Subject: Final raboining,

From: Joshua Mackay-Smith <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 27 Jan 2003 18:40:07 -0800

This round's winner is Ranjit, with ten big honkin' points.  Results as 
follows:

raboin (n.) (southern European Yiddish dialect) The wife of a rabbi.
Judith.

	David: Jews in Southern Europe mainly were Sephardim who spoke Ladino.
	Jean-Joseph: Sure, from all those Italian and Greek Jews.  Remind me 
to sometime tell you my father's shaggy-dog 		story about the Shah and 
his epileptic son, the Shan.  (Lay it on us. --ed.)
	Hutch: I seem to recall from the Rabbi David Small mysteries that this 
is 'rebbetzin.'
	Joe: I believe the word you're looknig for here is "rebbitzen".
	Aussie: Too easy.  I thought of submitting a description of the 
Cohanim - the traditional hereditary rabbi "caste", but I 		was too 
slowpokey on the reply.
	Linda: This sounds most likely to me, but...

raboin (n.) (from Tolkien's _Unfinished Tales_)  The hereditary priests 
of the Dwarves of Moria.
David.

	David: Rabbi + Oin, in case anyone was interested in my thought 
processes.
	Jean-Joseph: I just started reading this book yesterday, no kidding.  
Without peeling again at the table of contents, I 		think the only one 
of the Khazad who gets any coverage in this volume is Mim, and i don't 
think he ever heard
		of Moria.
	Hutch: Nicely topical, but unlikely.
	Linda: Good modern idea.  Haven't read past the trilogy over 30 years 
ago (prenatal influence on my twin sons).

raboin (n. or v.) Onomatopoeic word used to illustrate a sproinging 
(bouncing) or ricocheting sound in a cartoon.
Linda. (Ranjit 1 + correct guess 1) 2 points.

	Ranjit: Hee!
	Jean-Joseph: Surrounded by curved lines indicating...
	Hutch: I could have bought this one if 'sproing' had been used as a 
parallel example, instead of an actual gerund.

raboin (n.) An amino acid extracted from broccoli, used in topical 
preparations to promote blood-clotting.
Ranjit. (Jean-Joseph 2 + Judith 1 + Joe 2 + Aussie 2 + James 1 + Linda 
2)  10 points.

	Jean-Joseph: When I first saw this, I got a good feeling about it.
	Hutch: Everybody likes chemical names.
	Joe: Sure, raboin sounds like it could be a sciency word, and nothing 
else seems at all reasonable.
	Aussie: Highly likely.
	Pierre: 	"Shall I crucifer your sting?"
			"Crucifer! Crucifer!"
	Linda: I'm blinded by science.
	Amy: Hm, not buying it.  Maybe if it were raboine... even then, 
blood-clotting? Broccoli??

raboin (n.) An oily, extremely odoriferous thione obtained from the 
perianal glands of mammals of genus Rabonis
Hutch. (Amy 2 + Fran 2) 4 points.

	Jean-Joseph: What are these, skunks?  If so, I've read about this 
chemical, and I don't remember this word.
	Pierre: If something extremely odoriferous comes from a mammal, it 
belongs to the Mephitidae, and there is no such 		genus in Mephitidae.
	Amy: This, on the other hand, is, if not actually true, good enough to 
fool me. Two points plus thumbs up for "thione" if 		this was a player.

raboin (n.) An apprentice violinmaker.
Melissa. (Correct guess 2) 2 points.

	Jean-Joseph: "Many violins bearing the Stradivarius or Amati labels 
were actually the work of raboins."?  Nah.
	Pierre: Fiddlesticks!

raboin (n.) In southern European legend, a race of humans with tails.
Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. (Melissa 2 + Joe 1 + Aussie 1 
+ Linda 2) 6 points.

	Jean-Joseph: Nah.  It would probably be capitalized, anyway.
	Joe: This gets one point for creativity.
	Aussie: Flight of fancy award of 1 point.
	Pierre: I don't believe this tail.
	Linda: I thought they were from Transylvania, but 1 point.

raboin (n.) The substance responsible for the flavor of radishes.
Pierre. (Ranjit 2 + Jean-Joseph 1 + James 2 + Amy 1 + Fran 1) 7 points.

	Ranjit: Reminds me of mine.
	Jean-Joseph: Hmm... maybe.  But given some other good defs, I guess, 
I'll speculate that a definition would probably 		include more 
information about what the substance is.  Still, I need to give 
something my remaining point, so I
		guess this is it.
	Pierre: Another crucifer fiction.
	Amy: Got to love these chem definitions.

raboin (n.) A clamp for temporarily attaching rebars before pouring 
concrete.
Fran. (David 1 + Pierre 2) 2 points.

	Jean-Joseph: I don't think there's any need for a temporary clamp, you 
usually just create a stable structure out of the 		rebar.  But I don't 
have a lot of experience with this.

raboin (v.)  To dye silk cloth with a striped pattern; cloth so treated 
is referred to as "raboinée"
Jean-Joseph. (David 2 + Judith 2 + Pierre 1) 5 points.

	Jean-Joseph: Glad that accent came through okay, at least on the email 
that I received.  Not that it matters, nobody's 		going to vote for 
this anyway.
	Judith:  "Raboinée" is a beautiful word and should mean something like 
that.
	Pierre: One point for sounding like the way I thought it might be 
pronounced.
	Linda:  I can figure out how to weave stripes and how to dye the warp 
in stripes, but how does one dye cloth in stripes?  		With wax?  Tie 
dye can give a stripey look, but real stripes???  If this is real, 
please forward instructions.

raboin (n.) A fine powder commonly used in the detection of 
fingerprints.
Joe. (Melissa 1 + correct guess 1) 2 points.

	Jean-Joseph: Yeah, I know that stuff.  Is it called "raboin"?  Geez... 
I don't think so, but... hmm... the white stuff or the 		black stuff... 
if that had been specified, I would have gone for it.
	Pierre: Something's wrong with this, but I can't put a finger on it.
	Linda: Weird that I helped a bunch of Scouts get Fingerprinting merit 
badge last spring and this word did not come up, 		but modern cops use 
computers for most detection once prints have been dusted or lifted, 
which is what the
		town's cops were featuring.  The books may have used less technical 
words for younger people, as well.  Of 		course, my memory of 
recently-encountered words is not what it used to be.
	Fran: I wish I had another point.

General comments from y'all:

	Melissa: Criminey.  Two for the humans with tails, and one for the 
little bitty baby lying in a mang -- um, I mean, the 		fingerprint 
powder.
	James: Let's see about this batch... lots of oils/liquids, vegetable 
matter, legendary beings, and the southern Europeans 		are heard from. 
('bout time, too; the Mongolians have been dominating the discussion 
for far too long...)  I'll throw 		my lot in with the produce aisle.
	Pierre: I tried three unabridged dictionaries and found no "raboin", 
but I did find a web page which explained that Jews 		were thought to 
have tails because rabbins were confused with raboins.
			Another rumor about Jews is that they have horns. This comes from 
when Moses came down from the 		mountain after meeting with God and his 
face shone. The Hebrew for "shone" is "qaran", which differs in only 
the 		vowels from "qeren", which means "horn".

	And Linda posted her "Raboin on Parade" poem to the list in general, 
right?

	The web page that Pierre mentions is, form his description, pretty 
much in line with Brewer's; the actual definition I adapted is under 
"Tailed Men," "raboin" being defined in print as "See 'Tailed Men.'"

	All yours, Ranjit.