grant_barrett has adopted no words, looked up 0 words, created 15 lists, listed 486 words, written 155 comments, added 0 tags, and loved 41 words.

Comments by grant_barrett

  • Familiar to me mainly from reading the James Herriot novels, where the Yorkshiremen are given to saying it that way.

    February 13, 2010

  • tst

    February 13, 2010

  • February 13, 2010

  • <

    February 13, 2010

  • February 13, 2010

  • Writing notes on one's hand, à la Sarah Palin, instead of using a TelePrompter.

    February 10, 2010

  • Thanks for the cool article. I just tweeted it.

    http://twitter.com/wordnik/status/8866809162

    February 10, 2010

  • I love this list.

    February 9, 2010

  • A subset of karaoke bars with G.R.O.’s — short for guest relations officers, a euphemism for female prostitutes — often employ gay men, who are seen as neutral, to defuse the undercurrent of tension among the male patrons.

    Sinatra Song Often Strikes Deadly Chord, New York Times, by Norimitsu Onishi, February 6, 2010, datelined General Santos, the Philippines

    February 8, 2010

  • Then there is what was considered Bamberger's folly. In 1998, he decided to carve out a three-dome cave into one of his hillsides and line the ceiling with gunite. The ranch staff rolled their eyes when he told them he wanted enough room for a million Mexican free-tailed bats. For years, no bats came. But slowly, they began to find Bamberger's cave, and now as many as 400,000 bats make their summer home there. The cave is called a "Chiroptorium" — a term his wife and son came up with that combines Chiroptera, the scientific order bats are in, and auditorium.

    —National Public Radio, Texas Rancher An Unlikely Environmentalist, by Wade Goodwyn, February 2, 2010

    February 5, 2010

  • Some of those who come to learn are new landowners who've made their fortune in Austin's high-tech industry. The locals call them "Dellionaires" because the first wave worked at nearby Dell Inc. These owners buy property not to make money off of it, but for recreation; and Bamberger's message of habitat restoration resonates strong.

    —National Public Radio, Texas Rancher An Unlikely Environmentalist, by Wade Goodwyn, February 2, 2010

    February 5, 2010

  • The Marders had Nestlé’s vocal cords cut by a veterinary surgeon after a neighbor in the family’s apartment building on the Upper East Side threatened to complain to the co-op board about the noisy dog. ... The surgery usually leaves the animal with something between a wheeze and a squeak. The procedure, commonly referred to as debarking, has been around for decades, but has fallen out of favor, especially among younger veterinarians and animal-rights advocates.

    New York Times, Heel. Sit. Whisper. Good Dog., Sam Dolnick, February 2, 2010

    February 4, 2010

  • Legislation to curb drinking is of particular interest here in Scotland’s old industrial heartland, or the “Buckfast Belt,” where Buckfast is considered a regional favorite. The drink is so ubiquitous in this working-class town, not far from Glasgow, that some people call it Coatbridge Table Wine (others call it “loopy juice,” or, channeling Travis Bickle, “Who’re you lookin’ at?” wine.)

    New York Times, For Scots, a Scourge Unleashed by a Bottle, by Sarah Lyall, February 3, 2010

    February 4, 2010

  • One barrier to wider adoption of electric bicycles in the United States and Europe may be the culture of cycling. Bicycle riders have long valued cycling as a sport and a form of exercise, not simply as a utilitarian means of transportation, and many of them look down their noses at electric bikes.

    “To the core cyclist, it’s cheating,” said Loren Mooney, editor in chief of Bicycling Magazine. “Marketers understand this, and it’s why some have put e-bikes in mass retailers like Best Buy, rather than engaging in the uphill battle of trying to sell them in bike shops.”

    —"An Electric Boost for Bicyclists, New York Times, January 31, 2010.

    February 2, 2010

  • Gangerh, all of the prons are playing for me right now. Can you link to some that are not working for you?

    February 2, 2010

  • Hmmm, okay. I'll file a support ticket for jingle truck. Looks like it's intermittent.

    February 1, 2010

  • It's a dictionary metasearch: you look up something and it gives you a link to all the major online dictionaries which have that entry. It's kind of a hassle to open up everything in a new link, and it's not always current because relies on the dictionaries keeping up-to-date the indexes they provide OneLook (and most dictionaries are terrible at keeping up with new language), but I particularly like its reverse dictionary, which I believe is more or less just a full-text search of entries and synonyms from some publicly available lexical data.

    February 1, 2010

  • Bilby, try it now.

    Yes, the OneLook inclusion is new. We're pretty happy about that!

    February 1, 2010

  • Probably from the Spanish "chones," meaning "underpants." I have found it as far back as 1972.

    February 1, 2010

  • "Scattered across the centre of San Francisco are almost seventy semi-secret spaces, privately owned but open to the public. Subject to the fine print of a little-known pact between City and Commerce, these so-called POPOS (Privately Owned Public Open Spaces) allow alluring vistas of San Francisco and access to its intimate interiors." —"Strange Maps." More here.

    January 30, 2010

  • "Patterson has written in just about every genre — science fiction, fantasy, romance, 'women’s weepies,' graphic novels, Christmas-themed books. He dabbles in nonfiction as well."

    JONATHAN MAHLER. (2010). "James Patterson Inc." Retrieved Jan. 28, 2010, from New York Times Web site: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/24/magazine/24patterson-t.html?hpw&pagewanted=all

    January 29, 2010

  • Several prominent American yoga teachers like Ana Forrest and Bryan Kest have recently acknowledged eating meat. In an example of how yogis have adopted the language and ideology of foodies, Mr. Kest calls himself a “selectarian,” one who chooses everything he eats.

    "When Chocolate and Chakras Collide" Julia Moskin (2010) - NYTimes.com.

    January 29, 2010

  • See the third definition at beard.

    January 27, 2010

  • Prolagus, all of those pages, and tags in general, are in our plans for dusting and straightening.

    chained_bear, thanks for the suggestion about linking to comments instead of the entry summary page. I'll propose to the team that we perhaps allow users to choose whether to default to the entry summary page or the entry comment page. Most of our users just come for definitions, so they would still see the expected results, while the regular visitors like you could automatically see the comments pages where the conversations and annotations are happening. But, as I say, I have to propose it, we have to discuss it, and the UI-thinkers and the DB-thinkers and the user-flow-thinkers have to come to a consensus that it's a good idea. Too much inside baseball? I dunno.

    Spam is indeed a problem, as it is for all of the Internet. We're killing oodles of spam accounts and spam comments (so satisfying!), much which nobody ever sees but the spammer and I. For now, you can send an email to feedback@wordnik.com or just remark upon the spam where you find it, and then we'll find it, too. I think grandmaster John wants to do some kind of "flag this" icon in the UI but it would definitely be down the pike a spell before we see it.

    January 22, 2010

  • Ian, the sentences are gathered automatically. We've rolled out some new rulesets and a big batch of new data that need just a few tweaks. I've opened a support ticket for the issue.

    January 21, 2010

  • hernesheir, we're on it. Somebody is up to high jinks, testing to see how well our inputs are sanitized in word URLs. I've opened a support ticket for it. Both of your recent comments are the same issue.

    chained_bear, I also opened a support ticket for the issue where sentences are showing that do not illustrate the word for which they appear.

    January 21, 2010

  • Thanks for the heads up, joker. We're on it. Gruel and spankings all around.

    January 21, 2010

  • Ian, we're looking into the issue you note at intimate now.

    January 21, 2010

  • Marky, I've forwarded your question at bugs and John's profile to apiteam@wordnik.com.

    January 20, 2010

  • Thanks, Myth. We have a script that is slowly cleaning out bad data like that. It's a big database, though, which is also growing at the same time, so it's going to take a while to complete.

    January 20, 2010

  • "Luck" and "banned" aren't really forbidden, are they?

    December 16, 2009

  • Marky, Tony will be the one to answer your questions about this. I'll ping him.

    December 16, 2009

  • One of your lists is our list of the day today. (If this were Flickr I'd have an MS Paint-made starburst to put here.)

    December 15, 2009

  • Hill7, I believe this is what you want: the online Dictionary of Scots Language (one of my favorite online dictionaries) has an entry for "kilter" which defines it as "to tilt up" and "to tumble headlong, to go head over heels, to fall," among other definitions.

    December 15, 2009

  • I think you're right, rolig. I don't see it any any of dozens of dictionaries on my shelves or on my computer.

    December 15, 2009

  • John's on it like beans on rice. "Most commented on" words on Zeitgeist are scheduled to be fixed in a soon-to-come future release.

    December 12, 2009

  • down on the farm

    December 11, 2009

  • imm

    December 11, 2009

  • This word is a misspelling of epitome. "Empitome" is also a misspelling.

    November 24, 2009

  • Telofy, I've put in a request to move the pronunciation you asked about. We don't currently have a convenient way to move them, though, so I'm not sure how long it will take.

    PS: request of that sort are best left at

    http://www.wordnik.com/people/feedback

    November 24, 2009

  • Dunno. It was there all along.

    November 20, 2009

  • 2009-11-19 Capitonyms or capitonyms

    November 20, 2009

  • They Stumble Off The Tongue

    November 20, 2009

  • They Roll Off The Tongue

    November 20, 2009

  • Panvocalics

    November 20, 2009

  • Containers

    November 20, 2009

  • Laundry List

    November 20, 2009

  • Red/Pink Colors

    November 20, 2009

  • hero + pirouette

    November 20, 2009

  • Defined by CharlieCurve as "The starlet, athlete or hero turning in a circle and waving to the surrounding crowd."

    November 20, 2009

  • Also, I've made a support ticket for the lists that begin with a bullet. I don't have an ETA on them, but they are on our to-do lists.

    November 20, 2009

  • PS: Wordnik's equivalent for high-threat-level bug-reporting and fixing will henceforth be the Feedback account page. That page will be monitored by multiple people throughout the day, which is not necessarily the case for the numerous other places bug reports are being left.

    November 20, 2009

  • Prolagus, all of the lists you mentioned in bugs as missing have now been restored, thanks to John.

    http://www.wordnik.com/lists/commedia-dell-arte

    http://www.wordnik.com/lists/the-condom-free-preserve

    http://www.wordnik.com/lists/italian-politics

    http://www.wordnik.com/lists/scientific-papers-with-delightful-titles

    By the way, Wordnik's equivalent for "red-phone"-level bug-reporting and fixing will henceforth be the Feedback account page. That page will be monitored by multiple people throughout the day, which is not necessarily the case for the numerous other places bug reports are being left.

    November 20, 2009

  • Whichbe, all of the lists you mentioned in bugs are now restored. John's the man.

    For reference, the 6 lists trapped in Limbo are:

    - Wordie Challenge - example poth - http://www.wordnik.com/lists/wordie-challenge

    - Scambiguous - ex. know and no - http://www.wordnik.com/lists/scambiguous

    - Wakese - ex. monomyth - http://www.wordnik.com/lists/wakese--2

    - Punlandia - ex. polish - http://www.wordnik.com/lists/punlandia

    - Pharmacontents - ex. moxifloxacin - http://www.wordnik.com/lists/pharmacontents

    - Terms of Phonetics - ex. phoneme - http://www.wordnik.com/lists/terms-of-phonetics

    November 20, 2009

  • A vexample is an example sentence which is truly terrible.

    November 19, 2009

  • Agricultural reporter. (Suggested by its appearance in lowercase form on pollyanna's list, I Think We're All Bozos On This Bus.)

    November 19, 2009

  • Tiara, what are you having problems deleting?

    November 18, 2009

  • Missourians represent.

    November 14, 2009

  • Tiara, you should be able to add to your original list now. Do you want to give it a try?

    November 14, 2009

  • Tiara, what was the difficulty with adding to the old list? (And did you see that I mentioned it in Twitter today?)http://twitter.com/wordnik/status/5649628852

    November 13, 2009

  • Dean Martin sings Sympatico.

    November 13, 2009

  • LINE BREAKS ARE THE DEVIL'S TOOLS STOP NEXT THING YOU KNOW YOU WILL WANT TERMINAL SENTENCE PUNCTUATION AND LOWERCASE STOP

    November 12, 2009

  • We're working on fixing the high-level character issue. Hang in there.

    November 12, 2009

  • This word was chosen as Wordnik word of the day.

    November 11, 2009

  • This word was chosen as Wordnik word of the day.

    November 11, 2009

  • This word was chosen as Wordnik word of the day.

    November 11, 2009

  • This word was chosen as Wordnik word of the day.

    November 11, 2009

  • This word was chosen as Wordnik word of the day.

    November 11, 2009

  • This word was chosen as Wordnik word of the day.

    November 11, 2009

  • This word was chosen as Wordnik word of the day.

    November 11, 2009

  • This word was chosen as Wordnik word of the day.

    November 11, 2009

  • This word was chosen as Wordnik word of the day.

    November 11, 2009

  • This word was chosen as Wordnik word of the day.

    November 11, 2009

  • This word was chosen as Wordnik word of the day.

    November 11, 2009

  • This word was chosen as Wordnik word of the day.

    November 11, 2009

  • This word was chosen as Wordnik word of the day.

    November 11, 2009

  • This word was chosen as Wordnik word of the day.

    November 11, 2009

  • This word was chosen as Wordnik word of the day.

    November 11, 2009

  • This word was chosen as Wordnik word of the day.

    November 11, 2009

  • This word was chosen as Wordnik word of the day.

    November 11, 2009

  • This word was chosen as Wordnik word of the day.

    November 11, 2009

  • This word was chosen as Wordnik word of the day.

    November 11, 2009

  • This word was chosen as Wordnik word of the day.

    November 11, 2009

  • This word was chosen as Wordnik word of the day.

    November 11, 2009

  • This word was chosen as Wordnik word of the day.

    November 11, 2009

  • This word was chosen as Wordnik word of the day.

    November 11, 2009

  • This word was chosen as Wordnik word of the day.

    November 11, 2009

  • This word was chosen as Wordnik word of the day.

    November 11, 2009

  • This word was chosen as Wordnik word of the day.

    November 11, 2009

  • This word was chosen as Wordnik word of the day.

    November 11, 2009

  • This word was chosen as Wordnik word of the day.

    November 11, 2009

  • This word was chosen as Wordnik word of the day.

    November 11, 2009

  • This word was chosen as Wordnik word of the day.

    November 11, 2009

  • This word was chosen as Wordnik word of the day.

    November 11, 2009

  • This word was chosen as Wordnik word of the day.

    November 11, 2009

  • This word was chosen as Wordnik word of the day.

    November 11, 2009

  • This word was chosen as Wordnik word of the day.

    November 11, 2009

  • This word was chosen as Wordnik word of the day.

    November 11, 2009

  • This word was chosen as Wordnik word of the day.

    November 11, 2009

  • This word was chosen as Wordnik word of the day.

    November 11, 2009

  • This word was chosen as Wordnik word of the day.

    November 11, 2009

  • This word was chosen as Wordnik word of the day.

    November 11, 2009

  • This word was chosen as Wordnik word of the day.

    November 11, 2009

  • This word was chosen as Wordnik word of the day.

    November 11, 2009

  • This word was chosen as Wordnik word of the day.

    November 11, 2009

  • This word was chosen as Wordnik word of the day.

    November 11, 2009

  • This word was chosen as Wordnik word of the day.

    November 11, 2009

  • This word was chosen as Wordnik word of the day.

    November 11, 2009

  • This word was chosen as Wordnik word of the day.

    November 11, 2009

  • This word was chosen as Wordnik word of the day.

    November 11, 2009

  • This word was chosen as Wordnik word of the day.

    November 11, 2009

  • This word was chosen as Wordnik word of the day.

    November 11, 2009

  • This word was chosen as Wordnik word of the day.

    November 11, 2009

  • This word was chosen as Wordnik word of the day.

    November 11, 2009

  • This word was chosen as Wordnik word of the day.

    November 11, 2009

  • This word was chosen as Wordnik word of the day.

    November 11, 2009

  • This word was chosen as Wordnik word of the day.

    November 11, 2009

  • This word was chosen as Wordnik word of the day.

    November 11, 2009

  • This word was chosen as Wordnik word of the day.

    November 11, 2009

  • This word was chosen as Wordnik word of the day.

    November 11, 2009

  • This word was chosen as Wordnik word of the day.

    November 11, 2009

  • This word was chosen as Wordnik word of the day.

    November 11, 2009

  • This word was chosen as Wordnik word of the day.

    November 11, 2009

  • This word was chosen as Wordnik word of the day.

    November 11, 2009

  • This word was chosen as Wordnik word of the day.

    November 11, 2009

  • This word was chosen as Wordnik word of the day.

    November 11, 2009

  • This word was chosen as Wordnik word of the day.

    November 11, 2009

  • This word was chosen as Wordnik word of the day.

    November 11, 2009

  • November 11, 2009

  • November 11, 2009

  • November 11, 2009

  • All nights are late, eventually.

    November 11, 2009

  • This word was chosen as Wordnik word of the day.

    November 11, 2009

  • A frequent misspelling of tenure.

    November 7, 2009

  • It means "to communicate by means of a computer."

    November 5, 2009

  • Testtwo

    October 30, 2009

  • Albeit/albiet is a misspelling of albeit.

    October 30, 2009

  • Found it in one of the cutlines at the Boston Globe: "On the right of the image, sunlight bathes the anti-Saturn side of this geologically active moon. Saturnshine dimly lights the Saturn-facing side of the moon on the left of the image."

    October 21, 2009

  • Winger was a great band.

    August 3, 2009

  • “”éüä’‘îâ—ç

    July 15, 2009

  • Plural of "oeuvre."

    July 3, 2009

  • Less common spelling of "doofus."

    July 3, 2009

  • Usually rendered as two words: "non sequitur."

    July 3, 2009

  • Common misspelling of "non sequitur."

    July 3, 2009

  • Vaping is the inhalation of vapors from a smokeless cigarette.

    June 16, 2009

  • "Teh" is a frequent misspelling for "the." However, in online writing, "teh" now has its own semantic features and grammatical role.

    April 6, 2009

  • A frequent misspelling of "independent."

    April 6, 2009

  • A very common misspelling of "separate."

    April 6, 2009

  • Dialect past tense of "steal."

    April 3, 2009

  • Frequent misspelling of "sneek peek."

    April 3, 2009

  • This comes from a misunderstanding of the phrase "various and sundry," where the "and sundry" sounds like "assundry." It is rarely used and when it is used, it is in very informal texts.

    April 1, 2009

  • Often confused in writing with "illusion."

    March 26, 2009

  • This is a frequent misspelling and typographical error for "a lot

    March 26, 2009

  • "A lot" should be two words, not one.

    March 24, 2009

  • This is a common misspelling of "ad nauseam."

    March 23, 2009

Comments for grant_barrett

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.

  • <

    February 13, 2010

  • February 13, 2010

  • You probably think this song is about you.

    February 1, 2010

  • Ready when you are.

    December 19, 2009

  • Ooh, thanks. Lookee there!

    December 15, 2009

  • It's under blog.

    December 15, 2009

  • Am I being dull or is there no obvious link to LOTD? I can't see one on the Wordnik page, Zeitgeist or indeed anyword page.

    December 15, 2009

  • Thanks. And it seems I’ve found a way to circumvent that dot bug by editing the hidden fields on some other pronunciations page (via WebDeveloper toolbar) in such a way that the recording is posted to the right one. :-)

    November 24, 2009

  • I played with your name. 

    November 20, 2009

  • Hey, Grant. I'm from Missouri.

    November 13, 2009