VitaminQ - a temple of trivia lists and curious words
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~ Thursday, August 19, 2004
FOUR As Some organisations using the acronym AAAA: American Association of Advertising Agencies Australian Automotive Aftercare Association Alberta Aerial Applicators Association Association of Accredited Advertising Agents American Association of Amateur Astronomers Association of Accountants and Auditors of Armenia Arizona Antique Aircraft Association American Association for Affirmative Action Atlanta Area Aquarium Association Acrophobia Addicts Anonymous Association Army Aviation Association of America Akron Area Arts Alliance African American Appalachian Arts Alps-Adria Acoustics Association Albuquerque Aerostat Ascension Association Arizona Asian American Association American Academy of Adoption Attorneys Association for Applied Animal Andrology Asociación Argentina ‘Amigos de la Astronomía’ And here is an alphabet of '_a_a' words: AAAA - a small, slender grade of battery often used in pen torches baba - a small cake soaked in rum syrup OR a Polish coffee cake OR a Slovakian bake made of potatoes, barley and bacon Caca - a giantess and minor goddess in Roman mythology; in one story, she betrays her cattle-rustling brother Cacus to Hercules dada - the French word for hobby-horse, giving its name (chosen it is said, at random from a dictionary) to a radical arts movement of the early 20th century eaea - a Polynesian name for the plant spurge; a supernatural turtle in Hawaiian folklore; a vocal styling of elongated vowels used in Hawaiian falsetto singing; a gene (eaeA) which is associated with attaching and effacing lesions and which encodes intimin, a protein Fafa - an island, part of Tonga; a Micronesian foodstuff made from pounded taro root and coconut gaga - prone to lightheartedness or mental instability haha - a sunken ditch or wall built so as to stop animals trespassing but to avoid spoiling a view; originally a French term, it is usually hyphenised in English iaia - the Catalan word for ‘granny’; also an Italian surname - Cristina Iaia is a celebrated fashion designer best known for her upmarket lingerie Jaja - Jaja of Opobo was a king in 19th century Western Africa who was one of the first to oppose colonial trade monopolies and who was eventually deported to the W Indies for his ‘breaking of treaties’ kaka - the brown parrot of New Zealand; (with cap.) a Brazilian football star lala - a term applied to the excesses or pretensions of Los Angeles or especially Hollywood (Lala-Land); a style of shoe made by Clarks; a fairly common female first name mama - This child’s word for mother exists in languages as diverse as Swahili, Indonesian, Russian and Turkish and is thought to derive from a baby’s natural vocal sound when wanting to be fed; also common as a song title: songs called ‘Mama’ have been recorded by Herb Alpert, ELO, Roy Orbison, Annie Lennox, Sugarcubes, The Spice Girls, Bay City Rollers, Connie Francis, Genesis, Toto, Elvis and many more Nana - common word for a grandmother; French slang for a young woman; the dog-maid in Disney’s Peter Pan; a novel by Zola; a type of dwarf pomegranate tree oaoa - depending on pronunciation, this Polynesian word can mean ‘joy’, a stake to tie a canoe to, or ‘a scarecrow, made by rattling together empty water-bottles made of cocoa-nut shells’ papa - a general word meaning father; a priest of the Eastern Orthodox church; the nickname of Ernest Hemingway; a word used in the names of several islands in Orkney and Shetland, signifying that they were once inhabited by monks qaqa - Arabic word for warrior (Bin Laden is sometimes called ‘al-Qaqa‘); Uiluit Qaqa is a mountain in Greenland; the qaqa-loro is an endangered Bolivian parrot rara - comonly used in ‘rara avis’, a rare bird; a lake in Western Nepal; a style of musical band in Haiti sasa - a species of woody, evergreen Asian grass; a fairly common Eastern European male first name; a port in Mindanao in the Philippines; a town in Israel Tata - one of India’s biggest companies, best known for engineering and vehicle manufacture; a village in Senegal; a town in Morocco; a city in Hungary uaua - a sub-race of people existing in North East Africa in the early centuries AD; Samoan for ‘to start a plantation’’; the Kiribati word for swimming; a variety of taro - piko uaua Vava - the first player to score in two soccer World Cup finals, representing Brazil in 1958 and 1962; a township in Mozambique; ‘A Vava Inouva’ (’My Little Father‘) is a popular North African song Wawa - a town in Ontario, Canada; a coffee shop company based in Pennsylvania; the Chinese word for ‘doll’; Xaxa - a royal palace in the story The Mastermind of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs; a supernatural people in the myths of the Salish Indians of British Columbia yaya - the Swahili word for ‘nurse’ or ‘babysitter’; also means nursemaid in Tagalog (an unrelated language); a fairly common boy’s name in W Africa Zaza - an ethnic group from Turkey; a movie about a French entertainer, based on a play and made twice with the eponymous character played by Gloria Swanson (1923), then Claudette Colbert (1939); the cat character in children’s series Hector’s House (Le Maison de Toutou in the original French version) |