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...
fifth column
I always wondered vaguely about the origin of the term "fifth column," but never got around to looking it up 'til now. Turns out (according to the abovelinked Wikipedia article)...
fracking
I turned on the radio during Talk of the Nation's Science Friday yesterday, in the middle of a segment about natural gas in water. At one point (starting at 13:52...
impithany
Best recent line from a spam comment: For that brief moment of today I had a little bit of sanity and than I had to hit the pavement to go...