrote:
>I drove through part of the moors in Yorkshire. Not boggy and wet at
>all. Just kind of rolling terrain with low vegetation. The first
>half-hour was interesting, and the rest of the drive was more, and
>more, and more of the same.
I drove across Dartmoor once, on my way to Bodmin Moor.
It looked exactly like what I would call "veld".
Mark Brader
> Moors Memorial Chapel and Moors Run, Ohio
> the Alhambra)
For those who may not know, "Run" is a word used in that area for a creek.
I'm not sure how *large* an area I'm talking about; the only specific
place I remember encountering it was near Pittsburgh.
--
Mark Brader | In the face of such devastating logic as "despite
Toronto | what you say you mean, you must mean this and you
m...@vex.net | are wrong", I cede the territory. --Truly Donovan
HVS
> I don't know of any 'moors' in the USA. There are lots in
> England, and of course, in Scotland (many spelt "muir", of
> course). [I'm not too sure about Wales and Ireland.]
>
> But what about the USA and also Canada? Are there any? If there
> ARE what the British would call moors, which word is used
> instead?
Many of the English moors I've seen have reminded me of what I'd call
"scrub" or "scrubland" -- agriculturally low- or non-productive
areas, with fairly scattered, low vegetation.
--
Cheers, Harvey
CanEng and BrEng, indiscriminately mixed
William
> Moorland
> in Britain consists of upland areas covered with heather and
> other shrubs like bilberry (blueberry).
Unless they are on the Somerset Levels (Stathe Moor, Curry Moor,
Sedgemoor, etc.).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somerset_Levels
--
WH
pdpi
There are moors in the US. They just call them "terrorists" there,
though.
(tongue placed firmly against cheek there)
Adam Funk
> I drove across Dartmoor once, on my way to Bodmin Moor.
>
> It looked exactly like what I would call "veld".
I assume you mean the Afrikaans word "veld", which I understand is
cognate with English "field" and German "Feld" ... so I'm curious,
what is the Afrikaans word for "(enclosed/cultivated) field"?
--
No right of private conversation was enumerated in the Constitution.
I don't suppose it occurred to anyone at the time that it could be
prevented. [Whitfield Diffie]
Mike Lyle
As in the famous Sedgemoor. An awful lot of Exmoor, and Dartmoor, is
notoriously boggy.
"Wir sind die Moor-soldaten..."
--
Mike.
Jens Brix Christiansen
> I assume you mean the Afrikaans word "veld", which I understand is
> cognate with English "field" and German "Feld" ... so I'm curious,
> what is the Afrikaans word for "(enclosed/cultivated) field"?
That would be "akker", cognate with English "acre".
--
Jens Brix Christiansen
Mike Lyle
[...]
>
> I drove through part of the moors in Yorkshire. Not boggy and wet at
> all. Just kind of rolling terrain with low vegetation. The first
> half-hour was interesting, and the rest of the drive was more, and
> more, and more of the same.
>
> They must shoot something out there. I stopped once to take a picture
> and there were some shotgun shells on the ground. I still have one.
> It's marked Oakleaf - Precision loaded by A. Ward Thompson, Stockton
> On Tees - Tel 60 7060. Made in Great Britain.
>
> The other marks are confusing. 67,5 mm in one place, 6 in another
> place, and Eley 12 on the base.
Length (shotgun chambers vary), size of shot, and calibre, respectively.
Mr Ward Thompson's primed cases were presumably made for him with bases
produced by Messrs Eley Kynoch, but he would have loaded them. They
would have made their no doubt wealthy purchaser feel good, but wouldn't
have made him a better shot than the ones from the local ironmonger.
--
Mike.
Mike Lyle
In N America, there are "cranberry barrens". These are damp and acid,
and in parts of the British Isles I think they might have been called
"moors" before coming under cultivation. Over there, mechanical
harvesting is done by flooding the field, hassling the little plants to
knock the fruit off, and scooping up the floating berries: this flooding
strongly suggests the fields are level, so I assume they aren't in the
uplands, and might not everywhere have qualified as "moors".
--
Mike.
Ian Jackson
<mike_l...@REMOVETHISyahoo.co.uk> writes
'marshes'.
In Britain, parts of a moor could well be a marsh or other area of boggy
ground. Indeed, some are very dangerous. Didn't the villain in "The
Hound of the Baskervilles" get his just deserts by being swallowed up in
"Grippen Mire"? However, I'm not familiar with the idea that a marsh or
bog would, in itself, be called a moor, although the word "Moss" does
sometimes feature in the actual name of a moor, presumably because some
of it is distinctly mossy and boggy.
While most British moors are high ground, wild, often rocky, unable to
be cultivated, and where only heather and other scrub can grow, there
are a few moors which are simply large open areas. In NE England, in the
city of Newcastle upon Tyne, 'The Town Moor' is a large, flat, open
area, not far from the city centre itself. It is now used for
recreational purposes, but presumably, at one time, may have been
out-of-town heathland
<http://www.countrysideinfo.co.uk/whatis.htm>
which, I suppose, is just a moor, but less rugged and remote.
Which begs my next question, given that the USA doesn't seem to have any
'British style' moors, or even anything called a moor, does it have any
"heaths"?
--
Ian
Steve Hayes
>On 2009-06-26, Steve Hayes wrote:
>
>> I drove across Dartmoor once, on my way to Bodmin Moor.
>>
>> It looked exactly like what I would call "veld".
>
>I assume you mean the Afrikaans word "veld", which I understand is
>cognate with English "field" and German "Feld" ... so I'm curious,
>what is the Afrikaans word for "(enclosed/cultivated) field"?
It's been fully naturalised into English, like trek. It's in my English
dictionary as "elevated open grassland", though it can sometimes have heather
in it.
In Afrikaans an enclosed field is a "kamp", especially when used as pasture,
and "land" if used for crops.
Jerry Friedman
wrote:
> James Hogg wrote:
> > Quoth "John Varela" <OLDla...@verizon.net>, and I quote:
>
> >> On Thu, 25 Jun 2009 22:52:45 UTC, "Peter Duncanson (BrE)"
> >> <m...@peterduncanson.net> wrote:
>
> >>> Are/were there moors in North America?
>
> >> I've never seen a British moor,
"I never saw a moor" --Emily Dickinson. Obaue: Early American use of
past tense where perfect might be expected.
> >> so if I saw one in the USA I
> >> wouldn't recognize it, but reading the descriptions in this thread
> >> I'm wondering how closely a North American "prairie" corresponds to
> >> a British "moor". Before it was put under the plow Iowa would have
> >> looked a lot like these descriptions of moors.
>
> > As I understand it, the prairies are treeless grassland. Moorland
> > in Britain consists of upland areas covered with heather and
> > other shrubs like bilberry (blueberry).
We have bilberries (which we indeed call blueberries or
whortleberries, or at least that's what Ivey's /Flowering Plants of
New Mexico/ calls them) here too. They cover the ground in this
picture:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Vaccinium_myrtillus_Populus_tremuloides.jpg
That's upland (10,000 feet or 3,000 m), but I'm pretty sure it's not a
moor.
I can't resist linking to another picture I took that day:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Calypso_bulbosa_clump1.jpg
First (so far only) time I've seen that species. We've had a rainy
spring, by New Mexico standards.
> >> In Louisiana the word "prairie" is applied to grassy marshes, as
> >> apparently is "moor" in some parts of Britain.
>
> In N America, there are "cranberry barrens".
Yes, but
"cranberry barrens": 113
"cranberry bogs": 94,000
with similar results for the singular.
> These are damp and acid,
> and in parts of the British Isles I think they might have been called
> "moors" before coming under cultivation.
I'd occasionally wondered about that.
> Over there, mechanical
> harvesting is done by flooding the field, hassling the little plants to
> knock the fruit off, and scooping up the floating berries: this flooding
> strongly suggests the fields are level, so I assume they aren't in the
> uplands, and might not everywhere have qualified as "moors".
They do have peaty soil, though. Some details at
http://www.umass.edu/cranberry/cranberry/seasons.shtml
--
Jerry Friedman has never seen a cranberry bog, or a moor.
Irwell
> On 2009-06-26, Steve Hayes wrote:
>
>> I drove across Dartmoor once, on my way to Bodmin Moor.
>>
>> It looked exactly like what I would call "veld".
>
> I assume you mean the Afrikaans word "veld",
Used to be veldt in the olden days, wonder why the extra 't',
like in Humboldt Cointy.
James Hogg
It must have felt like a good way to show that the ending which
is pronounced like a "t" is historically "d" and remains "d" in
inflected forms, e.g. "te velde".
--
James
Mike Barnes
>On Fri, 26 Jun 2009 13:12:55 +0100, Adam Funk <a24...@ducksburg.com> wrote:
>
>>On 2009-06-26, Steve Hayes wrote:
>>
>>> I drove across Dartmoor once, on my way to Bodmin Moor.
>>>
>>> It looked exactly like what I would call "veld".
>>
>>I assume you mean the Afrikaans word "veld", which I understand is
>>cognate with English "field" and German "Feld" ... so I'm curious,
>>what is the Afrikaans word for "(enclosed/cultivated) field"?
>
>It's been fully naturalised into English, like trek. It's in my English
>dictionary as "elevated open grassland", though it can sometimes have heather
>in it.
British moors are not usually grassy. Think of something more like the
top of Table Mountain.
--
Mike Barnes
Cheshire, England
John Varela
wrote:
> Quoth "John Varela" <OLDl...@verizon.net>, and I quote:
>
> >On Thu, 25 Jun 2009 22:52:45 UTC, "Peter Duncanson (BrE)"
> ><ma...@peterduncanson.net> wrote:
> >
> >> Are/were there moors in North America?
> >
> >I've never seen a British moor, so if I saw one in the USA I
> >wouldn't recognize it, but reading the descriptions in this thread
> >I'm wondering how closely a North American "prairie" corresponds to
> >a British "moor". Before it was put under the plow Iowa would have
> >looked a lot like these descriptions of moors.
>
> As I understand it, the prairies are treeless grassland. Moorland
> in Britain consists of upland areas covered with heather and
> other shrubs like bilberry (blueberry).
Of course the British and North American (if such there be) moors
wouldn't have the same vegetation. Here are a couple of photos of
American prairie, two with antelope, one without:
http://web.me.com/john.varela/temp/prairie.html
John Varela
> R.H. Draney found:
> > Moors Memorial Chapel and Moors Run, Ohio
> ...
> > (Moors Run Ohio?...I guess that's where they went when they were kicked out of
> > the Alhambra)
>
> For those who may not know, "Run" is a word used in that area for a creek.
> I'm not sure how *large* an area I'm talking about; the only specific
> place I remember encountering it was near Pittsburgh.
Bull Run in Virginia is pretty well known. Right here inside the
Beltway we have Turkey Run, Dead Run, and Windy Run (is that a place
where the wind blows or is it that the run winds about?).
Hatunen
wrote:
>Of course the British and North American (if such there be) moors
>wouldn't have the same vegetation. Here are a couple of photos of
>American prairie, two with antelope, one without:
>http://web.me.com/john.varela/temp/prairie.html
Those appear to be pronghorns, which are not antelopes.
--
************* DAVE HATUNEN (hat...@cox.net) *************
* Tucson Arizona, out where the cacti grow *
* My typos & mispellings are intentional copyright traps *
Athel Cornish-Bowden
<mike_l...@REMOVETHISyahoo.co.uk> said:
> [ ... ]
> As in the famous Sedgemoor. An awful lot of Exmoor, and Dartmoor, is
> notoriously boggy.
When I were a lad we were fiercely warned of the dangers of straying
off the recognized paths on Dartmoor. I never came across anyone who
had got stuck in a bog, but everyone knew of someone who had a cousin
who had met someone on a bus who had heard of someone. I suspect a lot
of the bogs have been drained today, at least in the parts of the moor
frequented by tourists.
Incidentally, as a usage note, it is always singular on Dartmoor (and
probably Exmoor as well). Only visitors talk about "the moors".
However, my impression is that in Yorkshire they are plural.
This thread had cleared up something that puzzled me when I see The
Hound of the Baskervilles in French, as I have done at least twice, as
they always talk of "les landes", as the D�partement des Landes has
nothing that would remind me of Dartmoor. On the other hand it does
have things that might remind me of Sedgemoor.
--
athel
Adam Funk
> When I were a lad we were fiercely warned of the dangers of straying
> off the recognized paths on Dartmoor. I never came across anyone who
> had got stuck in a bog, but everyone knew of someone who had a cousin
> who had met someone on a bus who had heard of someone. I suspect a lot
> of the bogs have been drained today, at least in the parts of the moor
> frequented by tourists.
The same bus?
> Incidentally, as a usage note, it is always singular on Dartmoor (and
> probably Exmoor as well). Only visitors talk about "the moors".
> However, my impression is that in Yorkshire they are plural.
I think so too.
> This thread had cleared up something that puzzled me when I see The
> Hound of the Baskervilles in French, as I have done at least twice, as
> they always talk of "les landes", as the Département des Landes has
> nothing that would remind me of Dartmoor. On the other hand it does
> have things that might remind me of Sedgemoor.
I don't know why that département is so named, but "les landes" that I
saw in Brittany a few years ago looked like moors to me.
--
I don't know what they have to say
It makes no difference anyway;
Whatever it is, I'm against it! [Prof. Wagstaff]
Adam Funk
Or German "Acker". Thanks.
--
Steve: Now, okay. I did say that monkeys could program Visual Basic.
Leo: But not that all Visual Basic programmers are monkeys.
Steve: Exactly. [Security Now 194]
Adam Funk
> On Fri, 26 Jun 2009 13:12:55 +0100, Adam Funk <a24...@ducksburg.com> wrote:
>>I assume you mean the Afrikaans word "veld", which I understand is
>>cognate with English "field" and German "Feld" ... so I'm curious,
>>what is the Afrikaans word for "(enclosed/cultivated) field"?
>
> It's been fully naturalised into English, like trek. It's in my English
> dictionary as "elevated open grassland", though it can sometimes have heather
> in it.
Do you mean "veld" is naturalised into South African English? In the
American and English dialects I'm more familiar with, "veld" is
unknown or exotic or has an African flavour (Ray Bradbury's story "The
Veldt") --- but "trek" certainly is naturalised.
> In Afrikaans an enclosed field is a "kamp", especially when used as pasture,
> and "land" if used for crops.
Interesting, thanks. I guess "kamp" comes ultimately from Latin
"campus" (field).
--
When Elaine turned 11, her mother sent her to train under
Donald Knuth in his mountain hideaway. [XKCD 342]
Mike Lyle
[...]
> We have bilberries (which we indeed call blueberries or
> whortleberries, or at least that's what Ivey's /Flowering Plants of
> New Mexico/ calls them) here too. They cover the ground in this
> picture:
>
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Vaccinium_myrtillus_Populus_tremuloides.jpg
Good thing you weren't trembling like an aspen when you took the photo.
>
> That's upland (10,000 feet or 3,000 m), but I'm pretty sure it's not a
> moor.
>
> I can't resist linking to another picture I took that day:
>
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Calypso_bulbosa_clump1.jpg
>
> First (so far only) time I've seen that species. We've had a rainy
> spring, by New Mexico standards.
Wow! And I mean that most sincerely. Very similar, of course, to the
European Lady's Slipper, which I feel as though I've seen once, but it's
so agonisingly rare that I'm almost certainly imagining it.
[...]>
--
Mike.
Lars Enderin
> On 2009-06-26, Jens Brix Christiansen wrote:
>
>> Adam Funk skrev:
>>
>>> I assume you mean the Afrikaans word "veld", which I understand is
>>> cognate with English "field" and German "Feld" ... so I'm curious,
>>> what is the Afrikaans word for "(enclosed/cultivated) field"?
>> That would be "akker", cognate with English "acre".
>
> Or German "Acker". Thanks.
>
>
Ildhund
And whilst we're at it, Danish "ager" and Icelandic "akur".
--
Noel
R H Draney
>
>On 26 Jun 2009 17:54:11 GMT, "John Varela" <OLDl...@verizon.net>
>wrote:
>
>>Of course the British and North American (if such there be) moors
>>wouldn't have the same vegetation. Here are a couple of photos of
>>American prairie, two with antelope, one without:
>>http://web.me.com/john.varela/temp/prairie.html
>
>Those appear to be pronghorns, which are not antelopes.
Did I just hear a discouraging word?...r
--
A pessimist sees the glass as half empty.
An optometrist asks whether you see the glass
more full like this?...or like this?
Hatunen
wrote:
>Hatunen filted:
>>
>>On 26 Jun 2009 17:54:11 GMT, "John Varela" <OLDl...@verizon.net>
>>wrote:
>>
>>>Of course the British and North American (if such there be) moors
>>>wouldn't have the same vegetation. Here are a couple of photos of
>>>American prairie, two with antelope, one without:
>>>http://web.me.com/john.varela/temp/prairie.html
>>
>>Those appear to be pronghorns, which are not antelopes.
>
>Did I just hear a discouraging word?...r
Only if you are in Kansas where that's the state song...
rwalker
>R.H. Draney found:
>> Moors Memorial Chapel and Moors Run, Ohio
> ...
>> (Moors Run Ohio?...I guess that's where they went when they were kicked out of
>> the Alhambra)
>
>For those who may not know, "Run" is a word used in that area for a creek.
>I'm not sure how *large* an area I'm talking about; the only specific
>place I remember encountering it was near Pittsburgh.
Run is a very common term for a small creek in the mountains of
eastern West Virginia.
rwalker
wrote:
>On Fri, 26 Jun 2009 09:39:36 UTC, m...@vex.net (Mark Brader) wrote:
It's also a commonly used word in adjacent parts of West Virginia
(unsurprisingly).
Mark Brader
> Those appear to be pronghorns, which are not antelopes.
Google:
"pronghorn antelope" 290,000
pronghorn -antelope 410,000
Of course, not only are these counts rather unreliable, but they
prove nothing about proper zoological usage. They do, however,
suggest that "pronghorn antelope" is a widely used phrase. I can
say that it's familiar to me, anyway. And see how these similar
zoologically erroneous uses produce much higher ratios:
"koala bear" 353,000
koala -bear 9,490,000
"panda bear" 1,560,000
panda -bear 57,900,000
And I can't resist doing one more:
"pickup truck" 5,350,000
pickup -truck 52,300,000
although it's even more misleading, because "pickup", of course, has
meanings unrelated to the vehicle.
--
Mark Brader | "Grammar am for people who can't think for *myself*.
Toronto | Understanded me?"
m...@vex.net | -- Buck (Get Fuzzy: Darby Conley)
My text in this article is in the public domain.
Steve Hayes
>On 2009-06-26, Steve Hayes wrote:
>
>> On Fri, 26 Jun 2009 13:12:55 +0100, Adam Funk <a24...@ducksburg.com> wrote:
>
>>>I assume you mean the Afrikaans word "veld", which I understand is
>>>cognate with English "field" and German "Feld" ... so I'm curious,
>>>what is the Afrikaans word for "(enclosed/cultivated) field"?
>>
>> It's been fully naturalised into English, like trek. It's in my English
>> dictionary as "elevated open grassland", though it can sometimes have heather
>> in it.
>
>Do you mean "veld" is naturalised into South African English? In the
>American and English dialects I'm more familiar with, "veld" is
>unknown or exotic or has an African flavour (Ray Bradbury's story "The
>Veldt") --- but "trek" certainly is naturalised.
My dictionary (Collins) usually has something like "S.Afr" or "chiefly US" for
local and regional usages, but it doesn't say that for veld, though it does
say the terrain is in South Africa, just as prairies are in the US and steppes
are in Russia and Ukraine.
>
>
>> In Afrikaans an enclosed field is a "kamp", especially when used as pasture,
>> and "land" if used for crops.
>
>Interesting, thanks. I guess "kamp" comes ultimately from Latin
>"campus" (field).
--
Default User
> On Fri, 26 Jun 2009 09:39:36 UTC, m...@vex.net (Mark Brader) wrote:
>
> > R.H. Draney found:
> > > Moors Memorial Chapel and Moors Run, Ohio
> > ...
> > > (Moors Run Ohio?...I guess that's where they went when they were
> > > kicked out of the Alhambra)
> >
> > For those who may not know, "Run" is a word used in that area for a
> > creek. I'm not sure how large an area I'm talking about; the only
> > specific place I remember encountering it was near Pittsburgh.
>
> Bull Run in Virginia is pretty well known. Right here inside the
> Beltway we have Turkey Run, Dead Run, and Windy Run (is that a place
> where the wind blows or is it that the run winds about?).
I suspect that a fairly high percentage of people familiar with "The
[First/Second] Battle of Bull Run" might not know that "run" refers to
a stream.
Brian
--
Day 145 of the "no grouchy usenet posts" project
Hatunen
wrote:
>Dave Hatunen:
>> Those appear to be pronghorns, which are not antelopes.
>
>Google:
> "pronghorn antelope" 290,000
> pronghorn -antelope 410,000
>
>Of course, not only are these counts rather unreliable, but they
>prove nothing about proper zoological usage. They do, however,
>suggest that "pronghorn antelope" is a widely used phrase.
It certainly is a well-used phrase, one I use myself. But the
poster referred to them in the photos as simply "antelopes".
>I can
>say that it's familiar to me, anyway. And see how these similar
>zoologically erroneous uses produce much higher ratios:
>
> "koala bear" 353,000
> koala -bear 9,490,000
> "panda bear" 1,560,000
> panda -bear 57,900,000
What would you think if a poster had a photo of Ling-Ling and
referred to her as simply "a bear"?
Jerry Friedman
wrote:
> Jerry Friedman wrote:
>
> [...]
>
> > We have bilberries (which we indeed call blueberries or
> > whortleberries, or at least that's what Ivey's /Flowering Plants of
> > New Mexico/ calls them) here too. They cover the ground in this
> > picture:
>
>
> Good thing you weren't trembling like an aspen when you took the photo.
I probably was. That's why the camera has anti-tremble (anti-quake?).
> > I can't resist linking to another picture I took that day:
>
> >http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Calypso_bulbosa_clump1.jpg
>
> > First (so far only) time I've seen that species. We've had a rainy
> > spring, by New Mexico standards.
>
> Wow! And I mean that most sincerely. Very similar, of course, to the
> European Lady's Slipper,
In fact, the species I photographed is also found in Sweden and
Finland (and Siberia and Japan). But people who have seen real lady's
slippers are probably wondering why I got excited about these tiny
"fairy slippers".
> which I feel as though I've seen once, but it's
> so agonisingly rare that I'm almost certainly imagining it.
That's the problem with easily available color pictures.
--
Jerry Friedman
John Varela
> On 26 Jun 2009 17:54:11 GMT, "John Varela" <OLDl...@verizon.net>
> wrote:
>
> >Of course the British and North American (if such there be) moors
> >wouldn't have the same vegetation. Here are a couple of photos of
> >American prairie, two with antelope, one without:
> >http://web.me.com/john.varela/temp/prairie.html
>
> Those appear to be pronghorns, which are not antelopes.
http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/fauna4/fauna7.htm
If it's good enough for the National Park Service it's good enough
for me.
Meanwhile, is no one going to address the topic? Does the land in
the photos I posted look anything like what a Brit would call a
"moor"?
John Holmes
And the foreground in this for an Australian example (in Tasmania)?
http://www.brettdavis.com.au/book/olympus.jpg
There are often peaty puddles and bogs between the tussocks you can see
there.
--
Regards
John
for mail: my initials plus a u e
at tpg dot com dot au
Nick Spalding
on 28 Jun 2009 00:56:50 GMT:
Not much. To my mind the distinguishing feature of moorland is heather.
It's also too flat.
--
Nick Spalding
BrE/IrE
Athel Cornish-Bowden
I agree. I wouldn't call either of these a moor. As you say, they're
too flat. The Tasmanian example comes closer, but I doubt whether I'd
think of it as a moor either if the question hadn't been asked.
--
athel
Mike Barnes
>On Fri, 26 Jun 2009 18:05:28 UTC, Hatunen <hat...@cox.net> wrote:
>
>> On 26 Jun 2009 17:54:11 GMT, "John Varela" <OLDl...@verizon.net>
>> wrote:
>>
>> >Of course the British and North American (if such there be) moors
>> >wouldn't have the same vegetation. Here are a couple of photos of
>> >American prairie, two with antelope, one without:
>> >http://web.me.com/john.varela/temp/prairie.html
>>
>
>Meanwhile, is no one going to address the topic? Does the land in
>the photos I posted look anything like what a Brit would call a
>"moor"?
Not much, but it's all relative. A British moor is nowhere near as flat,
and often contains - in varying proportions - rocky outcrops, peaty
channels, and woody scrub such as heather, bilberries, etc.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v489/btraffordphotos/Leek/moorland_vieiw.jpg?t=1246181187
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2110/2081192656_fe99b98841.jpg?v=0
http://www.bbc.co.uk/scotland/islandblogging//blogs/005132/images/pic131.jpg
http://community.webshots.com/photo/fullsize/1049991805038148749NXLQef
It's difficult, tiring, and time-consuming to walk across a moor except
on man-made paths.
We don't have any land that looks like that in your photos.
Nick Spalding
on Sun, 28 Jun 2009 11:47:50 +0200:
That, the bit the man is standing in anyway is in Irish terms a bog, it
doesn't just contain bogs.
--
Nick Spalding
BrE/IrE
Paul Wolff
geographical types still have local names that aren't consistent across
the country. Moorland primarily suggests poor upland soils, not very
well drained, and anything upland in this island is going to get pretty
wet pretty often, so moorland will have frequent boggy sumps among the
drier areas. That kind of land tends to be acidic and peaty and supports
some grasses at lower levels and heather and bracken higher up. That's
the sort of country that I think of when moors are mentioned, and this
is what a grassy part might look like with a photogenic Dartmoor pony in
the foreground:
<http://www.windyridge.de/images/poni1.jpg>
Dartmoor is in the mild southwest. That terrain might not support so
much grass farther north.
There are also low flat wetland areas called moors, with occasional
elevated islands. Sedgemoor has been mentioned, part of the Somerset
Levels. There's also Otmoor, a small fen-like enclave in Oxfordshire.
I'd be interested to know if these are structurally or climatically
different in any significant way from the flatlands of the East coast
that we call the Fens and the Broads. They are reclaimed land with many
drainage channels, and fertile when drained. They are moor in a
secondary lowland sense.
My bit of Otmoor here:
<http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/182138>
The low hills a mile or two away are not part of the moor.
This view looks like flat, dry grassland, but it's really a stretch of
the Roman road from Calleva Atrebatum (Silchester), via Dorchester, to
Alchester (just south of Bicester), over a very high water table
(buttercups like moist conditions - the road engineers made sure it
stayed dry):
<http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/181451>
The wetter parts:
<http://oxford-consultants.tripod.com/Otmoor-update.htm>
--
Paul
Jerry Friedman
> Athel Cornish-Bowden <acorn...@ibsm.cnrs-mrs.fr> wrote
>
> >On 2009-06-28 11:31:43 +0200, Nick Spalding <spald...@iol.ie> said:
>
> >> John Varela wrote, in <dxizd0mOwXzR-pn2-tKddPJcSRQhF@localhost>
> >> on 28 Jun 2009 00:56:50 GMT:
>
>
> >>>> On 26 Jun 2009 17:54:11 GMT, "John Varela" <OLDla...@verizon.net>
Is it really secondary? The NSOED says the "upland" sense is the only
one in Old English, but the Saxon cognate means "marsh".
Some might be interested in this discussion of "moorhen" and the lack
of moors in the Americas:
http://www.museum.lsu.edu/~Remsen/SACCprop335.html
I wrote to Van Remsen (perhaps not sufficiently indicating my respect
for the ornithologists on the South American Check-list Committee)
about the etymology of "moor" and some other considerations.
--
Jerry Friedman
Ian Jackson
<1b72f611-19ab-4c44...@h11g2000yqb.googlegroups.com>,
Jerry Friedman <jerry_f...@yahoo.com> writes
"mere" (a lake).
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mere>
However, I can see no real connection between "mere" and "moor", which
can indeed have boggy, marshy areas but, more often than not, don't.
--
Ian
Paul Wolff
I never thought to look in a dictionary. I was more interested in
expressing what a moor means to me. The flat wetland meaning is
secondary in that it holds back, coyly, in the mind's eye, until the
uplands meaning has done with parading itself.
If the moor = marsh word is Saxon, and the East of England is Anglian,
whatever the Angles were, I can see some sense in 'moor' not being the
word used for the Fens and Broads I mentioned. Somerset was West Saxon
Wessex, and Otmoor may also have been in Saxon country for all I know,
as it's not more than few miles north of the Thames.
My time-frozen mental map of Wessex, Mercia, East Anglia and Northumbria
gets in the way at times like this.
>
>Some might be interested in this discussion of "moorhen" and the lack
>of moors in the Americas:
>
>http://www.museum.lsu.edu/~Remsen/SACCprop335.html
Moors and meres. Meres are common in northwest England.
>
>I wrote to Van Remsen (perhaps not sufficiently indicating my respect
>for the ornithologists on the South American Check-list Committee)
>about the etymology of "moor" and some other considerations.
>
--
Paul
Athel Cornish-Bowden
> [ ... ]
> Is it really secondary? The NSOED says the "upland" sense is the only
> one in Old English, but the Saxon cognate means "marsh".
>
> Some might be interested in this discussion of "moorhen" and the lack
> of moors in the Americas:
>
> http://www.museum.lsu.edu/~Remsen/SACCprop335.html
An interesting illustration of how passionate people are about
questions of nomenclature. If they're anything like biochemists, the
same people will probably claim to have no interest in nomenclature if
you ask them in a general way.
>
> I wrote to Van Remsen (perhaps not sufficiently indicating my respect
> for the ornithologists on the South American Check-list Committee)
> about the etymology of "moor" and some other considerations.
--
athel
Donna Richoux
> Which begs my next question, given that the USA doesn't seem to have any
> 'British style' moors, or even anything called a moor,
I learned the term was used on Nantucket Island, Massachusetts, when I
visited there, for its low brushy areas. Some pictures of moors on
Nantucket:
http://images.artnet.com/artwork_images_107748_482071_sergio-roffo.jpg
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_zicdcaPkqtA/SBB8Lyem0JI/AAAAAAAAAN4/om8gelhRs6
Y/s1600-h/nantucket+road+paint1.jpg
> does it have any
> "heaths"?
I don't remember that being used. These plant communities depend a lot
on the underlying geology, don't they?
What do you folks call your chaparral?
--
Best -- Donna Richoux
An American living in the Netherlands
LFS
Donna! I thought to myself "Good to see Donna posting something other
than the FAQ, I'll see what she has to say" - and what do I get? A dose
of STS!
--
Laura
(emulate St. George for email)
Donna Richoux
> Donna Richoux wrote:
> > I don't remember that being used. These plant communities depend a lot
> > on the underlying geology, don't they?
> >
> > What do you folks call your chaparral?
> >
>
> Donna! I thought to myself "Good to see Donna posting something other
> than the FAQ,
That's automated.
>I'll see what she has to say" - and what do I get? A dose
> of STS!
What song would that be? I remember a TV western "The High Chaparral"
but not the theme tune... I just played it on Youtube and still don't
recognize it.
YouTube suggests a completely different "Chaparral," a guitar tune by
someone named Don Rich, 1964. Was that a big hit on your side? I find
that when it comes to pop music, one country's massive hit is another
country's "Huh?"
Best -- Donna
LFS
> LFS <la...@DRAGONspira.fsbusiness.co.uk> wrote:
>
>> Donna Richoux wrote:
>
>>> I don't remember that being used. These plant communities depend a lot
>>> on the underlying geology, don't they?
>>>
>>> What do you folks call your chaparral?
>>>
>> Donna! I thought to myself "Good to see Donna posting something other
>> than the FAQ,
>
> That's automated.
>
>> I'll see what she has to say" - and what do I get? A dose
>> of STS!
>
> What song would that be? I remember a TV western "The High Chaparral"
> but not the theme tune... I just played it on Youtube and still don't
> recognize it.
That's what I'm hearing. It's the only context in which I've ever heard
the word chapparal.
>
> YouTube suggests a completely different "Chaparral," a guitar tune by
> someone named Don Rich, 1964. Was that a big hit on your side? I find
> that when it comes to pop music, one country's massive hit is another
> country's "Huh?"
Never heard of it.
Robert Bannister
> I never thought to look in a dictionary. I was more interested in
> expressing what a moor means to me. The flat wetland meaning is
> secondary in that it holds back, coyly, in the mind's eye, until the
> uplands meaning has done with parading itself.
>
> If the moor = marsh word is Saxon, and the East of England is Anglian,
> whatever the Angles were, I can see some sense in 'moor' not being the
> word used for the Fens and Broads I mentioned. Somerset was West Saxon
> Wessex, and Otmoor may also have been in Saxon country for all I know,
> as it's not more than few miles north of the Thames.
>
> My time-frozen mental map of Wessex, Mercia, East Anglia and Northumbria
> gets in the way at times like this.
Didn't King Alfred hide out somewhere round there?
--
Rob Bannister
Steve Hayes
>That, the bit the man is standing in anyway is in Irish terms a bog, it
>doesn't just contain bogs.
What's the difference between a bog, a marsh and a swamp -- or are they
synonyms?
Some people get around the difficulty of deciding which word to use by using
"wetlands", which seems to comprehend all three.
Steve Hayes
wrote:
>Athel Cornish-Bowden <acor...@ibsm.cnrs-mrs.fr> wrote
>>On 2009-06-28 11:31:43 +0200, Nick Spalding <spal...@iol.ie> said:
>>I agree. I wouldn't call either of these a moor. As you say, they're
>>too flat. The Tasmanian example comes closer, but I doubt whether I'd
>>think of it as a moor either if the question hadn't been asked.
>>
>There's no news value in mentioning that though England is small,
>geographical types still have local names that aren't consistent across
>the country. Moorland primarily suggests poor upland soils, not very
>well drained, and anything upland in this island is going to get pretty
>wet pretty often, so moorland will have frequent boggy sumps among the
>drier areas. That kind of land tends to be acidic and peaty and supports
>some grasses at lower levels and heather and bracken higher up. That's
>the sort of country that I think of when moors are mentioned, and this
>is what a grassy part might look like with a photogenic Dartmoor pony in
>the foreground:
>
><http://www.windyridge.de/images/poni1.jpg>
>
>Dartmoor is in the mild southwest. That terrain might not support so
>much grass farther north.
That's how I remember Dartmoor, and that is the sort of terrain I would call
"veld".
Jerry Friedman
wrote:
> On 2009-06-28 16:22:49 +0200, Jerry Friedman <jerry_fried...@yahoo.com> said:
>
> > [ ... ]
> > Is it really secondary? The NSOED says the "upland" sense is the only
> > one in Old English, but the Saxon cognate means "marsh".
>
> > Some might be interested in this discussion of "moorhen" and the lack
> > of moors in the Americas:
>
> >http://www.museum.lsu.edu/~Remsen/SACCprop335.html
>
> An interesting illustration of how passionate people are about
> questions of nomenclature. If they're anything like biochemists, the
> same people will probably claim to have no interest in nomenclature if
> you ask them in a general way.
Other ornithologists might do that, but not these guys. At least,
I've read some of their other discussions, and I've never seen
anything like that. They're a checklist committee, after all.
>
> > I wrote to Van Remsen (perhaps not sufficiently indicating my respect
> > for the ornithologists on the South American Check-list Committee)
> > about the etymology of "moor" and some other considerations.
--
Jerry Friedman
Garrett Wollman
Steve Hayes <haye...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>What's the difference between a bog, a marsh and a swamp -- or are they
>synonyms?
A bog has acidified soil.
A marsh has salt water, and is often somewhat tidal.
A swamp is any old bit of wet ground that has too much soil and
vegetation to be called a "lake" or "pond".
Quoth the OED:
bog, n.1: A piece of wet spongy ground, consisting chiefly of decayed
or decaying moss and other vegetable matter, too soft to bear the
weight of any heavy body upon its surface; a morass or moss.
fen, n.1: Low land covered wholly or partially with shallow water, or
subject to frequent inundations; a tract of such land, a marsh.
morass, n.: A wet swampy tract, a bog, a marsh; an area of very wet or
muddy ground; (as a mass noun) boggy land.
marsh, n.1: Low-lying land, often flooded in wet weather and usually
more or less waterlogged throughout the year; a tract or area of such
land. See also SALT-MARSH n.
swamp, n.: A tract of low-lying ground in which water collects; a
piece of wet spongy ground; a marsh or bog. Orig. and in early use
only in the N. American colonies, where it denoted a tract of rich
soil having a growth of trees and other vegetation, but too moist for
cultivation.
Quoth AHD3, indicating some transpondial differences in meaning:
bog, n.: 1.a. An area having a wet, spongy, acidic substrate composed
chiefly of sphagnum moss and peat in which characteristic shrubs and
herbs and sometimes trees usually grow. b. Any of certain other
wetland areas, such as a fen, having a peat substrate. Also called
/peat bog/. 2. An area of soft, naturally waterlogged ground.
fen, n.: Low, flat, swampy land: a bog or marsh.
marsh, n.: An area of soft, wet, low-lying land, often characterized
by grassy vegetation and often forming a transition zone between water
and land.
morass, n.: 1. An area of low-lying, soggy ground.
swamp, n.: 1.a. A seasonally-flooded bottomland with more woody plants
than a marsh and better drainage than a bog. b. A lowland region
saturated with water.
-GAWollman
--
Garrett A. Wollman | The real tragedy of human existence is not that we are
wol...@csail.mit.edu| nasty by nature, but that a cruel structural asymmetry
Opinions not those | grants to rare events of meanness such power to shape
of MIT or CSAIL. | our history. - S.J. Gould, Ten Thousand Acts of Kindness
Paul Wolff
The island of Athelney is on the north side of Stanmoor, and on the
north bank of the River Tone, being about 4 miles south-west of
Bridgwater. It consists of two low hills divided by a shallow
depression, containing 24 acres in extent, of which the eastern and
slightly higher hill where was the monastery of our Blessed Saviour, St.
Peter, St. Paul, and St. Athelwine, comprises 11� acres. It is still
often in winter-time an island to which people have to go by boats.
It was to this place that Alfred retreated in the autumn of 877, and in
the spring of 878 he built here a fortress called Ethelingaeigge.
Asser, whose account is vivid and valuable, having visited the place as
chaplain to Alfred himself, describes it as a small island in the midst
of an impassable morass...
<http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=40922>
--
Paul
Amethyst Deceiver
mikeb...@bluebottle.com says...
>
> In alt.usage.english, John Varela wrote:
> >On Fri, 26 Jun 2009 18:05:28 UTC, Hatunen <hat...@cox.net> wrote:
> >
> >> On 26 Jun 2009 17:54:11 GMT, "John Varela" <OLDl...@verizon.net>
> >> wrote:
> >>
> >> >Of course the British and North American (if such there be) moors
> >> >wouldn't have the same vegetation. Here are a couple of photos of
> >> >American prairie, two with antelope, one without:
> >> >http://web.me.com/john.varela/temp/prairie.html
> >>
> >>[...]
> >
> >Meanwhile, is no one going to address the topic? Does the land in
> >the photos I posted look anything like what a Brit would call a
> >"moor"?
>
> Not much, but it's all relative. A British moor is nowhere near as flat,
> and often contains - in varying proportions - rocky outcrops, peaty
> channels, and woody scrub such as heather, bilberries, etc.
>
> http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v489/btraffordphotos/Leek/moorland_vieiw.jpg?t=1246181187
> http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2110/2081192656_fe99b98841.jpg?v=0
> http://www.bbc.co.uk/scotland/islandblogging//blogs/005132/images/pic131.jpg
> http://community.webshots.com/photo/fullsize/1049991805038148749NXLQef
Here are some of my local moors.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoodley_Pike
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tod_from_golf_course.jpg - everything
in the background, from the church spire, is moorland.
--
Linz
Wet Yorks via Cambridge, York, London and Watford
My accent may vary
Cheryl
They look a lot like what we'd call barrens in Newfoundland, Canada.
http://adaptation.nrcan.gc.ca/assess/2007/ch4/1_e.php (see photo 3d)
http://jillmaclean.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/nl-aug08-085.jpg
Ian Jackson
>
>They look a lot like what we'd call barrens in Newfoundland, Canada.
>
>http://adaptation.nrcan.gc.ca/assess/2007/ch4/1_e.php (see photo 3d)
>
Which, in Britain, turn into 3g at higher altitudes.
>http://jillmaclean.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/nl-aug08-085.jpg
>
--
Ian
Steve Hayes
Wollman) wrote:
>In article <0o9g4595v7llgkkhl...@4ax.com>,
>Steve Hayes <haye...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>>What's the difference between a bog, a marsh and a swamp -- or are they
>>synonyms?
>
>A bog has acidified soil.
>
>A marsh has salt water, and is often somewhat tidal.
>
>A swamp is any old bit of wet ground that has too much soil and
>vegetation to be called a "lake" or "pond".
Thanks for that and the quotes. I think I might stick to "wetlands".
Jerry Friedman
> In article <0o9g4595v7llgkkhl84sksqsi7gftn4...@4ax.com>,
> Steve Hayes <hayes...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> >What's the difference between a bog, a marsh and a swamp -- or are they
> >synonyms?
>
> A bog has acidified soil.
>
> A marsh has salt water, and is often somewhat tidal.
>
> A swamp is any old bit of wet ground that has too much soil and
> vegetation to be called a "lake" or "pond".
>
> Quoth the OED:
> swamp, n.: A tract of low-lying ground in which water collects; a
> piece of wet spongy ground; a marsh or bog. Orig. and in early use
> only in the N. American colonies, where it denoted a tract of rich
> soil having a growth of trees and other vegetation, but too moist for
> cultivation.
>
> Quoth AHD3, indicating some transpondial differences in meaning:
>
> bog, n.: 1.a. An area having a wet, spongy, acidic substrate composed
> chiefly of sphagnum moss and peat in which characteristic shrubs and
> herbs and sometimes trees usually grow. b. Any of certain other
> wetland areas, such as a fen, having a peat substrate. Also called
> /peat bog/. 2. An area of soft, naturally waterlogged ground.
...
> swamp, n.: 1.a. A seasonally-flooded bottomland with more woody plants
> than a marsh and better drainage than a bog. b. A lowland region
> saturated with water.
That's how I was brought up. Swamps have trees; the others don't
(except spruce bogs and such up north). But people commonly use
"swamp" for any wetland.
--
Jerry Friedman
Richard Chambers
Ian Jackson wrote
>
> While most British moors are high ground, wild, often rocky, unable to be
> cultivated, and where only heather and other scrub can grow, there are a
> few moors which are simply large open areas. In NE England, in the city of
> Newcastle upon Tyne, 'The Town Moor' is a large, flat, open area, not far
> from the city centre itself. It is now used for recreational purposes, but
> presumably, at one time, may have been out-of-town heathland
> <http://www.countrysideinfo.co.uk/whatis.htm>
> which, I suppose, is just a moor, but less rugged and remote.
This is common in northern England. I live in an area of Leeds called Moor
Allerton, next to another suburb called Moortown, both being land reclaimed
from moorland on the northern outskirts of the city. In the case of
Moortown, reclamation was as recent as the mid-1920s. Many other cities in
the north and far west of the UK have suburbs named "Moor XXX" or "XXXmoor",
for the same reason.
Britain has various types of waste land:-
Moor: usually (but not always) found at an elevation of between 400m and
2000 m above sea level, usually in gently rolling hills. A very acidic soil
makes the land useless for agriculture (unless modified by drainage etc). A
good view of this type of terrain can be obtained from the 1937 (??) film
"Wuthering Heights". The soil is peat, in places dry, while in other places
boggy. The predominant vegetation is heather. Large expanses of moorland are
found in Exmoor and Dartmoor (SW England), in Wales, in Derbyshire (N
midlands of England), Yorkshire, Northumberland/Cumbria, and in Scotland.
Ireland also has a sizeable area of moorland. The M62 motorway between Leeds
and Manchester crosses a large area of moorland as it crosses the Pennine
Hills.
There is a small area of moorland in Brittany (NW France) which reminds me
very strongly of Exmoor.
Heath: usually (but not always) an area of land which is of very poor
quality for agriculture, often because the soil is either too sandy or too
lacking in depth. Usually drier soil than is found in a moor, especially if
the heath is caused by a sandy soil. The predominant vegetation is low
scrub, gorse and heather. Heaths are dwindling in number, because of
reclamation. A few remaining examples are found in Dorset, south Devon, and
the Breckland of Norfolk. I have walked on Luneburg Heath (where Doenitz
surrendered on behalf of the Reich in 1945) in northern Germany, which
seemed (to me) to be intermediate between a British heath and a moor.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/handsonnature/rambling/dorset_heaths.shtml
Some of the films (circa 1980) of Thomas Hardy novels show scenes of
heathland.
Downs: where agriculture is limited (but not necessarily impossible) due to
a poor depth of soil and a substrate of chalk. These are usually vast areas
of relatively dry grassland on rolling hills, and support sheep farming. The
best example is in the South Downs, which are in Sussex and Hampshire
(southern England). Not quite the same as a Prairie, but the nearest
equivalent that we have. The South Downs, a beautiful area of Britain, have
recently been awarded the status of National Park.
Marsh, Fen, Swamp and Bog: These are all areas of land where agriculture is
impossible because of excessive ground water. Few examples remain in
Britain, but the little that we still have is now mostly nature reserve or
forgotten land in the remotest parts of the Pennine Hills. Ireland still
possesses a considerable area of bogland. A bog is like a moor, but with the
soil universally wet and dotted with ponds, instead of merely wet in
patches.
Richard Chambers Leeds UK.
Irwell
> Richard Chambers Leeds UK.
Don't forget Benidorm, they have the Moors and the Christians re-enactments
every year.
Ian Jackson
Chambers <richard.cham...@ntlworld.net> writes
>
>
>Britain has various types of waste land:-
>
>Moor: usually (but not always) found at an elevation of between 400m and
>2000 m above sea level, usually in gently rolling hills.
>
>
the "m" should be "ft". Even the highest British mountain, Ben Nevis, is
only 1,344 metres (4,409 ft) high.
--
Ian
Amethyst Deceiver
richard.cham...@ntlworld.net says...
> Britain has various types of waste land:-
>
> Moor: usually (but not always) found at an elevation of between 400m and
> 2000 m above sea level, usually in gently rolling hills. A very acidic soil
> makes the land useless for agriculture (unless modified by drainage etc). A
> good view of this type of terrain can be obtained from the 1937 (??) film
> "Wuthering Heights". The soil is peat, in places dry, while in other places
> boggy. The predominant vegetation is heather. Large expanses of moorland are
> found in Exmoor and Dartmoor (SW England), in Wales, in Derbyshire (N
> midlands of England), Yorkshire, Northumberland/Cumbria, and in Scotland.
> Ireland also has a sizeable area of moorland. The M62 motorway between Leeds
> and Manchester crosses a large area of moorland as it crosses the Pennine
> Hills.
Sheep-farming is quite big on the moors.
Richard Chambers
"Ian Jackson" <ianREMOVET...@g3ohx.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:vocL5ZAK...@g3ohx.demon.co.uk...
Yes, you are right. Thank you for the correction.
Richard Chambers Leeds UK.
Hatunen
wrote:
>On Fri, 26 Jun 2009 18:05:28 UTC, Hatunen <hat...@cox.net> wrote:
>
>> On 26 Jun 2009 17:54:11 GMT, "John Varela" <OLDl...@verizon.net>
>> wrote:
>>
>> >Of course the British and North American (if such there be) moors
>> >wouldn't have the same vegetation. Here are a couple of photos of
>> >American prairie, two with antelope, one without:
>> >http://web.me.com/john.varela/temp/prairie.html
>>
>> Those appear to be pronghorns, which are not antelopes.
>
>http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/fauna4/fauna7.htm
>
>If it's good enough for the National Park Service it's good enough
>for me.
On the other hand, Wiikipdia points out:
"Confusingly, the pronghorn antelope of North America is not an
antelope, and no antelope species are native to the Americas. The
pronghorn is not a member of the family Bovidae, but the family
Antilocapridae. True antelope have horns which are unbranched and
never shed, while Pronghorns have branching horns, shed
annually."
If pronhorns and antelopes are from different families it's
difficult not to conlude the park service has it wrong and is
merely catering to popular American lingo.
Had they not been referred to as simply "antelopes", but either
"pronghorn" or "pronghorn antelopes" I would not have commented,
but in a group dedicated to the proper use of words....
--
************* DAVE HATUNEN (hat...@cox.net) *************
* Tucson Arizona, out where the cacti grow *
* My typos & mispellings are intentional copyright traps *
Garrett Wollman
Hatunen <hat...@cox.net> wrote:
>"Confusingly, the pronghorn antelope of North America is not an
>antelope, and no antelope species are native to the Americas. The
>pronghorn is not a member of the family Bovidae, but the family
>Antilocapridae. True antelope have horns which are unbranched and
>never shed, while Pronghorns have branching horns, shed
>annually."
This is pure nerdview. Taxonomic usage does not take priority over
the usage of ordinary language users.[1] In English-as-she-is-spoke,
as distinguished from the professional jargon of vertebrate
systematists, the meaning of "antelope" is not as restricted as
suggested by the Wikipedia article.
-GAWollman
[1] And no, the fruit sold as a cantaloupe in most megamarts is not
"properly" called a "muskmelon", because most shoppers are not
botanists. Taxonomists should confine themselves to their Latin
classifications and may not presume to dictate how ordinary peope use
their own language.
Nick
> In article <t2ek45dugn0qc1m1r...@4ax.com>,
> Hatunen <hat...@cox.net> wrote:
>
>>"Confusingly, the pronghorn antelope of North America is not an
>>antelope, and no antelope species are native to the Americas. The
>>pronghorn is not a member of the family Bovidae, but the family
>>Antilocapridae. True antelope have horns which are unbranched and
>>never shed, while Pronghorns have branching horns, shed
>>annually."
>
> This is pure nerdview. Taxonomic usage does not take priority over
> the usage of ordinary language users.[1] In English-as-she-is-spoke,
> as distinguished from the professional jargon of vertebrate
> systematists, the meaning of "antelope" is not as restricted as
> suggested by the Wikipedia article.
>
> -GAWollman
>
> [1] And no, the fruit sold as a cantaloupe in most megamarts is not
> "properly" called a "muskmelon", because most shoppers are not
> botanists. Taxonomists should confine themselves to their Latin
> classifications and may not presume to dictate how ordinary peope use
> their own language.
As a fellow fish, I can only agree with you.
--
Online waterways route planner: http://canalplan.org.uk
development version: http://canalplan.eu
Frank ess
So, I guess these jackalopes are actually "jackhorns"?
http://users.stargate.net/~mnovak/jackalopes/
--
Frank ess
Hatunen
(Garrett Wollman) wrote:
>In article <t2ek45dugn0qc1m1r...@4ax.com>,
>Hatunen <hat...@cox.net> wrote:
>
>>"Confusingly, the pronghorn antelope of North America is not an
>>antelope, and no antelope species are native to the Americas. The
>>pronghorn is not a member of the family Bovidae, but the family
>>Antilocapridae. True antelope have horns which are unbranched and
>>never shed, while Pronghorns have branching horns, shed
>>annually."
>
>This is pure nerdview. Taxonomic usage does not take priority over
>the usage of ordinary language users.[1] In English-as-she-is-spoke,
>as distinguished from the professional jargon of vertebrate
>systematists, the meaning of "antelope" is not as restricted as
>suggested by the Wikipedia article.
If that's the nerdiest thing you ever see here consider yourself
lucky.
As I said, I tend to call them "pronghorn antelopes" myself. And
would have had no problem had they been labelled that for the
photo.
Robert Bannister
That's why I was surprised at the number of people who said that they
expected moors to be covered with heather. I know there are moors like
that, especially in Scotland, but when I think "Yorkshire moors", I
think of close-cropped, grass-covered sheep country with patches of
large rocks and rough vegetation (which might be heather or might not).
--
Rob Bannister
Amethyst Deceiver
says...
I certainly expect to see heather. I invariably turn an ankle on the
stuff.
Don Stockbauer
> On Wed, 24 Jun 2009 19:30:46 +0100, Ian Jackson
>
> <ianREMOVETHISjack...@g3ohx.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> >I don't know of any 'moors' in the USA. There are lots in England, and
> >of course, in Scotland (many spelt "muir", of course). [I'm not too sure
> >about Wales and Ireland.]
>
> >But what about the USA and also Canada? Are there any? If there ARE what
> >the British would call moors, which word is used instead? Is there any
> >reason why such a common word as "moor" has disappeared from AmE?
>
> According to the dictionary, a "moor" is (chiefly British) an expanse
> of open rolling infertile land. Certainly, there are parts of the US
> that meet this definition, but we don't use the word "moor" to
> describe them. I don't know that "moor" was ever used in AmE to
> describe land, so I wouldn't say that the word has disappeared. It
> hasn't appeared yet.
>
> A Yorkshireman visiting the American plains may see similarities to
> the moors...open, rolling, and infertile (if "infertile" is used to
> mean non-productive plant growth).
All plant growth is productive in that it converts CO2 to O.
Roland Hutchinson
> John Varela wrote:
>
>> On Fri, 26 Jun 2009 09:39:36 UTC, m...@vex.net (Mark Brader) wrote:
>>
>> > R.H. Draney found:
>> > > Moors Memorial Chapel and Moors Run, Ohio
>> > ...
>> > > (Moors Run Ohio?...I guess that's where they went when they were
>> > > kicked out of the Alhambra)
>> >
>> > For those who may not know, "Run" is a word used in that area for a
>> > creek. I'm not sure how large an area I'm talking about; the only
>> > specific place I remember encountering it was near Pittsburgh.
>>
>> Bull Run in Virginia is pretty well known. Right here inside the
>> Beltway we have Turkey Run, Dead Run, and Windy Run (is that a place
>> where the wind blows or is it that the run winds about?).
>
> I suspect that a fairly high percentage of people familiar with "The
> [First/Second] Battle of Bull Run" might not know that "run" refers to
> a stream.
[raises hand, sheepishly[1] ]
[1] how else?
--
Roland Hutchinson
He calls himself "the Garden State's leading violist da gamba,"
... comparable to being ruler of an exceptionally small duchy.
--Newark (NJ) Star Ledger ( http://tinyurl.com/RolandIsNJ )
Roland Hutchinson
> On Wed, 24 Jun 2009 19:30:46 +0100, Ian Jackson
> <ianREMOVET...@g3ohx.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>>I don't know of any 'moors' in the USA. There are lots in England, and
>>of course, in Scotland (many spelt "muir", of course). [I'm not too sure
>>about Wales and Ireland.]
>>
>>But what about the USA and also Canada? Are there any? If there ARE what
>>the British would call moors, which word is used instead? Is there any
>>reason why such a common word as "moor" has disappeared from AmE?
>
> Are/were there moors in North America?
Possibly not.
Emily Dickenson claimed never to have seen one, for starters.
Hence we may deduce, at a minimum, that they are not thick on the ground in
the vicinity of Amherst, Mass.
Roland Hutchinson
Now, that takes backbone.
Roland Hutchinson
> In article <0o9g4595v7llgkkhl...@4ax.com>,
> Steve Hayes <haye...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>>What's the difference between a bog, a marsh and a swamp -- or are they
>>synonyms?
>
> A bog has acidified soil.
>
> A marsh has salt water, and is often somewhat tidal.
>
> A swamp is any old bit of wet ground that has too much soil and
> vegetation to be called a "lake" or "pond".
Very nice.
But given that marshes are salt water by definition, why do we have the term
"salt marsh", I wonder. Is it simply lily-gilt from the Dept. of Reduncancy
Department?
Default User
> Default User wrote:
> > I suspect that a fairly high percentage of people familiar with "The
> > [First/Second] Battle of Bull Run" might not know that "run" refers
> > to a stream.
>
> [raises hand, sheepishly[1] ]
Many battle in The Civil War had two names. The Union tended to name
them after geographic features, and the Confederacy after towns, such
as First and Second Battle of Manassas.
Many people aren't aware that the Battle of Shiloh is named for a
church in the area. The Confederates called that battle Pittsburg
Landing.
> [1] how else?
"Bullishly"?
--
Day 149 of the "no grouchy usenet posts" project