Questions

[santhere]

This may seem a little odd, but I have two questions

Q1: what do you call the ball a fortune teller looks into to predict the future

Q2: What do you call the box a beekeeper keeps his bees in, I seem to recall that its called a beestead, but my dictionary doesn`t agree

Help!

[JoyceCarter]

The fortune teller's accessory is a 'crystal ball'.  Looking into it is called 'scrying' (but lots of English people don't know that word).  You can actually scry in all sorts of things, e.g. a pool of ink, or water in a bowl with a black lining.  The idea is that in focusing the eyes on the shine, the attention becomes disengaged from the here-and-now, so any promptings from the subconscious mind can float up into consciousness, and (maybe!) appear as pictures where you're looking.

Bees live in a beehive.  Everyone would recognize that.  There are regional variations in the name for one of those round, woven ones - it can be a beeskip or beeskep.

[santhere]

you still call it a beehive even though it is in reality a box...odd...

[JoyceCarter]

I've just looked up 'hive' in the dictionary to see what it comes from, as we don't have any feeling of it in modern English as anything other than a home for bees!  It says it comes from the Old Norse for the hull of a ship - presumably to you it still says something like that?

Incidentally, after I'd written about the crystal ball, it struck me that, after you've mentioned it in full, if you want to abbreviate it, you'd say 'crystal', rather than 'ball' - 'gazing into the ball' doesn't have quite the ring you want, somehow!

[santhere]

No, I can`t think of any word in danish that is similar to hive, and I don`t think it's used regarding a ship`s hull, maybe swedish or norwegian then..

the particual sentence I use it in goes like this: "We live inside the fortune teller's crystal ball" - so I think I am covered

[canadian]

"Beekeepers keep their colonies in boxes called hives."

http://www.masterbeekeeper.org/buildings.htm

[Ed]

Interesting - I didn't realise that fortune tellers were staring at the sheen on the crystal ball.  I always assumed they were staring into the centre of it

My encyclopedic dictionary lists 'hive' as being 'a box for housing bees' and, 'the bees that live in such a place', and 'a place where people are working very busily' - a hive of activity.

Edit:  BTW, if you're ever stuck for a definition, or a thesaurus, there's a good online facility at www.dictionary.com (also a translator) I use it quite a lot

[JoyceCarter]

The important thing for scrying is that the dual impression of the surface and the depth is slightly confusing, so that reality sort of 'goes away' - the nearest thing I can think of in ordinary experience is if you're looking down at steps leading into water, with the glints from the surface and the refraction making you totally unsure where the next step your foot is aiming for actually IS.  But in that circumstance, you'd windmill your arms or hang onto your companion, whereas with the 'gazing', you have to accept the oddity, THEN things might happen!  The pictures are projected from inside your mind - they're not something living in the crystal ball.

[Ed]

I take it, from what you say, that you do a bit of crystal gazing, Joyce?  Sounds interesting - do you have much success with it?

[JoyceCarter]

I knew someone who used to do it, who explained and got me to have a go.  I would occasionally get an impression.   It's interesting to see what will turn up.  Sometimes it turns out to be something from the past of someone who's in the room, rather than the future - equally as much of a surprise!  But I'm not going to be getting anyone to cross my palm with silver any time soon.