> get lamp

Of all the (increasingly frequent) times I've found myself going "brain, why did you transpose those two letters?", I gotta say that "crobboli" (for broccoli) is a pretty fun one.

Last Friday the word "puzzleologist" came up at our local, and I wondered aloud what a fully-Greek-rooted word with the same meaning would be, since "puzzle" didn't sound Greek. Through one turn of the internet and another (during which we found that "puzzle" is "of uncertain origin") we were led to the word metagrobologist, which I just think is an awesome word. I don't know if "all this duncical nonsense has my brains metagrobolized" that I'm seeing attributed here and there to the Wall Street Journal is actually a true quote, but it sure sounds cool.

"Like a sudsy Brigadoon"

You know what, San Jose Mercury News, I'm-a just stop you right there. Leading off an article like that! You go to your room and think about what you've done.

("Suds" here in the sense of beer, not soap, although Bud Light is hardly beer.)

So I've been reading collaborative game-playing transcripts from #ClubFloyd recently (http://www.allthingsjacq.com/interactive_fiction.html#clubfloyd), specifically Guess the Verb! just now. In the UCLA computer science scene, mention is made of the "Cruel Site of the Day". I think I had vaguely heard of this before (the game was authored in 2000 and this scene appears to be set in earlier times), so I Googled it up and lo, Cruel.com. About halfway down the page there is this post: http://www.cruel.com/59/endangered-profanity-mutton-monger.html which states:

The first profanity we’d like to rescue is mutton monger, an Elizabethan era term that describes a pimp. The term mutton once was used to describe prostitutes, so the mutton monger was the guy selling those nice cuts of meat.

Amusing and colorful enough. But I liked this bit at the end of the quote from a play that uses it:

Orlando: Thou keepest a man here, under my nose –

Matheo: Under thy beard.

Orl: As arrant a smell-smock, for an old mutton-monger as thyself.

Mat: No, as yourself.

Is it me, or is this the Elizabethan equivalent of "I know you are, but what am I" or "I'm rubber, you're glue"?

Does anyone else find past-participle constructions like the following rather odd?

"dinner needs cooked"
"it needs done"
"my shirt needs cleaned"
"essay needs written"

My own idiom wants the present participle: needs cooking, doing, cleaning, writing. The participle is playing the part of a noun here (like saying you need scissors or lunch or anything else), and my language processing center doesn't like the sound of the past participle as a noun. (I know what writings are, but what are writtens?) The cases I can think of where it would seem to be a noun, it's actually a modifier on a noun that's implied: "Would you like scrambled or fried?" (eggs) "The great unwashed" (masses of people).

I'm not passing judgement that it's bad English, but it sounds so wrong to my ear yet so many people do it that I wonder if this is one of those regional habits.

(Somewhat tongue-in-cheek here.)

In your opinion, is "liek whoa" or "like woah" more correct? Or do you prefer some other combination? Show your work.

When one intends to convey inappropriate sniggering on having read a probably-unintended sexual implication into something, why is it most common to describe oneself as being, specifically, twelve? Why not eight, ten, thirteen?

Dear Flint Center sign text people:

I knew what you meant, and anyone who's actually interested probably would know as well, but methinks "THOMAS THE TANK" is really quite a different thing from Thomas the Tank Engine.

http://www.wordspy.com/

"This Web site is devoted to lexpionage, the sleuthing of new words and phrases. These aren't 'stunt words' or 'sniglets,' but new terms that have appeared multiple times in newspapers, magazines, books, Web sites, and other recorded sources."

Neat!

esmestrella says:
OH GOD
"redeeming vagina" has the same number of syllables and pattern of stress as "hakuna matata"
the remainder is left as an exercise for the reader

Okay, nomenclature investigation time.

[Poll #1160620]