If you have nothing better to do...

[Frankie Reloaded]

...I would like to ask you to help me out. I came across a thing in a novel which I just do not understand and Google brings strange unusable results*.

A caster is going to cast a spell. She warns a nameless enemy: "If you en´t telling me your name, I´ll bind you as a nameless thing. And you´ll still be bounden, tied and sealed like a polter or a shuck."

What do you think polter and shuck mean in this context? What would occur to you when reading the sentence? I know how dictionaries define shuck, but polter? Poltergeist? In a shuck?

The author is Neil Gaiman, so the language should probably be UK English

* http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=POLTER

[Snusdog]

shuck in that context would seem to be a soul pulled or "shucked" from the body and bound by the soul snatcher. If I remember my voodoo correctly.

But you might want to check further just to make sure.

[Skell18]

I would say shuck is what dog describes, your soul ripped from your body, like shucking an oyster, its forced open to remove the meat inside, similar thing with getting your soul, its forcibly removed and them held as a prisoner by the snatcher, your body left as a soulless shell with no purpose.

[crullers]

I would say shuck is what dog describes, your soul ripped from your body, like shucking an oyster, its forced open to remove the meat inside, similar thing with getting your soul, its forcibly removed and them held as a prisoner by the snatcher, your body left as a soulless shell with no purpose.

That sounds just like my first marriage!

[Skell18]

That sounds just like my first marriage!

hahahahahaha

[Frankie Reloaded]

Thank you very much. You are truly awesome.

Now I can boast the depths of my English language skills to my fellow Slovaks

[Snusdog]

Also to elaborate.......the binding part is that a soul so displaced (shucked) from its body- without proper burial rites of "passage" is left to wander "bound" or trapped here and thus is not allowed to pass on and so rest in peace.


Either that....or it pretty much describes marriage as crullers suggested.....

[Frankie Reloaded]

This fits perfectly because the "thing" started causing trouble in human world and the caster came to bound it so that its powers would not reach anywhere outside its domain. I just got sidetracked by dictionary meaning of "shuck" as a corn or green peas outer cover leading me to an image of the thing being forcefully placed in something resembling shuck. Your explanation is much better.

I also learned that it´s not a good idea to study poltergeist around midnight yesterday, especially for a person with a history of anxiety attacks :embarrassed blush:

[Frankie Reloaded]

I have another problem for those who have nothing better to do than help

This time it´s military. Or at least I think.

(A man lit a cigar in a hospital, cancer ward no less, and...)

"Excuse me," said the woman with the clipboard, when she saw the smoke, and she launched herself across the room at Fat Charlie's father like a SCUD missile with its watch on upside down.

I really do not get this. If you do, please let me know. It was "its watch", so the missile should have... No. I am lost :bi_polo:

[Andy105]

Not sure. Some wear their watch facing inward, on their wrist, so that the crystal doesn't reflect and give away their position. Call it 'upside down' . Maybe a reference to being stealthy, or quietly?

[Frankie Reloaded]

Thank you Andy, this might be it. I can definitely work with that connotation in translating that paragraph.

[trebli]

Well Frankie, you’re more of a scholar than I am. I’d ponder the meaning for a nanosecond and keep reading.


If I had to guess, I would say that someone who turns their watch upside down “means business”. I’ve done it myself. With the stretchy Spandex type of band it’s easy and quick to flip the watch over and slide it up your forearm. This protects the watch face from scratching when you are working on something.

[Snusdog]

"Excuse me," said the woman with the clipboard, when she saw the smoke, and she launched herself across the room at Fat Charlie's father like a SCUD missile with its watch on upside down.

As I read it..........it seems the image is that the woman......or more precisely..... her arm (on which there was an inverted watch) was like a SCUD missile zeroing in on the smoker.........thus the picture is an attempt at a humorous juxtaposition of missile and arm....... resulting in the mental image of a watch wearing SCUD.

Bottom line...... the consternation then is not so much a matter of an unknown military detail......as it is of poor writing

[Frankie Reloaded]

Day care for school kids?

Hello. At the moment I am struggling with American concept of day care in a book I am translating. The problem is there was a fire in an "unlicensed day care facility" and the kid who is talking about that was 7 years old when it happened. Now: there are 2 types of day care in Slovakia with completely different names and and concepts (even different types of buildings) and I am not sure which one to use as a parralel to the one in US English.

Do you think the day care in the book (located in Los Angeles) was:
- some sort of kindergarten and the kid did not go to school even at 7 (she was not disabled or anything like that), or
- some sort of after-school care for smaller kids called "school club" in my country and usually organized by and located in the school?

Thank you for your insights as ever

[Andy105]

It could be a commercial day care facility, licensed to watch kids after school, or a school district sponsored system, or even a private home where one person watches a few kids for hire (usually licensed). After-school daycare is not uncommon for late afternoon child care here, til the parent or parents get off work. Unlicensed is probable a private enterprise.