lost on a tightrope
In Taylor Swift's song “Innocent,” I heard a line as “Lost your parents on a tightrope,” and I thought, Huh, I guess this is sort of a Robin trope, orphaned...
Triskaidekadromes
Brian T posted a cryptic crossword clue recently, and Amy H posted the answer but used rot13 to avoid spoiling it for everyone else who might be trying to figure...
arsy-tansy
Not long ago, I read The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (in a printed copy, on paper—the relevance of which I'll explain later), and was struck by this...
Violent rhetoric
Every so often, friends of mine express outrage about the violent rhetoric and metaphors used by (for example) politicians. And I agree that there's a lot of violent rhetoric and...
A slash by any other name
A couple of days ago, I wrote about abbreviations containing slashes; researching that reminded me to mention that there are a couple of different names for slashes, and a couple...
Two-letter abbreviations with slashes
In English, most of our two-letter abbreviations are written as either two letters by themselves, or two letters with one or two periods. But there are a few that are...
Nothing Like a Dame
Was just listening to bits of South Pacific, looking for duets (at Jacob's suggestion), and came across this excellent couplet from the song “There Is Nothing Like a Dame”: Lots...
Emotive conjugations
In 1948, Bertrand Russell, on a radio program called The Brains Trust, gave a joke example of an irregular verb conjugation: I am firm; you are obstinate; he is a...
time gun
Sadly, a time gun isn't what I, as a science fiction fan, initially thought it was. However, it is nonetheless kinda cool. A time gun is apparently a cannon or...
scrummy
Apparently “scrummy” is a portmanteau of scrumptious and yummy. I had initially assumed it must mean something like “scummy.”...