Aq-Ar
This uptalk seems orright to me?
It seems nine out of ten disagree
With Australians’ affection
For rising inflection?
For high raises it’s terminal, see?
Uptalk, also known as upspeak, rising inflection, high rising intonation (HRI), or high rising terminal (HRT), is when English-speakers habitually end declarative sentences with the intonation of a question? It’s heard in accents from Belfast, northeast England, Canada, Hong Kong and California (among “Valley girls”)? It’s been a feature of some Australian accents since the 1960s, especially among younger speakers and women? In Britain, where it’s known as Australian question intonation (AQI), its spread among young people since the 1990s has been blamed on the popularity of the Australian soap opera Neighbours? A survey in 2014 claimed that 85% of British managers believed that use of AQI by employees was a sign of insecurity and might affect their chances of promotion? That’d be right?
Aqua, a light greenish blue,
And aquamarine, the same hue,
Both stem, as they oughta,
From aqua, for water;
The stuff that the pisces swim through.
My soul had no water-borne birth.
A centaur inside? Cause for mirth!
I’m neither Aquarian
Nor Sagittarian:
My astral home’s always been Earth.
When arousing his partner erotically,
Cousteau liked behaving exotically:
He would don rubber suit,
And some flippers to boot,
And tickle her fancy aquatically.
Fiona was caught unawares
When, as they got up from their chairs,
Her date said, “Hey Fee,
How would you like to see
The aquatints I keep upstairs.”
When his jester diminished his bliss
With a watery gag on some miss
(A cornier joke
Than the King liked), he spoke,
“What aqueous humour is this?”
Some said it was hooked like a beak;
Some saw it and hardly could speak.
Whatever they did,
People said of our Sid
That his aquiline nose was unique.
“Defining Arabian mustard
Is easy: it’s whitetop.” “I trusted
You’d tell us some more.”
“You want more? Okay, sure:
It’s a brassica. There, done and dusted.”
Arabian mustard appears to be an obsolete name for several brassica species, but especially Lepidium draba, also known as whitetop, hoary cress or Thanet cress. This perennial herb with white flowers is native to western Asia and southeastern Europe and an invasive weed in North America and Australia.
Modern Arabic isn’t a tongue
Used by many whom I live among,
But in Middle East lands
And North African sands
It is commonly spoken and sung.
The Arabic alphabet’s read
Right to left (Roman’s left-right, instead).
The part I forget is
Its actual letters—
Their numerals, I have in my head.
0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9—and that’s from memory!
To arabize, make like an Arab:
Eat oranges, couscous, and carob.
Spend time in the sun;
Wear a headdress—it’s fun!
(But no animal charms, like a scarab.)
Reader, concentrate: all of us die.
But there’s death and there’s death, and here’s why:
It takes mass consecration
To fight the negation
Implicit in Arbeit macht Frei.
Archaeology: study of old stuff,
Conducted by those who behold stuff
Made by Romans or Greeks.
When the Ancient World speaks,
You should listen, ’cause some of it’s gold stuff.
A dinosaur sick of old tricks
Decided one day to affix
Some feathers and things
To his forelegs (now wings)
To meet archaeopteryx chicks.
Who cares if they’re odd or tongue-twistery?
Archaisms add to the mystery
Of English, say I.
Thou wouldst banish them? Fie!
And gadzooks! Hast thou no sense of history?
Archaisms used on the Net
(Like that capital N) look all wet.
Writing out “World Wide Web”—
It’s the web now, you pleb!
And you’re using “e-hyphen-mail”, yet!
I don’t really mind if you’re still using Olde Internet Style, but prepare yourself for a bit of mockery from any Web loggers who “Google™”-search their way to your Home Page.
Herr Detective! Schnell, looken zie zere!
Kaiser Berti vas murdered! But vere
Is ze culprit? Ach, nein!
It’s his servant, ze svine!
Ja, ze archbutler did it, I svear.
An officer of the German empire, the Erz-Mundschenk.
He envied his neighbours’ archdukedom;
Each offer he made, they rebuked ’em.
He offered a million;
Then a cool thirty billion.
When they turned down a trillion, he nuked ’em.
When Superman said to his rival,
“You’re risking the planet’s survival!”
Lex laughed, “Never fear,
There’s a backup right here:
A set of Earth blueprints archival.”
Let’s archive our art on the Moon!
A poem, a painting, a tune—
We’ll preserve it all there.
The new space race: prepare
30,000 new artworks by June.
An archive’s the ultimate store
For documents, photos and more,
And apparently, soon,
There’ll be one on the Moon.
(People only kept cheese there before.)
The Lunar Codex, the brainchild of physicist and author Samuel Peralta, is a series of four time capsules containing the work of 30,000 contemporary artists from 157 countries inscribed on small discs of nickel NanoFiche and radiation-shielded memory cards, which will be sent to the Moon through the mid-2020s as commercial payloads accompanying NASA missions.
On his doubters, the Wiz stole a march,
As he sawed through the box made of larch.
“My assistant,” he said,
“Was already half-dead.”
(As magicians go, this one was arch.)
...because he was an archmagician, or chief magician. (There are subordinate magicians? Maybe they’re the ones in the box.)
A migrating bird told her mother,
“I want to fly north like my brother!”
So her mum asked the shop
If the airline would swap
Her own Arctic return for another.
The Arctic tern typically migrates from the Arctic to the Antarctic and back each year.
A malt whisky taster and sniffer
Liked snifters that little bit stiffer
Than boring ol’ blends:
“You may like ’em, my friends,”
He would banter, “but Ardbeg to differ.”
“Just leave it, you rock-climbing creep!”
Said a team-mate, “I just want to sleep.
That peak is too high;
If we try it, we’ll die.
It’s arduous. Difficult. Steep.”
Those Olympian gods were a bore:
Zeus and Hera, and Artemis—snore!
They were far too abundant,
And now they’re redundant.
(Except Ares, the Greek god of war.)
The Lone Ranger peered over the brow
Of the cliff, and when Tonto asked, “How?”
Said, “I should’ve yelled whoa!
But the canyon below...
Well, it’s all argentiferous now.”
I stuffed pita fibre, or arghan,
Right into his mouth, really far, an’
He went, “Aaarrrgggh!
AaaaAAAArrrrggGGH!
AAAAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGHHHHH, MAN!”
We nicknamed the first of ’em “Argle”;
The other, his brother, was Bargle.
In the car, they would fight
Every day and all night,
Argle-bargling until Invercargill.
“You’re a chauvinist pig, born and bred—
All those macho ideas in your head!
Even how you address me
Is meant to oppress me.”
“That’s arguable, baby,” he said.
An aristo’s one of the posh,
With a title, a mansion, and dosh;
And a daddy and mummy
Whose accents are plummy
Who always say “spiffing” and “gosh!”
Aristophanes wrote lots of plays;
Just eleven survive, nowadays:
The Wasps and The Birds
(33,000 words)
And nine more (tally prone to delays).
Aristotle, philosopher (Greek),
Was in that sense, at least, not unique.
But his impact was vast,
And without him, our past,
And—who knows—future too, would be bleak.
My arms—they won’t wave! They just keep
Kinda hanging—refusing to sweep!
They’re no longer alive!
Call a medic!... Oh. I’ve
Only rolled on them during my sleep.
So I said to ol’ lopsided Greg,
“Tell me, why in the world do you beg?”
He responded, “Before,
When I bought that chain saw?
Well, it cost me an arm and a leg.”
To win people’s minds and their hearts, he
Thought, “I know: get crafty and artsy!
An adornment or two...
Ja, an armband will do.
With a swastika, ’cause I’m a Nazi.”
The work in the Louvre ain’t charmless,
So why not go look? It’s quite harmless.
There’s lots that’s beguiling,
Like Mona, who’s smiling,
And Venus de Milo, who’s armless.
To avoid ever coming to harm or
Your end, just invest in some armour.
In sheet-metal suits
With pointy-toed boots,
Life is always substantially calmer.
The right to bear arms is such fun!
You’ll always be safe with a gun.
You’re never in danger
From mugger or stranger,
So shoot, people—get yourselves one!
Arm wrestling’s my favourite sport:
The tension! So gripping! So fraught!
My Gran (eighty-three)
Likes it too; good for me,
Because she’s the main person I’ve fought.
King Philip the Second of Spain
Sent his ships off to England to gain
Both its crown and its land;
His Armada, though grand,
Found the target too ’ard to attain.
Our product has seen a decline
In its sales, which is not at all fine.
But they’re turning around:
Our profits were sound
From the start of last quarter. More wine!
Father’s language was fairly archaic.
While admiring a Roman mosaic,
He observed, “How arrestive!
A rather suggestive
Nude bull-fighter. Is it Mithraic?”
The art of the Cult of Mithras in Ancient Rome often featured Mithras killing a bull; other iconic scenes showed him being born from a rock and feasting with the god Sol (the sun). Then there was the lion-headed man, naked apart from one or two serpents entwined around his winged body. Imagine if Mithraism hadn’t lost out to Christianity...
Anyway, yeah: arrestive was a nineteenth-century synonym of arresting.
Sebastian was thankful when he
Was skewered with arrows; you see,
The guy was a saint,
And they usually ain’t
As sick of The Archers as me.
An everyday tale of country folk heard on BBC Radio 4. And I do mean every day.
The robin flew swiftly and sparrowy
In the straightest of lines (i.e., arrowy).
Took him ten minutes flat;
Nearly caught by a cat!
But he knew that the trip would be harrowy.
The bottom, or backside, or arse,
Is a popular subject of farce.
Many actors will find
They’re surprised from behind
In performances lacking in class.
At Cher’s waxwork, I start to expound,
“The likeness is... rather profound...”
But then hear someone shout,
“Mate, she’s all arse about!
Back to front! It’s the wrong way around!”
Impregnable up on its hill,
A castle ain’t easy to kill.
But cannon and mortar
Should hasten the slaughter:
Arsenal 1, Castle 0.
The National Gallery of Art
Is a place rather close to my heart.
There’s Rembrandts to see,
And admission is free—
So skinflindts can go, for a start.
An art house is where you will find
All those films of less-popular kind,
Like a subtitled drama
Of some lonely farmer
Who’s Russian, or crazy, or blind.
An arthritic ol’ ankylosaur
Couldn’t tolerate life any more.
“My knuckles are fine,”
He was heard to opine,
“But blimey, my ankles are sore.”
King Arthur: some say he was fake,
Others credit what legend hath spake.
I accept the accord
On the stone and the sword,
But what gives with that broad in the lake?
The governor said, “It is plain
That this drongo is wrong in the brain.
Is he Arthur or Martha?
I reckon Macarthur
Don’t know. He’s confused—or insane.”
Australians will say about someone who’s always confused that he or she doesn’t know if he’s (or she’s) Arthur or Martha, unless they’re speakin’ real informal and say that he or she “don’t know”.
John Macarthur (1767–1834) was an influential early figure New South Wales. As pioneer of the Merino wool industry, he became the richest man in the colony, and was also the instigator of the Rum Rebellion of 1808, a military coup against Governor William Bligh. Later in life he served in the NSW Legislative Council until he was removed, two years before his death, upon being declared a lunatic by Governor Richard Bourke. For many years he was depicted on the Australian two dollar note, which failed to highlight this detail.
Mrs May triggered Article 50,
And Johnson thought all would be nifty.
Now that crashing out beckons,
His government reckons
It does us all good to be thrifty.
Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union, often abbreviated A50 or Art50 on social media, sets out the procedure for a country to exit the EU, specifying a two-year period for negotiating its withdrawal. The UK asked twice under Theresa May for this period to be extended, but current prime minister Boris Johnson, despite his earlier insistence that Britain would get “the best deal”, now maintains that he will not ask for any further extension whether or not a withdrawal agreement is reached. This threatens a “no deal” Brexit on 31 October 2019, which the government’s own analysis suggests will have a substantial negative impact on Britain’s economy and daily life.
When encouraging livestock creation,
Handle mothers with care, not vexation:
Artificial or real,
It’s still a big deal
To be subject to insemination.
An artiodactyl’s a pig
Or a camel; some little or big
Even-toed kind of beast—
Says my uncle, at least.
(“It’s an ungulate, sonny, you dig?”)
A thespian said to a priest,
“You’re a vicar, but I’m an artiste!”
Said the priest, “So you say.
But a great one? No way.
Compared to us guys, you’re the least.”
To protect against error or goof,
The printmaker runs off a proof
To ensure an engraving
Is not misbehaving
Or making the artist go “oof!”
Here’s a piece that we got in today:
An example of New Age crochet.
It can serve as a hat
Or a belt, or... what’s that?
A bit too artsy-craftsy, you say?