Wednesday, July 15, 2015
Missing antonym
Another popup thought.
Reading an article about the Woodill Wildfire, one of those fiberglass kit cars that were popular in the early '50s.
Woodill was a Willys dealer who designed the car with the goal of persuading Willys to sell it as their official sports car. Toledo didn't bite on the idea, so Woodill contracted with Glasspar and local machine shops and sold a few hundred Wildfire kits on his own.
The Wildfire body was especially pretty, and the assembled car must have been especially fun to drive because Willys running gear was lively, crisp and economical.
The article was focusing on one particular car, believed to be Woodill's first running prototype. It has been passed down among collectors for 60 years, and at the time of writing had "only 40,000 miles" on the odometer.
Wait! ONLY? For a '52 Chevy sedan, 40K would be ONLY. But for a unique prototype, instantly collectible, with lots of peculiarities, 40K is ________.
What's the opposite of ONLY? In this context ONLY means "a remarkably small". How do you say "a remarkably large"? There isn't a word for it!
= = = = =
Few days later: Curbside Classics did a little feature on a Renault Caravelle, which got my Renault genes to stand up and salute ... and in the comments, a Brazilian mentioned that the Willys Interlagos was based on the Caravelle. I'm reasonably familiar with the Willys do Brasil, but hadn't heard of the Interlagos. Googled it and had a pure cargasm. OOOOOOOH! I WANNIT I WANNIT I WANNIT! Unfortunately it's totally unavailable. Made in small quantities in the late '60s, never exported to US. Well, I can dream. Maybe I'll try to make a Poser model to discharge the cargasm.
Labels: Language update
¶ 2:42 AM
