Lexigame Community
General Category => Words => Topic started by: TRex on August 11, 2014, 01:12:47 PM
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it seems unfair that mordent is classified as rare whilst mordant is common. I've certainly encountered the former far more than the latter.
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And I've never heard of mordent but knew that mordant had something to do with dyeing. What varied knowledge Chihuahua players have!
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TR, we should all take note of this.
;D
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I've played a few mordents in my day. Nevertheless, I have no problem with the current status of these two words. Mordent is strictly a musical term, and there are plenty of musical terms which would seem to me to be much more widely known and yet are classified as less common in Chihuahua. Mordant, which can refer to a dye fixative, has other meanings which are more familiar to me. For example, some people's senses of humor are referred to as mordant, and sharp cheeses have been described this way.
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I have to agree (belatedly) with rogue_mother here.
Mordent is such a specialised word that I'd never heard of it. It appears in English language corpora far less frequently than mordant. What's more, some of the examples of usage of mordent are actually misspellings of mordant: "mordent satire", etc.
I'm satisfied mordent should continue to be classed as rare.
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Just found this ...
Mordent is one of the few words doing the rounds here that is completely new to me.
Mordant, on the other hand, I encountered when using a microscope at the age of 11. When using stains to enhance tissue contrast under the microscope, a mordant is a substance used to act as a sort of "glue" between the tissue and the stain. As an example from that past foray into microscopy, a stain that's used for plant tissues is iron haematoxylin, but you need to soak the tissue to be stained in an alum solution for the stain to bind. Otherwise, the stain washes right out when you counterstain with another stain, such as carbol-fuchsin.