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 #17 (permalink) Sun Jul 09, 2006 20:51 pm Meaning of sewer |
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| Slava wrote: | | Jamie (K) wrote: | | I have seen Russian women who sew for a living list their occupation as sewer! I rolled over laughing the first time I saw that. |
Hi Jamie, I can see why you were laughing but then again, my dictionary says that a sewer can be a drainage pipe as well as one who sews. So how do I do know sewer is not a profession? |
The word sewer is seldom used to mean a person who sews, and it would be used even more seldom in writing, because it can so easily be confused with the word for the sewage drainage pipe. Using sewer as a term for someone who sews also sounds a bit low colloquial, as if it were made up on the fly by someone who didn't know the normal words for that profession.
It's similar to drawer. The retractable box meaning is so dominant that it's very rare to hear it used to mean a person who draws. In the latter meaning, it also sounds low colloquial. |
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Jamie (K)
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| #18 (permalink) Sun Jul 09, 2006 21:07 pm Meaning of sewer |
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Hmm, then we should notify the guys over at leo.org as they claim that sewer is a profession.
So, what do American say then when they refer to the profession, is it seamstress or sempstress? |
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Slava
Programmer and Co-founder
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| #19 (permalink) Sun Jul 09, 2006 21:40 pm Beer in Slovakia |
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Hi Slava
"Seamstress" would definitely be a more commonly used word than "sewer" to speak of a profession. To be honest, I'd never heard the word "sempstress" before.
A more general term is "garment worker" (which I don't find in Leo at all  ).
Amy |
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Yankee
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| #20 (permalink) Sun Jul 09, 2006 23:02 pm Beer in Slovakia |
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Hey Everybody,
I'm not sure if anyone's interested, but I've learned something important from this book of mine.
Did you know, if you making a soup, (beefsoup, whatever) and you want the meat to absorve better into the water, you have to put it into the water when it's still cold, and warm it up to the boiling point while the meat has been in the water already? Otherwise the hot water blocks those cells in the meat (don't ask me what kind of cells exactly, cells in the meat,that's it) therefore the meat itself stays more valuble. (More stuff stays in the meat, but the water doesn't change that much.)
I hope you didn't mind my off-topic interruption, but since I saw this little trick in this book, I couldn't resist to tell everybody I've met, and the strange thing in it is :noone knew about it.
All right, I go back to read.
Does the word absorve exist? I meant something like melting, and this word popped up somehow. It's not in my dicionary but it makes some sense in my head.
I told you not to tell me new words, now I'm making up my own language 
Good night
Spencer |
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Spencer
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Fan Of Arabian Horses
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| #22 (permalink) Sun Jul 09, 2006 23:48 pm Meaning of sewer |
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| Slava wrote: | Hmm, then we should notify the guys over at leo.org as they claim that sewer is a profession.
So, what do American say then when they refer to the profession, is it seamstress or sempstress? |
A man who sews is called a tailor. Over the past several years, they've been calling women tailors also. Traditionally, a woman tailor was called a seamstress. Amy's suggestion garment worker is also correct, but that's usually someone who works in a clothing factory making mass-produced clothing. A person who sews chairs and sofas, or car seats, would be an upholsterer, I suppose, but he or she does more than just sew. I don't know what they call the Hmong ladies who sew the convertible tops of Fords and Jeeps.
The LEO dictionary is a life-saving resource. I can't tell you how many times it has pulled my nuts out of the fire. However, once in a very long while I find something in there that I have serious doubts about.
I think the absolute worst electronic dictionary is the Millennium Czech-English dictionary. About 50 percent of its English translations are from some other planet. |
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Jamie (K)
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Tamara
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| #24 (permalink) Mon Jul 10, 2006 13:36 pm Beer in Slovakia |
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| Tamara wrote: | | Jamie (K), thank you for the interesting posts (and sorry for my Cyrillic writing. Your computer is not due to communicate by Cyrillic letters unless it is taught to do that ). |
Actually, Tamara, my computer has been "taught" to write not only in Cyrillic, but also in Czech, Slovak, Polish, Hungarian, Arabic, Chinese and IPA, and it happily writes in Cyrillic rather frequently.
The problem was that I wrote examples in Cyrillic, but when I previewed my post, the site showed me "buxgalter" as "?????????". Anything Cyrillic came back as question marks from English-Test.net, even though I can write in Cyrillic and read Russian newspapers on my computer.
It's a mystery why the site will take Cyrillic from you, but not from me. 
Perhaps because I might use it for evil.  |
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Jamie (K)
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Spencer
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Fan Of Arabian Horses
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Conchita
Language Coach
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Torsten
Learning Coach
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| #29 (permalink) Tue Jul 11, 2006 0:23 am Beer in Slovakia |
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MIchael,
There you go!!!
You came from the back, but you got it!
Thanks a zillion my best net-friend I've ever had, but this thing is not solved until I found the same meaning of that stupid word I made up.
This became my mission, and I'll be more than happy if I know you by my side,bloodbrother
One's for all, nothing can stop us, no smoking alowed in this building!
Spencer |
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Spencer
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Posts: 326
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| #30 (permalink) Tue Jul 11, 2006 8:42 am Beer in Slovakia |
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Hi!
| spencer wrote: | Tamara, so you knew the trick.
Good.
I'm going to keep on reading till I find something you DON'T know and I'll get you once and for all 
(It's gonna take a little while though, there are still about seven hundred and fifty pages ahead of me) |
Let me just make a note that you also should learn tricks which are rarely mentioned in such guides. For example, how to choose a really right peace of raw meat properly.
Do you know, for example, how selective and careful is a Caucasian herder (‘чабан’, pronounced as [chaban]), when he receives a really important guest?
He takes a piece of fresh meat from the right side of a young black male lamb (if I didn’t mix up something important in this formula ). This is a ritualised action to choose the most delicious and soft part - to demonstrate his respect to the guest.
Also, as you need to put your growing theoretical knowledge in practice, you need to organise a permanent inflow of fresh and healthy volunteers who are ready to taste results of your experiments.
(Thanks, God, for my husband’s even-tempered character, health and his patience!  )
Tamara
_________________
It’s impossible to learn swimming without entering the water… |
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Tamara
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| Education in English? | Any Recommend Podcast? |
. And you called it a snot slurper. 
But why don?t you change your sentence that way: