[[ [2009-04-14] added document header Style: <>=bold Type: newsgroup posting Date: 7 December 1998 Title: Re: walls Author: Marc Okrand, Roger "DloraH" Cheesbro Summary: Various words for walls, floors, ceilings and roofs. ]] From: Marc Okrand Newsgroups: startrek.klingon Date: Monday, December 07, 1998 12:55 AM Subject: Re: walls Actually, there are several words referring to "wall": An interior wall (such as a wall separating your living room from your kitchen) is a . An exterior wall (that is, a wall which separates the inside of a building from the outside) is a . For the interior side of an exterior wall, it is quite common to use , but the phrase , literally "room's exterior wall" ( "room") is also heard, referring to the wall in a room which faces outside (as opposed to the other walls in the room whose other sides are still indoors). The wall around a city is a , which is apparently derived from "domain, holdings, territory" plus "circle." A wall which divides a territory into parts (such as the Berlin Wall) is also called a , even though neither side of it is the interior of a structure. On occasion, for clarity, such a wall is termed a "separator wall" ( "separate," <-wI'> "that which does [something]") or a , literally "boss wall," presumably dating back to a time when each subterritory had a specific person in charge. The phrase "room's interior wall" is also heard from time to time, but usually only when it is necessary to distinguish the "interior wall" sense of from the "separator wall" sense. A "interior wall" need not be vertical. In a multistory structure, the stories are separated by what Klingon architects and builders call a "horizontal wall" ( "interior wall," "be horizontal"). The side of this "wall" which is the bottom of the upper story is the "floor"; the side which is the top of the lower story is the "ceiling" (based on "floor" plus <'eq>, an element otherwise unknown (there is no evidence it is connected to <'eq> "be early"). [[").:=")).]] "floor" is also used for the floor of a room on ground level (or a basement floor, for that matter), even though there is no corresponding and no . Similarly, though in general "ceiling" refers to the ceiling of a room that has a room above it, it may also be used for the ceiling of a room on the top floor, even though there is no corresponding and no . On occasion, though, the ceiling of the top floor is called , literally "room's roof" (from "room" plus "roof"). The term refers to the covering on top of a structure. Hope this helps your story. TPO wrote in message <3660B2F0.20F8@rpa.net>... >Marc, you here? > >I'm working on a literary piece that makes many references to a wall or >walls. >Any ideas how I can handle this? (recast, metaphor, ...) > >DloraH [[eof]]