satzverständnis
German translation: siehe unten
| 15:12 May 23, 2006 |
| English to German translations [PRO] Other / Mondlandung | |||||
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|  Selected response from: hirselina | ||||
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| 3 +2 | siehe unten |
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| Discussion entries: 1 | |
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Answers
10 mins confidence: 
peer agreement (net): +2
peer agreement (net): +2siehe unten Explanation: The word Shinola, thus spelled and capitalized, is indeed a trademark name for a brand of shoe polish. It comes from shine and the suffix -ola, found in various commercial products (Victrola, granola, Crayola). The first element is pronounced like "shine." The trademark was registered just after 1900. January 23, 1998 Shinola thohlfel @ cmp.com writes: Today I had to decide how to spell and whether to capitalize "Shinola" and was stunned not to find it in my dictionary--not the new desk edition or the slightly older unabridged. (Do I have the wrong brand of dictionary?) My coworkers and I guessed it came from an old trademark for--I don't know--shoe polish? So we spelled it as above, and capitalized it. How far off are we? You're right on. The word Shinola, thus spelled and capitalized, is indeed a trademark name for a brand of shoe polish. It comes from shine and the suffix -ola, found in various commercial products (Victrola, granola, Crayola). The first element is pronounced like "shine." The trademark was registered just after 1900. The only reason anyone cares about Shinola is that it is part of the slang expression not to know shit from Shinola 'to be completely ignorant'. Presumably this was inspired chiefly by the alliteration of the two words, but it's notable that the -ola suffix was common in scatological jokes in the 1930s. The expression takes on a further irony in modern times because most people really don't know shit from Shinola; they've never heard of Shinola. It's hard to date the expression exactly, as with many vulgarisms; the first clear example is from the early 1960s, but the euphemistic variant "not to know sugar from Shinola" is found in the early 1950s, and a very reliable source, the linguist Raven I. McDavid, Jr., has quoted a limerick using the full phrase that he heard during the 1930s. It is not surprising that dictionaries don't enter Shinola. Most dictionaries only include trademarks that are extremely common, and Shinola is almost never used outside of the vulgar expression. And that expression, while a reasonably well known slang use, is not so common that merits inclusion in standard dictionaries (several slang dictionaries do have it in), so I wouldn't worry about the quality of your dictionary. http://www.randomhouse.com/wotd/index.pperl?date=19980123 |
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