bourbonmots has looked up 1479 words, created 15 lists, listed 698 words, written 70 comments, added 0 tags, and loved 2 words.
Comments by bourbonmots
Comments for bourbonmots
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I just added Any of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World to my impossible snow globes list. Thank you!
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Ah! So it is. Thanks!
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bourbonmots! Your name is a sweet tooth fairy!
bourbonmots commented on the word every potential wordie list is an existing wordie list
So many interesting lists. Being an infrequent visitor, I miss the ability to browse through several weeks worth of recent lists. It seems now someone can post a list and it will disappear off the community page in a day, or even a few hours (especially when the locksmiths come aspamin’), and one would never know it was created.
Dec 13, 2012
bourbonmots commented on the word every potential wordie list is an existing wordie list
Not to mention numerous fish lists.
Dec 13, 2012
bourbonmots commented on the list sweet-tooth-fairy-land
That's what I was looking for. Thanks.
Dec 13, 2012
bourbonmots commented on the list sweet-tooth-fairy-land
Happens a lot: you come with an idea for a list, then find out someone has already created that list. Actually, I think there is a list or a word entry around here for that, but I can’t find it.
Dec 13, 2012
bourbonmots commented on the word cell phone sex change
Where Siri becomes iSir
Dec 12, 2012
bourbonmots commented on the word The Question Is Moot!
Love the visual!
Aug 7, 2012
bourbonmots commented on the word The Question Is Moot!
Typical SNL of the time – mediocre material, but Jesse Jackson, by playing it straight, is hilarious and is still able to use it to skewer the Reagan administration during the ’84 presidential campaign. Google it for the skit.
Aug 7, 2012
bourbonmots commented on the word gravity tractor
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120707.html
Jul 8, 2012
bourbonmots commented on the word path
When I ran in 1992 I talked about income inequality. And one of my proudest achievements was that, in my second term, the income of the bottom twenty per cent of the workforce, in percentage terms, increased as much as the top twenty per cent….We did it by empowering and expanding the middle class and allowing poor people to path into it.
-- Bill Clinton in an interview on NBC
Nov 8, 2011
bourbonmots commented on the word concurred
“Salsa with cottage cheese IS a good combination,” Tom concurred.
Sep 18, 2011
bourbonmots commented on the word poulard
"Is there another course after the roast poulard?” Tom asked apprehensively.
Sep 18, 2011
bourbonmots commented on the word cattywampus
More info here:
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0703/dictionary_men070903.asp
Sep 13, 2011
bourbonmots commented on the word Esperanto
Bah! That’s just some people talking.
Sep 13, 2011
bourbonmots commented on the word plastics
MR. MCQUIRE: Ben!
BEN: Mr. McQuire.
MR. MCQUIRE: Ben.
BEN: Mr. McQuire
MR. MCQUIRE: Come with me a minute; I want to talk to you….I just want to say one word to you, just one word.
BEN: Yes, sir.
MR. MCQUIRE: Are you listening?
BEN: Yes, sir, I am.
MR. MCQUIRE: Plastics.
(long pause)
BEN: Exactly how do you mean?
MR. MCQUIRE: There’s a great future in plastics. Think about it. Will you think about it?
BEN: Yes, sir, I will.
MR. MCQUIRE: Okay, enough said. That’s a deal.
Sep 12, 2011
bourbonmots commented on the word Esperanto
You know I've got my reasons.
Sep 12, 2011
bourbonmots commented on the word Esperanto
Sorry?
Sep 11, 2011
bourbonmots commented on the word Esperanto
Worth mentioning, but probably doesn’t qualify for the Solutions list as it was a noble but failed attempt to facilitate global communication.
Sep 11, 2011
bourbonmots commented on the word switchgrass
On the Solutions list because George W. Bush said it, so it must be true.
Sep 11, 2011
bourbonmots commented on the word bolthole
“It was well that Morris’s bluff had worked, for, though he was not hiding arms in his house, he was hiding aristocrats….No one marked for death, however, could long trust his life to a Parisian bolthole.”
-- Richard Brookhiser, “Gentleman Revolutionary”, p132 of the Free Press paperback
Sep 11, 2011
bourbonmots commented on the word promptitude
George Washington in a "monitory" letter to Gouveneur Morris: “'The promptitude, with which your lively and brilliant imagination is displayed, allows too little time for deliberation and correction; and is the primary cause of those sallies, which too often offend, and of that ridicule of characters, which begets enmity not easy to be forgotten, but which might easily be avoided, if it was under the control of more caution and prudence.'”
-- Richard Brookhiser, “Gentleman Revolutionary”, p129 of the Free Press paperback
Sep 11, 2011
bourbonmots commented on the word ineptious
Morris described Jacques Necker as being “’afloat upon the wide ocean of incidents’; his proposals were ‘feeble and ineptious.’”
-- Richard Brookhiser, “Gentleman Revolutionary”, p115 of the Free Press paperback
Sep 11, 2011
bourbonmots commented on the word arbitress
“He had come to France in time to see the sunset of the salon. These periodic teas and suppers, presided over by fashionable and intellectual ladies, where everything from love to philosophy might be discussed, so long as it was done cleverly, had begun to lose their aura of excitement and power. ‘You know, Madame,’ one politician told an arbitress, ‘the reign of women is over.’ ‘Yes, monsieur,’ she answered, ‘but not that of the impertinent.’”
-- Richard Brookhiser, “Gentleman Revolutionary”, p104 of the Free Press paperback
Sep 11, 2011
bourbonmots commented on the word school
“The one flaw in Lafayette that his American friends began to notice as he entered his thirties was his love of the applause he had received. He would never consciously do a dishonorable thing to win more, but he had not learned the republican art of schooling his ambition.”
-- Richard Brookhiser, “Gentleman Revolutionary”, p103 of the Free Press paperback
Sep 11, 2011
bourbonmots commented on the word rightclick
Justatypo. It should by hyphenated: right-click
*edit* At least as a verb. As a noun -- "That function requires a..." -- I can see using either right click or right-click. I can't say I have a grammatical argument for that distiction, though.
Sep 5, 2011
bourbonmots commented on the word venustate
venustate?
I think I’d be more inclined to aphroditify something (even though it breaks the “Don’t mix Greek and Latin roots and affixes” rule).
Sep 4, 2011
bourbonmots commented on the word convergent evolution
The Guiana dolphin…detects faint electric fields generated by such things as contracting muscles, a beating heart and pumping gills – telltale signs of potential prey…. The Dolphin is the first placental mammal known to have these super sensory powers, scientists report. It detects electric fields using organs on its snout called vibrissal crypts that were once considered simple remnants of long-lost whiskers. Electroreception – the ability to sense these bioelectric fields – has already been described in sharks, amphibians, fish and some egg-laying mammals….The vibrassal crypts – originally responsive to mechanical, whisker-generated stimuli – evolved to respond to electrical stimuli instead….The finding…is "a beautiful example of what’s called convergent evolution, where animals find the same solution to the same problem, but from a different starting point."
-- ScienceNews August 27, 2011.
Sep 2, 2011
bourbonmots commented on the word affair of gallantry
Does anyone have an Illicit Liaisons list going?
Aug 31, 2011
bourbonmots commented on the word bill-kiting
“Finally, in the manner of all desperate enterprises, the Finance Office shifted its debts among its creditors like peas in a shell game. William Graham Summer, the nineteenth-century economist and a great admirer of Robert Morris’s, called it ‘the most vulgar kind of bill-kiting.’”
-- Richard Brookhiser, Gentleman Revolutionary, p69 of the Free Press paperback
I can't find a reference for this.
Aug 31, 2011
bourbonmots commented on the word fatigue
“’If you see the doctor,’ Gouverneur Morris wrote his new boss gratefully, ‘tell him that fatiguing from four in the morning till eight in the evening, and sleeping only from eleven till three agrees with me much better than all the prescription in…the world.’”
-- Richard Brookhiser, Gentleman Revolutionary, p68 of the Free Press paperback
Aug 31, 2011
bourbonmots commented on the word affair of gallantry
“…Viscount Palmerston (father of the prime minister), recorded in his diary that he breakfasted in Paris with ‘Mr. Morris…and American, a gentlemanlike sensible man,’ who lost a leg ‘in consequence of jumping from a window in an affair of gallantry.’”
-- Richard Brookhiser, Gentleman Revolutionary, p62 of the Free Press paperback
Aug 31, 2011
bourbonmots commented on the word mortification
While Gouverneur Morris was home from King’s, he accidently upset a kettle of water on his right arm and side.…one family member wrote to another, ‘…he rested much better than he had before…though his right arm seemed too free from pain for so great a wound, which you know is the first sign of a mortification.’”
--Richard Brookhiser, Gentleman Revolutionary, p10 of the Free Press paperback
Aug 31, 2011
bourbonmots commented on the word unlimber
“In their intoxication they made love in her apartment at the Louver, in his carriage, and in the visitors’ waiting room of a convent in Chaillot where Adele’s old governess lived as a nun. Morris did not record their encounters in graphic detail, unlimbering instead the full battery of eighteenth-century euphemisms, reinforced with his own odd humor. They performed ‘the rites’; he conferred ‘the joy’; they did ‘the needful.’ They ‘sacrificed to the Cyprian Queen Venus’; they ‘performed the first commandment given to Adam, i.e. be fruitful and multiply or at least we use the means.’”
-- “Gentleman Revolutionary”, Richard Brookhiser, p117 of the Free Press paperback.
No mention of country matters
Aug 31, 2011
bourbonmots commented on the word dollars to doughnuts
My grandmother used to say, "I'll bet you a nickel to a burnt doughnut..." Have not heard it anywhere else. (She used to work in a bakery, so it may have been her own play on dollars to doughnuts).
Aug 31, 2011
bourbonmots commented on the word last chance encounter group
Thanks! :)
Aug 31, 2011
bourbonmots commented on the word rush limbaugh
Nothing wrong with fruitcake, as long as it's made with dried fruit (unsulphered) and not the traditional candied dreck.
Aug 31, 2011
bourbonmots commented on the word developing nation building permit
Should require congressional authorization.
Aug 29, 2011
bourbonmots commented on the word dollars to doughnuts
American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms: dollars to doughnuts, its. It’s a virtual certainty , as "It’s dollars to doughnuts that the team will make the playoffs." This metaphoric term pits dollars against doughnuts as in a bet. Colloquial; late 1800s
Aug 28, 2011
bourbonmots commented on the word rush limbaugh
Hmm, looks like the medicine took the governors off again; I should be keeping my political opinions to myself. And fruitcake really isn’t the proper description for the man. The answer to c_b’s joke wouldn’t be a bad description, though.
Aug 28, 2011
bourbonmots commented on the word rush limbaugh
If there was a fruitcake list I would enter it there. As well as Michelle Bachman
Aug 24, 2011
bourbonmots commented on the word balonium
DAMA researchers have now found, at last, some preliminary validation of their claim to have seen signs of dark matter. A Minnesota detector called CoGeNT has registered seasonal blips akin to what DAMA has seen, physicist Juan I. Collar of the University of Chicago said at the symposium. He cautioned that the data are preliminary but charged that competitors—including one whose results he derided as “pure, weapons-grade balonium”—have been too quick to dismiss DAMA.
– Scientific American July 2011, p. 19
Aug 24, 2011
bourbonmots commented on the word rewilding
Europeans ate their way through the island nation of Mauritius, most famously eliminating the dodo bird by 1700. Less well known was their effect on the Mauritian island now known as Ile aux Aigrettes, where they exterminated giant skinks and tortoises and logged the native ebony trees for firewood.
In 1965 the largely denuded 25 hectares of the island were declared a nature reserve. But even in the absence of logging, the slow-growing ebony forests failed to thrive. Why? Because they had lost the animals that ate their fruit and dispersed their seeds. So in 2000 scientists relocated four giant tortoises from the nearby Aldabra atoll in the Seychelles, and by 2009 a total of 19 such introduced tortoises roamed the island, eating the large fruits and leaving behind more than 500 dense patches of seedlings....For this tiny island, at least, rewilding appears to have worked. And that holds out hope for other restoration ecology projects in the midst of the sixth mass extinction in the earth’s history.
– Scientific American, July 2011, p. 16
Aug 23, 2011
bourbonmots commented on the word put paid to
Finish off, end – American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms
It’s one of the most commonly consumed snacks in the Western world and has been made in one form or another for at least three centuries, so you might think nothing new could come of the humble french fry. But British chef Heston Blumenthal put paid to that notion years ago. He and his research chef Chris Young came up with a triple-cooked “chip” with a taste and texture that blow away anything you will find at a burger joint.
– Scientific American, July 2011, p 27
Aug 23, 2011
bourbonmots commented on the word you can't squeeze blood from a turnip
AKA: You can't squeeze blood from a stone: You can't get money from someone who has none.
Aug 23, 2011
bourbonmots commented on the word new interface
Not sure if you’re still entertaining requests and also not sure if this has come up already, but I would like to have a See All option for the All Lists and All Open Lists pages. Or if there are so many lists that See All would make the scrolling function too sensitive, options of 500 or 1000 groupings would be helpful. As it stands right now, it’s pretty laborious trying to work through the lists 100 at a time. Also, the same option within a list would be nice (sweet tooth fairy has nearly 3000 listings).
It would also be nice if, in the future, the lists were dated as the comments on the word pages are. That way if you checked out a list from a word page, you could then go to an All Lists page and scroll down the see what other lists were created around the same time. It seems a fair number of lists have been inspired by other lists.
Aug 15, 2011
bourbonmots commented on the word decircinate
Thanks. I’m also seeing an 1897 quote: “…to bring into a compass or roundness: to draw a Circle with a pair of Compasses.” And I can see it now, thinking of it in the sense of words like delineate and describe -- 'to draw a circle' being the original definition and the other senses following by extension
Aug 14, 2011
bourbonmots commented on the word splanchnology
Not to be confused with haruspicy.
Aug 14, 2011
bourbonmots commented on the word decircinate
I would have thought the term would be 'encircinate'. Decircinate sounds like it would imply squaring off or in some other way disrupting the roundness of something.
Aug 14, 2011
bourbonmots commented on the word space bag
I'll wait for erinmckean's ruling
Aug 5, 2011
bourbonmots commented on the word space bag
(spam alert!)
Aug 5, 2011
bourbonmots commented on the word space bag
Triple your storage space!
(As seen on TV!)
Aug 5, 2011