Unlubricated
“Overhead he heard the tiny, unlubricated sound of a bat.” —Theodore Sturgeon, “Excalibur and the Atom,” 1951. Reading these old Sturgeon stories is reminding me that prose can unashamedly use...
Unfortunate Forever Stamps
I'm guessing most Americans know by now that the US Postal Service sells “Forever Stamps”; you buy a Forever Stamp at today's first-class one-ounce stamp price, and it will be...
Death Metal English
The editor of the heavy metal website Invisible Oranges provides a guide to Death Metal English. A couple of sample translations from the article: Normal English: “Commuting to work” Death...
because
Half the people on my Facebook friends list have linked to an article by Megan Garber in the Atlantic titled “English Has a New Preposition, Because Internet,” about the growing...
Fake Ludlum titles
Nice list of winners of Slate's 2012 Fake Robert Ludlum Title contest, along with notes on Salman Rushdie's Ludlumization of Shakespeare plays....
Some puns
Uncle Dobe passed along a list of puns, many of which (to my surprise) I hadn't seen before, and some of which made me laugh out loud. Here's an abridged...
Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony
Someone mentioned the Emmy Awards the other day, and I realized I wasn't sure why they were called that. I figured they must have been named after some famous person...
sismance?
Jackie pointed out (I'm paraphrasing) that we're now seeing bromance storylines with female characters. I did a quick Google for [female bromance], and found the following suggested terms: womance (pronounced...
homophene
Everyone knows about homophones. But I only just learned about homophenes: different words that look the same to a lip-reader. See also A Lip Reader Deciphers The Umpire-Manager Arguments Of...
Dictionary of hobo slang
I recently read a novel set among Depression-era hoboes, which led me to look up some of the slang terms, which led me to an online dictionary of hobo slang....