Random thoughts

[pne]

Bold and brave are roughly synonyms ("courageous, fearless, intrepid")... but in German, you have brav (which I assume to be cognate to brave) which means "well-behaved, obedient" (usually applied to children or pets who keep out of mischief), while in Hiberno-English, you have bold meaning "naughty, disobedient".

(To be fair, though, thesaurus.com lists for bold not only "(1) brave" plus synonyms but also "(2) brazen" plus synonyms including "cheeky", "rude", and "insolent".)

---

This morning, I saw someone "sawing" apart old railway rails with what was presumably an oxy-acetylene torch. Looked rather cool: fire! and slicing through metal like butter! Though I imagine the novelty wears off quickly if you do it for a job.

---

Also this morning, on the way to work, tungol's name popped into my mind and reminded me of this poem:

Auf den sieben Robbenklippen
sitzen sieben Robbensippen
die sich in die Rippen stippen
bis sie von den Klippen kippen.

Comments

[tungol.livejournal.com]

Random appearances in other people's journals! :-)

Hmm... I think I can figure out most of the poem (with the help of my dictionary), except for "stippen", which seems from context like it must mean something along the lines of "hit, shove, push".

stippen

[pne.livejournal.com]

Close -- I'd translate it as "poke" or "jab".

It's an informal word, so I'm not surprised if it's not in your dictionary.

So it's something like "On the seven seal cliffs // live seven seal tribes // who poke one another in the ribs // until they fall off the cliffs".

stippen?

[elgrande.livejournal.com]

I don't know "stippen" either.
I guessed it must have the meaning pne mentioned.