More place names made useful

Current mood: Eternally grateful to my fantabulous friends (who read this blog)
Current music: The computer's whine - a hint that I'm going too fast for it to keep up?

Thank you, thank you to my wonderful Anblogeda readers! Where would I be without you? Having pondered deeply on some of your comments on the previous post I now have two more entries for 'How to Mull Correctly'. Enjoy.

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DUNEDIN (n)

The population of surplus sheep in any given region. Usually defined as the difference between the sheep population and the human population. For example, if there are 40 million sheep in New Zealand but only 4 million people, then it can be said that New Zealand has a dunedin of 36 million. However, the term dunedin can also be used when there are sheep where no sheep should be, e.g. 'Due to an error of judgement by the new farmhand, Lord Demsworth's library now housed a dunedin of twelve ravenous, book-eating ovines.'

Picture taken from http://norwest.biz/tshirts.html

Not to be confused with TAURANGA (n), the population of surplus cattle in any given region.

GODALMING (ppl adj)

Descriptive of a street musician who possesses considerably less than the usual amount of musical talent, but who is quite convinced of his genius. He thus plays louder than any other busker in the vicinity, in order to prove his skill to himself, the competition, and any unfortunate passers-by within a 500 m radius whose eardrums are still intact.

Example of usage:

Could someone please run down to that godalming busker around the corner, and pay him a tenner to go away?

Hence:

godalm (v) - To make an unnecessarily large amount of noise in a futile attempt to promote an embarrassingly small amount of talent.

godalmer (n) (somewhat derogatory) - A godalming street performer; a person who godalms.

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Incidentally, I came up with my definition of 'Godalming' (suggested by Lovely Louise) by merely looking at the word itself, and seeking inspiration in its sound and construction. I had no prior knowledge of the town (which is in Surrey, it seems), so it is quite possible that there are no godalmers in Godalming.

My excellent friend Edsters, however, has been to Godalming and has offered an alternative definition as "wandering aimlessly but thoughtfully next to a river". This sounds good to me, and I don't see why a word can't have more than one definition. I'm sure it would be fairly obvious in context as to which meaning is being referred to, as one is infinitely pleasant and the other is anything but.

I had a little look in Wikipedia to see what this Godalming place was all about, and found a rather odd story about the Rabbit Woman of Godalming. Go check it out.

Anyway, I must dash off, but do take a gander at the comments for the last post. There's a nice little conversation going on...