kissing (was: Re: Summary so far on DJUNO

[And Rosta <a.rosta@UCLAN.AC.UK>]

John:
> > How about cinba (x1 kisses x2 at locus x3)? When I was in my early
> > teens, a very important parameter was whether tongues were used (i.e.
> > whether the kiss was - in suaviational rather than national terms -
>
> Okay, ya got me.  "Suaviational"??  I survived "gynecolaly" all right,
> but this one could be from "suave" or "sua via" (or are they
> one and the same somehow?).
>
> Cough up, please.

Alright, guv: it's a fair cop - I make words up. BUT: I just checked
now & found _suaviation_ in OED 1st ed, which we have in our office
(my colleague salvaged it when the library was THROWING IT AWAY!!).
= "kissing".

> > And kissing necessarily involves oral apparatus.
> > Or does {cinba} cover caresses, as in
> >
> >    the pink just kissed the black
> >
> > (said by snooker commentators)?
>
> Mathematicians, too.  Circles and spheres are said to kiss when they
> intersect at a single point only.  I see no reason why, if people
> can "sarji" a language, circles cannot "cinba".

If you're imaginative enough, I'm sure circles can sneeze too. Or
perform conjouring tricks or whatever. But is this not *metaphor*?

I wonder this about the thread initiated recently by Jorge, about
localist construal of properties - of properties construed as
possessions and possession construed as location.

I'm no opponent of unmarked metaphor, but when establishing
word-meaning we do need to distinguish between core/literal meaning
and peripheral/meaphorical meaning.

--And.