over-egg the pudding
The black pudding were so black that even over-egging yon just made 'er blacker, it did.
Ed is not the only Anglophile here.
For musings by an American linguist now living and teaching in Sussex on the differences between American and British English, an entertaining blog (with equally entertaining comments) is at Separated By a Common Language, written by the entertainingly-pseudonymed Lynneguist. I may pull interesting things from her archives in the future for further examination, but for now, […]
The old side-eye
Only peripherally about words, or for that matter stuff.
The Grammar of ’Splaining
On WHYY’s “Radio Times” this week, in discussing Mark Zuckerberg’s testimony before Congress about Facebook and Cambridge Analytica, host Marty Moss-Coane asked her guest, “So what kind of ’splainin to do does Mark Zuckerberg have?” I’m just charmed by the construction of her sentence. It refers, of course, to one of the great Lines That […]
Hangry and smad
There are surely more examples of these blended portmanteau emotions, but “hangry” (hungry + angry) has become a major part of my kids’ lexicon, and “smad” (sad mad) was made memorable by a mention in Gilmore Girls. I find hangry in particular quite useful as a reminder to check for HALT (Hungry Angry Lonely Tired) […]
Is it esculent?
esculent: edible, fit to be eaten According to dictionary,com, it originates in the 1620s, from L. esculentus, from esca “food,” from PIE *ed- “to eat” (see eat). (Link and usage examples here) I saw it a while back and hadn’t gotten around to following up on the idea that it would make a great first […]
Neither to the right nor the left
The thing about the physical impossibility of bees' flight is also not true, I believe.
Walking into bars
I really enjoyed this set of “…walks into a bar” jokes about various aspects of language. Some examples: A dangling participle walks into a bar. Enjoying a cocktail and chatting with the bartender, the evening passes pleasantly. A bar was walked into by the passive voice. Two quotation marks walk into a “bar.” A malapropism […]
Sideways Dictionary: Like Urban Dictionary, but for tech analogies
The Washington Post has teamed up with Jigsaw (which is part of Google’s parent company, Alphabet) to create a new site called Sideways Dictionary, which provides brief explanations of various tech terms, in the form of analogies. Readers can vote existing analogies up or down, and add new analogies. For more info, see an article […]
muckers and the running smobble (NSFW)
When I was a kid, I occasionally listened to my father’s LP of Oscar Brand’s Bawdy Songs and Backroom Ballads. One of the songs on the album was “Sam Hall,” which included this line: You’re a bunch of muckers all, damn your eyes. At some point, I asked my father what muckers meant, and he […]