On Wed, 05 Mar 2008 23:09:36 -0500, Rick Harrison <not@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
wrote:
>In article <3h9us3hfuacackqgou7n9uc2uo8np9gj3l@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>, Padraic Brown
><elemtilas@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>
>> No, conlangers have been boinking for years. Perhaps this was the
>> first big formal conference event, but certainly not the first
>> gathering! References to conlang boinks go back to at least 1999.
>
>Well then, I sit corrected. By the way, what does "boink" mean in your
>variety of English?
boink [bojNk]. n. a forgathering of conlangers, generally informal in
nature and usually involving a small number of persons. (syn. "con")
That is, this is a term that evolved (from a Real English English
word, the meaning of which is somewhat racier than the Conlangers'
usage!) on the Conlang list and was current there and on related lists
for several years. It hasn't appeared in the Conlang archive in the
last half decade, though, so perhaps twas a fad after all!
It has no particulary racey connotation in my variety of English. I
don't regularly use the word, but would understand it to mean, like
"bonk" or "clonk", to strike something in a humorous fa****on or to
emit a humorous noise upon being so struck. Sort of like the sound
effects you get in cartoons when the cat runs around the corner and
the mouse boinks/bonks/clonks him with a cast iron frying pan.
Padraic
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