Archive for August, 2006

Scouser

A "Scouser" is a person from Liverpool; which is to say, a Liverpudlian. According to MW3, the name is due to "lobscouse" (a meat and vegetable stew) being popular in...

railfan

The Wikipedia entry for railfan contains a small trove of unfamiliar-to-me words. The term itself has the meaning you'd probably expect: someone who's interested in railroads. But the article also...

STFW

I've known the phrase "RTFM" for many years, and I've been using the phrase "TSOR" for about three years, but I had never previously encountered "STFW." At first I thought...

fuller

I had heard of fuller's earth before, but I had always thought it was named after someone named "Fuller." (Doesn't "Fuller's Earth" sound like the name of a science fiction...

tranche

A "tranche" is "a division or portion of a pool or whole," sez MW11; apparently "pool" in this context refers to finance. And "tranche" apparently has a very specific meaning...

psephology

Psephology is an old-fashioned term for "the statistical study of elections," according to Wikipedia, which notes that the term was "coined (from the Greek psephos, 'pebble', which the Greeks used...

cyberpathy

In the roleplaying game Paranoia, a character could have a mutant power called "machine empathy," which caused machines (including computers) to like the character. Apparently in comic books these days,...

pash

A submission recently used the phrase "pashing off"; from context, it was clearly Australian slang for something in the general vicinity of either kissing or making out. WordWeb Online says...

tanto

I was familiar with the katana (the long Japanese sword used by samurai) and the wakizashi (the shorter second sword also used by samurai), but I was previously unaware of...