Borden System Words: Manitoba

Before we continue in our quest for Borden words let's have a quick Borden system refresher since it's been a little while. If you recall from last time (just click on the "BSwords" tag link at the bottom of this post and all of them will pop up), the upper North-South Borden blocks represent 2 degrees of latitude and the lower N-S Borden blocks within these, each represent 10 minutes. Since 2 degrees = 120minutes, the only lower N-S Borden blocks available are “a” through “l”. The upper East-West Borden blocks represent 4 degrees of latitude (south of 62 degrees), while the lower Borden blocks continue to represent 10minutes each. Since 4 degrees = 240 minutes, the only lower E-W Borden blocks available are “a” through “x”. Remember that? Good! Another good thing to remember is that the Borden blocks are in alphabetical order going from the Southeast of Canada to the North and West, so AA is in the water at the US border south of Newfoundland, while KW is in far Northwestern BC.

Now on to Manitoba and its 57 words. Bear in mind that the ‘M’ East-West Borden block only runs from ‘a’ through ‘j’ in Manitoba (the rest are in Sask.), and the ‘D’ North-South block only runs from ‘g’ through ‘l’ (the rest would’ve been in the U.S. were the Borden system used there). OK let’s see what we’ve got (FYI blocks EM, GK, and GJ had none):
IM – iamb
HM – heme, hame
GM – game, gamb, gama
FM – feme, fame
DM – dime
IL – ills, iglu, idle
HL – hilt, hill, hila, help, helo, helm, hell, held, halt, halo, halm, hall, half, hale
GL – gilt, gill, gild, gelt, gels, geld, gals, gall, gale, gala
FL – fils, filo, film, fill, file, fila, felt, fell, falx, fall
EL – ells, eels
DL – dill
IK – ilks
HK – hike, hake
FK – fake
EK - elks
DK – dike
HJ – hajj, haji

Did you know that a falx refers to a sickle-shaped structure, a fils is a middle eastern fractionary unit of currency, and hajj is a pilgrimage to Mecca? Also, hila is the plural of hilum and refers to the mark or scar on a seed produced by separation from its funicle or the nucleus of a granule of starch.

But it looks like Manitoba gave us a real swear! Hell! Ahhahaha! Wee! Plus, we learned a few new words, which is also good. Go Manitoba! Next we'll look at Ontario...