Done it. But every time I type the english word calendar somehow I get it wrong and a bit of the dutch equivalent kalender creeps in. It then takes a few attempts to get it right. Why does it end in -ar and not -er, after all, that's how it's pronounced? Odd language, English...
And I tried to beat Google at its own game and guess what? I failed, or to a certain extent at least. I did not give my own name as I was prompted, but just the letters JKL, and now I get messages about meetings from this JKL person. I suppose I'd better go into the settings and change this. It could lead to all sorts of confusion. May be I was just being particularly tegendraads that day!
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Funnily enough there is a word "calender" but it means an enormous roller if I recall correctly. As a librarian I ought to be energetic enough to go and check that actually. *goes to OED and does so* Well, turns out there are 3 of the rascals:
ReplyDelete"A machine in which cloth, paper, etc., is pressed under rollers for the purpose of smoothing or glazing; also for watering or giving a wavy appearance, etc." (this one is related to "cylinder")
"One of a mendicant order of dervishes in Turkey and Persia" (from the Persian "qalandar")
and to top it off
"A corn-weevil".
Hooray for the OED. How lucky that Cambridgeshire County Council provides it online, as the University doesn't...
We do have it online, and with off-site access too. There are a few valuable electronic resouces the Public Library Services proved - British Standards (if you like that sort of thing) and the Guardian / Observer archive back to the first half of the nineteenth century.
ReplyDeleteOh yes - excellent! That'll teach me to talk about checking things and then not check. Thanks Clive!
ReplyDeleteActually the main reason was that in the past I'd looked for it through our Oxford Reference Online subscription, which only has the much smaller Oxford Dictionary of English. The OED itself comes under databases rather than ebooks, I now realize.