First Lady
I always thought that the phrase “First Lady” meant, by definition, the wife of the head of state; in particular, in the US, that it specifically meant the wife of...
Many of those two
The sort of phrasing problem that comes up when you try to present statistics in terms of small numbers: More people are using condoms, for example, but they still play...
4G phones
I heard a TV commercial the other day that I thought referred to “the first orgy phone.” Turns out I misheard; it was really a 4G phone. Oh, well....
Obscene intensifiers (probably NSFW)
Today's xkcd comic strip shows a graph of frequency of usage, for a variety of adjectives, of the intensifiers “fucking” and “as shit.” It's a cute graph, and some of...
Obsolescism: taping
Way back in 1997, I introduced the term “obsolescism” to refer to a term or phrase (like “dialing” a telephone) that has lost its literal meaning but hasn't yet become...
Strummin’
Last November, I heard the song “Margaritaville” on the radio. I was amused at the line “strummin' my sex train,” until I discovered it was actually “strummin' my six-string.”...
LGTM/SGTM
I first encountered the acronyms “LGTM” and “SGTM”—“Looks/Sounds Good To Me”—at work. I'm sure that plenty of people elsewhere use them, but I don't see many instances of them on...
Graffiti in Pompeii
Kendra tells me that a piece of graffiti found on a wall in Pompeii translates to “Everybody writes on walls except me.” Which led me to search for other ancient...
warfarin
I've known for a while that there's an anticoagulant named warfarin, but it never occurred to me to look up its etymology; I always just assumed it had something to...
Four-footed poets
I just read a bit of verse in a book that reminded me, because of its rhythm, of Tolkien. It looked like a quotation, so I Googled it, and discovered...