;-) In which case, it may be a good idea to read the article before condemning the results?
Maybe jbif? or maybe my own tests suggest its not worth my time reading it? :)
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or maybe my own tests suggest its not worth my time reading it? :)
In which case I shall bow to your superior knowledge.
Edited by jbif on 27/10/2008 at 10:36
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Another person misunderstanding the term 'mimsing'.
Well, my excuse is that it's not a very well documented expression. I've carried out several internet searches for mimser using various search engines, and the only relevant references to it I can find are here in HJ's Back Room.
Edited by L'escargot on 27/10/2008 at 10:59
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I've carried outseveral internet searches for mimser using various search engines and the only relevant references to it I can find are here in HJ's Back Room.
Isn't this the internet gastropod? The meaning of this slang word has been examined here at length. Some people disapprove of it because they think it is 'judgemental' about careful drivers, despite the many assurances given to the contrary by those who think it a useful shorthand term for this sort of discussion.
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I think the problem is, one never really has any idea why a driver is driving how they are just by following them, so making judegments on it is rather dodgy.
I mean, Im against speeding as such, but if someone was rushing their child to hospital etc, I could well understand it.
In the same way, I would far rather the elderly retain their licenses and drive slow than loose their independance. They usually go so slow they are easy to pass.
The worst mimsers as far as I can tell, are middle aged - fully capable physically of driving well, but clearly dont have the slightest hint of ability at it.
Also, I think should be included, are those with the big 4x4's who simply cant handle them - seem to be a lot of these about and because they spend so much time messing around not parking their stupidly big car, they hold everyone up.
I sat and watched this woman in out local carpark try 6 separate times to park her Audi Q7 and fail each time - with a queue of 8 cars waiting getting rather annoyed.
I dont drive fast, but I dont get in anyones way on purpose either - if I have someone behind me who wants to overtake I tend to ease off down the straights so they can pass ( though strangely they often dont - perhaps a speeding mimser? ).
If you have a low-powered car, they often loose speed on hills, which from behind may look like mimsing, but it is infact just the same as when a lorry cant maintain its speed in the same situation.
And I do get great economy from driving slow and since Im rarely in a hurry to get anywhere, getting there quicker is irrelevant. To be honest though, there are so few stretches where i live that you can drive legally above 50, its not often you will technically be holding anyone up.
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>>I think the problem is, one never really has any idea why a driver is driving how they are just by following them, so making judegments on it is rather dodgy.
Tut tut. Thinking like this will deprive many contributors to this site of important exercise, such as rushing to judge, jumping to conclusions and leaping to the moral high ground.
Sometimes I drive more slowly than is permitted, often I walk rather than run, I have even slowed down to let my kids get a better look at the alpacas in the field. If my going slowly makes you late, try leaving a little earlier.
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>>I think the problem is one never really has any idea why a driver is driving how they are just by following them so making judegments on it is rather dodgy. Tut tut. Thinking like this will deprive many contributors to this site of important exercise such as rushing to judge jumping to conclusions and leaping to the moral high ground.
Who is judging, jumping to conclusions and taking the moral highground? The people on here who regularly use the expression have already stated that 'driving slowly' is not their definition of the term.
Perhaps if you find those traits as objectionable as your post suggests, you should consider apologising to those you've committed them against?
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Heh heh BB... I must say I too sometimes think, reading between the lines, that some post has come from a militant mimser of the worst type...
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I love the word mimse. I'm not sure that I've ever used it myself, but it is delightful - almost onomatopoeic, were that possible in the circumstances.
There should be a word which means "the use of words that seem to imitate the sounds they refer to, were the thing they refer to to actually be a sound, or have a sound associated with them".
The very feel of the word mimser, rolled around the mouth - you can see the person dithering in your minds eye, mounting pavements on sharp left handers in towns, parking exactly 3/4 of a cars length from the next car when parallel parking, failing to switch their lights on when it's so dark they're a barely perceptible shadow on the road, sitting behind a tractor on an A-road inches away from it and halfway across the white line, but making no attempt to overtake it when the road is clear for miles ahead, doing 40 in a NSL but then not decellerating at all when they go into a town. Mimsing.
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Quite BB. It's why at age 13 I understood immediately what it meant to a driver, and loved it on sight. Mimsers and people so hopelessly liberal that they think people have a moral right to mimse detest and fear it for the same reason.
:o}
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It is a sad fact though that there are more and more mimsers, whose behaviour is encouraged by legislators hostile to the automobile and indifferent to our psychic well-being, and the pace and rhythm (or in this case, arrhythmia) of traffic is often effectively set by them. In dense traffic it only takes one or two to screw things up definitively for miles.
In the much emptier roads, and more technically proficient motoring population, of the fifties mimsers were thinner on the ground and were less dominant. I doubt if WB of Motor Sport, a keen driver of usually quite modest cars back in those days, expected the carphounds to take over.
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It's why at age 13 I understood immediately what it meant to a driver ....
Had the word even been coined when you were 13, Lud?
;-)
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>>Perhaps if you find those traits as objectionable as your post suggests, you should consider apologising to those you've committed them against?
I never said that I find these traits objectionable (that is just someone jumping to a conclusion). These traits are what adds colour and depth to these fora.
>>The people on here who regularly use the expression have already stated that 'driving slowly' is not their definition of the term.
You have judged that only people who use the the term regularly enough should have an opinion on its meaning, even though there does not seem to be a universal concurrence on the definition
As for your ordering me to consider apologising, well, that could only come from the moral highground.
Why should I apologise for an opinion?
Why should I apologise to people who bear these traits?
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Right, your post indicated no criticism.
Since Lud is entirely responsible for bringing the word top this forum, who better to define the word?
For that matter, as the people using the word are being judged for doing so, surely their own definition of the word is more relevant than any others? Otherwise you are (as is indeed the case) judging them for saying something which they did not in fact say.
And the 'order' (although I thought it a request), was not from a moral highground, so much as an ironic standpoint. You judged others (and wrongly) for something which you were very much guilty of in the very act of judging.
There you go Alanis, a much better example than that weird spoon/knife thing.
Basically my only point is that you have jumped in to complain about people who judge others merely for driving more slowly than they wish to - when in fact that had not even happened.
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I dont drive fast but I dont get in anyones way on purpose either - if I have someone behind me who wants to overtake I tend to ease off down the straights so they can pass ( though strangely they often dont - perhaps a speeding mimser? ). If you have a low-powered car they often loose speed on hills which from behind may look like mimsing
No one would think that was a mimser's post stu. And I agree that there are fast mimsers, more and more of them, and very lethal they can be too.
It is when you are driving low-powered cars that the obstruction caused by mimsers hurts most. I speak as a long-term driver of two-cylinder Citroens and Skoda Estelles. These vehicles, driven with brio and a decently heavy right foot, can give quite an amusing account of themselves and surprise other traffic by sailing past it uphill. But not when they are baulked during their flat-out rush up the foot of the hill by some utter wally waddling into their path in a modern vehicle with four times the power.
Why does everyone suppose I am down on mimsers? Because they have made my life a misery on many occasions without having the faintest idea that they are incompetent selfish twozzers, that's why.
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I've just been reminded of the most mimsish bit of mimsing I've ever been the victim of.
I was at an Alfa meet at Stanford Hall, and the weather was atrocious, leaving the field where everyone was parked an utter muddy mess. I had carefully planned my method and route to get from the slippy grass on to the tarmac path, using a large run up of mostly virgin field to allow hyself to gain a decent amount of momentum, which would carry me across the 10 foot or so of gripless mud either side of the road way.
Was carrying this out to perfection when a bumbling fool in a Brera mimsed across my path meaning I had to abort, and coming very close to leaving me stuck in the mud. They were nowhere near causing a collision, but the absolute lack of attention to anything around them was breath-taking (and not a little displeasing, since it then took me a further 3 attempts to get out of the mud)
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I think the word is mimsying actually.
I have found an example of its use (in a rival newspaper, so I can't link it) from 2002, and another, with an apparently slightly different meaning, from 1997.
But I agree it appears to be the HJ Forum that has given the word to the world at large.
JK Rolling gives it a suggested sense of pathetic complaint in Sir Nicholas de Mimsy-Porkington, perhaps by association with the old word "mince".
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Edited by L'escargot on 27/10/2008 at 13:09
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it appears to be the HJ Forum that has given the word to the world at large.
As far as I know it is I who have the dubious distinction of introducing this word here. But it isn't my word. It is one I learned in the fifties, used in the same meaning (slow, unaware, bad, obstructive driver, NOT good, careful, law-abiding one) by William Boddy, editor of Motor Sport. Just a few days ago I posted a thread about its etymology. Perhaps it was the word 'etymology' in the title that put people off looking at it.
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As far as I know it is I who have the dubious distinction of introducing this word here.
A forum search reveals that the first use in the Backroom was by Stuart B on 13th July 2001.
The second use was by Alex L. Dick. on 3rd August 2001.
The first use by Lud was on 24th January 2006.
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Thanks tyro. That has put me in my place. To excuse my vainglory in this matter, I wasn't here in those days.
Why is it that whenever I do forum searches I can't find what I know is there?
Could it be that my heart is in the mechanical, pre-electronic era?
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I think the word is mimsying actually.
Now you're talking! If only people used the right word. Plenty of hits when I searched for mimsying.
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>> I think the word is mimsying actually.
It isn't. But please yourself.
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>> >> I think the word is mimsying actually. >> >> It isn't. But please yourself.
The verb is surely to mimsey, not to mimse? Or maybe either?
Perhaps BBC radio 4 Word of Mouth should have a look at this one. I'm intrigued by the idea that Lud is the only person who can remember its use 50 years ago, and perhaps has singlehandedly carried it on into the present century.
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>> >> I think the word is mimsying actually. It isn't. But please yourself.
Supporters of mimsying .............. tinyurl.com/5dltub
Supporter of mimsing ............... Lud
Edited by L'escargot on 27/10/2008 at 15:17
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Supporters of mimsying .............. tinyurl.com/5dltub Supporter of mimsing ............... Lud
I did that same search L'escargot. Had a brief look and although some of the characteristics appear suitable, none of the hits for 'mimsying' appear to refer to motoring.
Mimsying mimsy or a mimsing mimser? Two seperate words? Could the latter be a derivation purely for use in a motoring context?
;o)
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>> several internet searches for mimser using various search engines and the only relevant references to >> it I can find are here in HJ's Back Room. >> Isn't this the internet gastropod?
Sorry for my imprecise use of words. I should have said that the only relevant hits I got were links to Back Room threads/posts.
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Oh Boy, what a discussion!
Has anyone checked the Oxford English Dictionary yet?
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The Urban Dictionary has a very interesting definition of Mimsy, suffice to say I would get modded to death if I repeated it here..
8^)
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Has anyone checked the Oxford English Dictionary yet?
Have certain people forgotten that this is a motoring forum?
DD.
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On on the credit crunch thread, yes its seems they have... at least this one's motoring related! ;)
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