<DIV>Sardines!</DIV> <DIV>Champagne</DIV> <DIV> Wojtek Sokolowski <sokol@jhu.edu> wrote:</DIV> <BLOCKQUOTE style="PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #1010ff 2px solid">> lil help? > > working on a list of toponyms which originate as proper place > names but > then come to have a more generalized meaning. examples would include: > > Babel > Mecca > hell > seltzer > Siberia > Boeotian > champagne > solecism > Chautauqua > Waterloo > Pax Romana > Watergate > Gibraltar > Timbuktu > El Dorado > > > any other good ones? Balkanization Polnische wirtschaft (=Polish i.e. messy economy) Wild West America (2 meanings: El Dorado and Wild West) Dixie - land -crat (or Mason-Dixon line) Bantustan Zion Brazilianisation (=acute social stratification between rich and poor) Continental breakfast (refering to continental Europe) Selling Brooklyn bridge China wall Shanghai (=obtaining a crew of a ship by abduction) Atlantis Greek (=obscure) Trojan horse Olympian Caucasian Wojtek ___________________________________ http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk</BLOCKQUOTE><hr SIZE=1> Do you Yahoo!? Free <a href="http://us.rd.yahoo.com/mail_us/tag/*http://calendar.yahoo.com">online calendar</a> with sync to Outlook(TM).