Commas, multiple
The following sentence contains a comma after every word: Ahead, Edmund, inevitably, lurked. I'm not saying it's a good sentence, but I believe it to be grammatical. So what's the...
Dual-interpretation sketches
Vardibidian recently pointed to a Ronnie Corbett sketch involving double meanings of terms like “Blackberry.” I enjoyed the sketch; fun verbal comedy. And I was pleased, because I often see...
Happy Days
For my entire life, I've been hearing the Happy Days theme song and wondering why it contains the weird line “These days are all / Filled in with glee.” Though...
run of wines?
I thought a recent headline said this: Asian scientists set to topple America's run of wines But then while I still trying to figure out the context for that, I...
woop woop
I recently encountered the term Woop Woop, which turns out to be, according to answers.com, “An imaginary town in the remote outback, supposedly backward.” The example sentence, from the Sydney...
Fancy words from the NY Times
Interesting blog entry from the New York Times about the words that readers look up most often using their website's dictionary function; there's a list of the top 50, arranged...
slow clap
The thing I find fascinating about the phrase “slow clap” is that it's used to refer to two different things that are near-opposites in meaning. On the one hand, there's...
secret banana writing
No, this entry isn't about the letter-tile game Bananagrams. (Some of my friends love it; if you're unfamiliar with it, take a look. But it doesn't really fit my head...
roving
A roving, says Wikipedia, is “a long and narrow bundle of fibre [...] usually used to spin woollen yarn.” I'm sure y'all fibre-arts people knew that already, but I hadn't...
Hipster Ipsum
Want some sample filler text, but find faux-Latin too stodgy? Now you can use Hipster Ipsum—“Artisanal filler text for your site or project” to fill your space with hipster-related terms....