ERIFF results

[eLLioTT morEton]

Fictioneers!

Fran's so-far-over-the-top-it's-in-low-Earth-orbit glacial dust garnered 
11 votes, swooping over Jim's just-plain-WRNOG food-and-insecticide 
slogan, which only got 7.  David's berserker dustup got 5.  Moral:  
Plausibility is for losers!  

Nobody voted for the real definition, which was the work of Oxford E. 
"Ned" Dictionary.  Neddie loves it when that happens.

Anyhow, great round, people.  Haul it away, Fran!!!!!!!!!!!!!

em

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General comments

Hutch:  WOW! An exciting crop of creative excrescence!
Ranjit:  Bah, I hate them all.  Especially mine.  And also especially the
dictionary definition, for which I am reserving special contempt to be
unleashed as soon as I find out which it is.
Eric:  Good round, dude.
Jean-Joseph:  Google turns up a bunch of proper nouns and misspellings of 
'sheriff', although it also asks "Did you mean: reef", which puts a spin 
on the underwater embankment that hadn't occurred to me.  Nothing from 
dictionary.com, either.  Guess I'll have to wait and see.
Nora:  I don't believe any of them, so I am going to vote for the most fun 
ones!
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eriff (n.) -- The dried skin and pulp of the coffee cherry that is removed 
from coffee beans in processing.

By:  Eric
2 (James 2)

Hutch:  "cherry" and "bean"? Those don't sound right together.
Ranjit:  bagasse!
Jean-Joseph:  Either chaff or bagasse.
Jim:  chaff by way of riff-raff?
James:  TWO POINTS
Nora:  coffee cherry?  I find it difficult to think that would be part of 
a real definition, and if it is, WOW!
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ERIFF (abbrev.) -- An acronym, standing for "Eat Regularly In Four Foods", 
developed in 1928 as part of a public awareness campaign by the Food, 
Drug, and Insecticide Administration to encourage consumption of meat, 
dairy, grains, and vegetables.  From the original brochure: "You'll be 
spiff, you'll be teriff, if you always ERIFF."

By:  Jim
7 = (Ranjit 2 + Eric 1 + Fran 2 + Nora 2)

Hutch:  The FDA has *not* ever had that for a name!
Ranjit:  I'm gonna be chanting that catchphrase all week.  Two points!
Eric:  One point, for impressive stupidity.
Fran:  I love this one:  2 points!
Jean-Joseph:  Uh.... no.
Nora:  This is just hilarious!  I give it two votes for the impossibleness 
of it!
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eriff (n.) -- A mixture of ground peach pits and poultry bones, formerly
used with limited success as a fertilizer for cotton planting.

By:  Jean-Joseph
1 (Pierre 1)

Hutch:  I have a hard time seeing poultry bones as a good choice for
fertilizer. Maybe that's why they had only limited success?
Jean-Joseph:  More bagasse, or maybe picoline... wait, this one is mine.
Pierre:  1
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eriff (adj.) -- Glorious overabundance even to the point of waste; the
mixed emotion of reveling in abundance with concern or guilt over the
excess.
     "The cellar being eriff after our harvest, we ate well with 
little worry for the winter" - Jacobsen, "Ten Years in the North", 1881.
     "I am all but eriff at your generosity, and do not know whether I 
can accept" - from a letter from Alice B. Toklas to Vera Lachaise, 1949.

By:  Ranjit
1 (Linda 1)

Hutch:  Naah! Don't believe there was ever a need for such a word.
Linda:  1 point for the??excessive food? (Thanksgiving's coming up, 
hooray!)?
Fran:  OK, good also:
Jean-Joseph:  Opposire of 'bereft'?

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eriff (n.) -- An underwater embankment, man-made.

By:  Hutch
3 = (Fran 1 + Pierre 2)

Fran:  But for some reason I am ROTFL on this one, so 1 point:...  I love 
using slang like ROTFL because I am (at over-30) very unhip.  So I
feel that it MUST be funny to say such things.  Like ZOMG and pwn and
!!!eleven!!  It is funnier when I use these terms in communication with my
students than with you, I think, but at lest I amuse myself by writing 
this
e-mail.
Pierre:  2

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eriff (n.) -- 1.  A canary-bird two years old.  2.  A rogue just 
initiated.  (Etymology unknown.)

By:  OED
No votes.

Hutch:  "canary-bird"? It 'twere just "canary" I might've gone for this 
one.  Really like the newly initiated rogue, too, but I seem to recall 
(from Dickens and assorted fantasy novels) that the correct phrase is
"stooled to the rogue".
Jean-Joseph:  David Randall.
[No, no.  We initiated David years ago. --EM]
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ERIFF (n.) -- Desert dust embedded in glacial ice. NOAA researcher Dr. 
Carolyn Wender quotes social critic Arthur Friedman, who inspired her 
current project: "When icebergs have on occasion been towed by ship to 
equatorial regions to provide iced treats for the well-to-do, there have 
been found patches of eriff embedded in the ice rendering it unfit for use 
as a bed for caviar or in drinks.  However, such "riffery" was certainly 
good enough for use in crank freezers for iced creams and sherbets."  
Wender now examines the eriff in icebergs calving from ever-older sections 
of glacier, analyzing it for mineral content and pollen, and has a new 
analysis of the changing wind patterns over the Atlantic ocean which have 
carried Saharan dust to Greenland.  (Scientific American, September 1984, 
p. 77)

By:  Fran
11 = (Judith 2 + Ranjit 1 + Linda 2 + Eric 2 +Jean-Joseph 2 + Jim 2)

Judith:  If this is not the "real" answer (and I doubt if it is), whoever 
wrote it deserves to be the winner, so I'm giving it the 2 points.
Hutch:  Okay, this one is just TOO FAR over the top.
Ranjit:  I don't know why something like that would need a name, but this 
is the only other def with a usage example, and I like saying "riffery",
so one point here.
Linda:  two for the Scientific American spoof
Eric:  Two points.  Because weird words with no obvious Greek or Latin 
roots?  Soil science, all the way.  Podzol.  Karst.
Jean-Joseph:  Well, this certainly strikes me as authentic.  Whether it's 
authentically about 'eriff', or some other word that means dust in a 
glacier, I can't say.  But I'll give it two points.  I have to assume that 
this quote from Friedman is from some time ago, before refrigeration made 
this sort of thing unnecessary.
Jim:    <confusion> This example sounds utterly like an Elliott fiction. 
But... he's running the round! </confusion>  It gets 2 points for 
imitation
of Elliott, if not Webster.

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eriff (n.) -- A breed of goat from Albania and Macedonia.

By:  Pierre
1 (Hutch 1)

Hutch:  I dunno. Simple, straightforward (boring?). But believable: 1 
point
Linda:  I like the Macedonian goats.
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eriff (n.) -- Truncheon; nightstick.

By:  James
2 (Jean-Joseph 1 + Jim 1)

Hutch:  What the sheriff carries? This one earns my next points ... that I
don't have to give.
Jean-Joseph:  One point for not being fancy.
Jim:  1 point

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eriff (n.) -- 1. (Old English) a combat between two berserkers.  2. 
(Middle English) a brawl.

By:  David
5 = (Judith 1 + Hutch 2 + James 1 + Nora 1)

Judith:  That's the only thing left...1 point.
Hutch:  I can't decide whether I believe this one or not, but I'm voting 
for it: 2 points
Jean-Joseph:  Now, If I were Elliott, I'd probably have some insight into 
this one based on whether they used a double-F in Old English.  Or 
something.
James:  ONE POINT
Nora:  I think this combat would be bloody... bloody funny!  only because 
I think the word berserker is funny, too.  This gets my one vote!
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eriff (n.) -- The sundown crepuscular period.

By:  Judith
No votes.

Hutch:  Crepuscular just means 'dim' or 'like twilight'. I just don't see 
this for 'evening twilight'.
Jean-Joseph:  I like 'crepuscular'.  Even though I'm not really sure what 
it means.
[I thought this one was inspired by "erev" -- EM]
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eriff (n.) -- A drumming sequence of four measures of four beats each,
characterized by emphasis on the second beat.  Variations using quarter, 
eighth, and sixteenth notes are frequent.

By:  Linda
No votes.

Hutch:  Another along the lines of Fran's joke definition. Don't think so.
Jean-Joseph:  Tempting.
Jim:  (specifically, each is twice as frequent as the previous!)
Nora:  I liked this one, too because it was like the joke definition.  :)  
No votes to give, though...  half vote?
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