three suggestions

[TRex]

From the baptismal game:

stim - a small amount, also slang for stimulant
salam - a low bow (verb and noun)
mistal - a cow shed

[mkenuk]

I know 'salaam' (one of the few words you can't help learning if you spend any time at all in the Middle East), but I've always seen it spelled in English with double 'a', presumably to try to echo the very long vowel in the Arabic word.
MK

[TRex]

I know 'salaam' (one of the few words you can't help learning if you spend any time at all in the Middle East), but I've always seen it spelled in English with double 'a', presumably to try to echo the very long vowel in the Arabic word.
MK

I've seen it both ways. The double 'a' (three 'a's) is probably more common.

[birdy]

I think I've always seen "salaam" with the double a.

I think I've only heard "stim" in the drug sense, but I don't believe I've ever seen "mistal."

[Alan W]

I'll answer these one at a time.

Mistal is in the Collins Dictionary as a dialect word for a cow shed. It's in Wiktionary as well. An example of the word in use is from a 2012 article in the Dewsbury Reporter. Dewsbury, in Yorkshire, is where my grandmother was born as it happens.

The local farmer, Mr Lindley, used to take down the fence between his paddock and the 'piece' which allowed the feast to extend right up to the cattle mistal.

I'll add mistal as a rare word.

[cmh]

Going back 30 years or so I have had plenty of good Yorkshire bargains from Dewsbury market! I suppose mistal is a dialect word but it seems common enough to me although of course now an old fashioned word.
This has prompted me to mention "lamper" another word which is not accepted on Chi and which could have been played twice in the last week or so. This may also be dialect but I have found some references on the inter net and they tally with my meaning of the word. It is one who goes lamping. Not a particularly nice activity as it is hare or rabbit coursing at night using high powered lights usually mounted  on 4 by 4's. I suppose I should have started a new thread but as I have said on the forum before I am rubbish on the computer and I can reply but I can't work out which button to press to start afresh!!!!!

[yelnats]

"Lamping" would be called 'spotlighting' in Oz.

[Alan W]

Cmh, you may as well make a new suggestion in the middle of an existing topic - everyone else does! Actually the only problem (for you) is that I might overlook it. But I have made a note of the lamper suggestion, and I'll answer it in due course.

But starting a new topic is not too hard. I'll try to explain, assuming you know very little about using the forum. You need to be on the page that shows the list of existing topics in whatever category you want to post in. The forum has 6 categories. This one is "Words". On the page you have open you'll see a line towards the top like this:

Lexigame Community > General Category > Words > three suggestions

If you click on "Words", you will get to the list of topics for the Words category (including this one, "three suggestions"). At the top of the list, towards the right, you should see

MARK READ | NOTIFY | NEW TOPIC | POST NEW POLL

Click on "NEW TOPIC" and you'll create a new topic. The main difference from replying to an existing topic is that you have to supply a "Subject", i.e. a heading for the topic.

If you don't want to start a topic in Words, but in another category, you can click on "General Category" and you will see all 6 categories, so you can select the one you want.

If you're still unsure what to do, you could try the big yellow "Help" button at the top right of every page. This opens up a set of Help pages that go into a fair bit of detail, with graphics.

Good luck!

[CJx]

Stimming is also an autistic behaviour, where people carry out repetitive actions in an attempt to calm themselves. One can stim in all sorts of ways e.g. rocking, tapping, staring...
I think 'stim' and 'stimming' probably have their roots in 'stimulation'.
Not that I have looked any of this up in the Required Dictionaries

[cmh]

Thanks Alan. I will write down these instructions and when I next feel brave enough to voice a suggestion I will follow them. I had looked at Help but I sometimes think I just panic (rather like I did at school when faced with "problems"   oh  those men building walls in x number of hours how they  still haunt my nightmares!!)

[birdy]

I had looked at Help but I sometimes think I just panic (rather like I did at school when faced with "problems"   oh  those men building walls in x number of hours how they  still haunt my nightmares!!)

Or even worse, those men building walls starting at opposite ends and moving toward each other at different rates of speed - when would they meet?

That was the one kind of problem that I couldn't figure out (the others just took a long time).

[Alan W]

Regarding salam, as an alternate spelling of salaam, the greeting used in Arabic-speaking and Muslim countries, I'm not convinced it should be added to our words.

Words coming from a language with a different alphabet from ours often appear in multiple versions. In this case the version with three As seems to have become fairly standard a long time ago. Most dictionaries don't offer salam as an option. The full-sized OED lists a number of variants in use from the 1600s, but none of them other than salaam are shown as still being current. Salam is identified as being in use from the 1600s to the 1800s.

I think this version is too rarely used to warrant us allowing it in Chi.

[Alan W]

I agree with the suggestion of stim. It has a few meanings.

In Ireland it is used for a very small amount, always in a negative context: "not a stim". The English Dialect Dictionary gives the example "The night was ... dark; ... you could not see a stim." This sense is listed in the Collins Dictionary. The word cracker is used in a similar way in Australia, but only for money: "He didn't have a cracker."

As you say, TRex, stim is also used as an informal term for stimulant. In fact it seems to be used for many words derived from stimulate - stimulant, stimulation, stimulus. I saw a reference to "fiscal stim". Also "nipple stim".

And as CJx tells us, stim can mean a repetitive action typical of autism. The word is apparently derived from "self-stimulatory behaviour". I didn't see this meaning in any dictionary except Wiktionary. However the overwhelming majority of uses of the word online are using it in this sense. Stim in this sense is also used as a verb, so I will allow stimmed and stimming as well as stim.

[Alan W]

Somewhere during this discussion, cmh suggested lamper, a person who goes hunting at night with bright lights. The activity of the lamper is called lamping, but we already allow this word, as well as lamped, possibly from the use of lamp meaning to install lamps in an area.

I can see the word lamper in a few of the Oxford dictionaries, and there is occasional use of it in British newspapers. I don't see any signs of the word being used outside the UK. Yelnats mentioned the word spotlighting, which is used more widely for this practice, and the person who does it can be termed a spotlighter.

I will allow lamper in future. We already have a word lampers, an alternate spelling of lampas: "A condition of horses, in which there is swelling of the fleshy lining of the roof of the mouth behind the front teeth." I'm not going to spend any time considering whether to disallow this word in future as a plural. I will leave well enough alone.

[ensiform]

I'm lamping!

https://youtu.be/wqwYnVOQfrY