roily

[Paul B. Gallagher]

William Ryan wrote:

> There is no point in consulting "British dictionaries" unless you
> consult the Oxford English Dictionary - the vast, comprehensive and
> continuously updated standard work. It lists both "roily" and the
> variant(?) "riley" with many examples, indicating predominantly US
> usage, and in the case of "riley" regional US usage. Like John, as a
> user of British English I totally unaware of "roily" - but did know
> "roiling" as a archaic or poetic word.

I don't know "roil" as a noun, but it's certainly familiar over here as 
a verb, especially in crosswords. Thanks for making the connection to 
"rile" -- "to agitate, stir up (a person)." No relation to "the life of 
Riley," I suppose.

> With regard to Paul's earlier comment that "roily" is unusual in
> being formed from a verb - we do not know that this is so, since
> "roil" also exists as a noun. Compare "seepy", "creepy", "jumpy",
> "rumbly", "moany" etc, etc - are these deverbal or denominal? Hard to
> prove. In colloquial English you can add -y as a formative suffix to
> many words and still be understood even if the resulting word is not
> in any dictionary.

Of these, "seepy," "rumbly," and "moany" are unfamiliar to me, so I 
can't judge their provenance. But "jumpy" seems clearly deverbal, since 
"jump" is naturally verbal (an "action word") and the corresponding noun 
is derivative.

Still, the general pattern is that "-y" is usually added to nouns to 
form adjectives. Even a few hundred exceptions won't disprove that.

> As for the alleged absence of "runny" in English-Russian
> dictionaries, it is in the Oxford Russian Dictionary (3rd edn is the
> one I looked at) which gives "mokryj" for describing a runny nose,
> and in my English-Russian section of the 1995 Penguin Russian
> Dictionary, which gives "soplivyj" in the same sense.

I wouldn't claim that it was absent from /all/ English-Russian 
dictionaries; I only remarked that it was absent from the three I consulted:

1. Большой англо-русский словарь/New English-Russian Dictionary, ed. by 
I. P. Galperin. 2nd ed. 2 vols. Moscow: Русский язык, 1977. About 
150,000 words.

2. Англо-русский словарь/English-Russian Dictionary, by V. D. Arakin, Z. 
S. Vygodskaya, & N. N. Ilyina. 4th ed. Moscow: Государственное изд-во 
иностранных и национальных словарей, 1962. About 34,000 words.

3. Англо-русский словарь/English-Russian Dictionary, ed. by V. D. Arakin 
et al. 13th stereotype ed. Moscow: Русский язык, 1990. About 36,000 entries.

Of these, only the third is significantly younger than 1970 and should 
be expected to contain it. You don't cite the date of your dictionary, 
but I'll wager it's not too old...

-- 
War doesn't determine who's right, just who's left.
--
Paul B. Gallagher
pbg translations, inc.
"Russian Translations That Read Like Originals"
http://pbg-translations.com

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