[Harp-L] Burnishing v Embossing

[Bob Cohen]

On Jan 22, 2017, at 10:48 AM, Bob Cohen <bob at xxxxx> wrote:


> On Jan 21, 2017, at 2:41 PM, Jerry Deall <jdeall at xxxxx> wrote:
> 
> 
> shtoys verb, participle geshtoysn, shove; crush; pound

Good one Jerry. If I may add my two cents to the discussion from a writer/English teacher perspective, word meaning changes with usage in living languages. Whatever it meant before, in the common parlance among contemporary harmonic tinkerers, “emboss" now means to narrow the space between the reed plate and the reeds by “smooshing” the metal of the reed plate.

My favorite example of semantic change is the word quaint. When “Handy Nicholas” grabs “Alisoun” by the “quyente” in the “The Miller’s Tale,” Chaucer does not use the word as an adjective nor did it mean “a quaint town: picturesque, charming, sweet, attractive, old-fashioned, old-world, cunning; pseudoarchaic olde, olde worlde.” *** "Adult" Language Trigger Warning *** In the 14th century “quaint” meant “cunt.”

Harmonica content: Why don’t manufacturers machine the reed plates with tighter tolerances in the first place?

Bob Cohen
Writer, Internet Consultant, Teacher
w: bobjcohen.com
t: #itsabobworld