leaden has looked up 4017 words, created 18 lists, listed 666 words, written 212 comments, added 176 tags, and loved 223 words.
Comments by leaden
Comments for leaden
-
Hi leaden, your erudite contributions are missed!
-
Thanks for Bilbygate. I have added it to "Gates".
-
Hey--I was the first person to comment on this profile!
-
Something in your comment on The Dangers of Epileptic Lagomorph Driving seems to be making everything italic.
leaden commented on the word spiff
“Wiktionary
. . .
n. countable, dated A well-dressed man
n. countable A bonus or other remuneration, . . . .
n. countable, colloquial, Jamaica a hand-rolled marijuana cigarette; a joint
. . .
v. to reward (a salesperson) with a spiff.”
Could you be more specific, please?
May 16, 2013
leaden commented on the word plumbing
I can’t believe I didn’t know the word plumbum. I might have to change my nom de plumb again.
May 9, 2013
leaden commented on the word kerfluflun
n. A flocculent kerfuflun
May 4, 2013
leaden commented on the word fortuitous
@TJay:
Although some, seeking pomposity, substitute fortuitous for fortunate, the words are not synonymous. Fortunate means “lucky.” Fortuitous means “by chance,” “by accident.” Something that is fortuitous can also be fortunate, but unless it happened by chance, fortunate is the correct word.
– Rene J. Cappon, The Associated Press Guide to Writing, Peterson’s, 2000
That’s the usage problem to which the AHD entries refer. Until recently, “fortuitous” meant “accidental”, not “lucky”. (See the CDC definition.) In the twentieth century some English speakers began to conflate fortuitous with fortunate and using it to mean (as you say) serendipitous. Some audiences regard this usage as confused or pompous, and a good dictionary won’t include it without a warning.
http://grammar.about.com/od/alightersideofwriting/a/fortunategloss.htm
http://grammarist.com/usage/fortuitous-fortunate/
http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/fortuitous.html
May 3, 2013
leaden commented on the list fingernails-on-my-chalkboard
@arby: Calm down. Have a kerfluflun. Or some kerflunitrazepam.
May 3, 2013
leaden commented on the list unenthusiastic-interjections
This list is unobjectionable.
May 3, 2013
leaden commented on the word acanthopterygian
Spiny, fish of the
acanthopterygian
variety are.
Feb 26, 2013
leaden commented on the word snowmenclature
http://dailyportmanteau.blogspot.com/2010/02/snowmenclature.html
http://blogs.mcclatchydc.com/washington/2010/02/snowmenclature.html
http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wordroutes/snomg-its-snowmageddon-2010/
http://www.wxyz.com/dpp/news/creative-winter-storm-names-like-snomg,-snowpocalypse,-snowmageddon-are-starting-to-spread
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowmageddon
Feb 20, 2013
leaden commented on the word inexplicable exclamation mark
!
Feb 4, 2013
leaden commented on the word misconfigure
http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/7685/is-misconfigured-a-word
Jan 10, 2013
leaden commented on the word week†™ s
See also mojibake.
Dec 31, 2012
leaden commented on the word antœci
See also antecians.
Dec 2, 2012
leaden commented on the word antecian
See antecians.
Dec 2, 2012
leaden commented on the list some-html-is-allowed
Did the blockquote tag break recently? Or was it broken in the Great Fiasco and never fixed? E.g.:
This is not.
Oct 6, 2012
leaden commented on the word orthography
I stumbled across a video of David Wolman promoting his book Righting the Mother Tongue: From Olde English to Email, the Tangled Story of English Spelling at Google (from March 26, 2009): “Righting the Mother Tongue tells the cockamamie story of English spelling. When did ghost acquire its silent 'h'? Will cyberspace kill the one in rhubarb? And was it really rocket scientists who invented spell-check?”
I don’t know if the book is any good, but I think it likely someone here will enjoy the talk.
Oct 6, 2012
leaden commented on the word camel case
See also medial capital.
Aug 8, 2012
leaden commented on the word medial capital
See also camel case.
Aug 8, 2012
leaden commented on the word camel case
I learned this morning that my employer has a new service which is spelled with a lowercase first letter, two medial capitals, and an inexplicable exclamation mark, like so: "xyXxxXxxlxk!",* even if it appears in the middle of a sentence. (I don't know what it looks like at the beginning of a sentence; I doubt anyone who works here is brave enough to try it.)
* That's not the real name, but the pattern of risers and descenders is approximately right.
Aug 8, 2012
leaden commented on the word tyroma
Really, CD&C? “Cheesy”? (Please pardon me while I step out to be sick.)
Jun 3, 2012
leaden commented on the word trichorrhoea
See also trichorrhea.
Jun 3, 2012
leaden commented on the list body-parts--2
I think there might be one or two problems with your list, Emil.
Jun 3, 2012
leaden commented on the list a-shedding-of-the-hair
You’re welcome. It was my pleasure to populate your list instead of attending to things to which I really should be attending. (Feel free, of course, to cull.)
Jun 3, 2012
leaden commented on the word trichorrhoea
Nice find. I hadn’t guessed how many English words (almost all medical or anatomical, of course) derive from this Greek root. I found an extensive list titled “tricho-, trich-, -tricha, -trichia, -trichan, -trichic, -trichosis, -trichous, -thrix, -trichum, -trichy +”.
Jun 3, 2012
leaden commented on the list gates
See also Bilbygate.
Jun 3, 2012
leaden commented on the word nocake
“The cake is a lie.”
Jun 3, 2012
leaden commented on the word cong you bing
I can’t believe Microsoft passed up working this into a slogan — something along the lines of “Cong you Bing, today?”
Jun 3, 2012
leaden commented on the word cong you bing
See also scallion pancake.
Jun 3, 2012
leaden commented on the word battledoor
To clarify, a battledoor is neither a battle nor a door, and is used to strike a shuttlecock, which is neither a shuttle nor a cock. The catgut and hornbook, on the other hand, are more or less what one might expect.
Jun 2, 2012
leaden commented on the word battledoor
See also battledore.
Jun 2, 2012
leaden commented on the word battledoor and shuttlecock
See battledore and shuttlecock.
Jun 2, 2012
leaden commented on the word Memorical Day
I typed this, then realized that I prefer it to the correct spelling.
May 18, 2012
leaden commented on the list lost-for-word
Déjà maid?
Feb 27, 2012
leaden commented on the word expectatorium
I had hoped this word would turn out to mean “a room for anticipating” or “a room for spitting”. Either way, I could have found no end of uses for it.
Feb 24, 2012
leaden commented on the word galluptious
The earliest occurrence of this spelling* I can find on Google Books appears in The Metal Worker, Vol. V, No. 14, published 1876 April 1:
The phrase galluptious cuspadore in which it appears† is causing me to swoon. As far as I can tell it hasn't been repeated in the century-and-a-third since.‡ Someone please use this phrase as a name for your book or your band or your child§ immediately. Thank you.
__________
* The spelling “goluptious” is more common, with “about 848 results”, as opposed to 143 for “galluptious”.
† And on April 1st, no less.
‡ At this time, the phrase is a bona fide Googlewhack, although of course that will no longer be true soon after I post this.
§ Or, I suppose, your spittoon.
Feb 24, 2012
leaden commented on the word tidal wave
(Edit: It appears deinonychus beat me to the punch.)
Feb 4, 2012
leaden commented on the word cursory
Argh.
“But this original name is dying out because sod over here is a cursory so is not used much.”
Sometimes the Internet makes me sad.
Jan 18, 2012
leaden commented on the word pointing at the moon
It’s “Godo no tsuki” (“Moon of Enlightenment”) from the very popular 1885-1892 woodblock print series Tsuki hyaku sugata (月百姿) (One Hundred Aspects of the Moon) by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi (月岡 芳年). The British Museum has a print. The following website is nice for thumbing through the series:
http://yoshitoshi.verwoerd.info/
Dec 15, 2011
leaden commented on the word pointing at the moon
Dec 14, 2011
leaden commented on the word Eyebeam Creed
See Eyebeam.
Dec 11, 2011
leaden commented on the word reduplicative paramnesia
This looks exactly like the other page about reduplicative paramnesia.
Dec 3, 2011
leaden commented on the word week†™ s
It’s a right (closing) single-quote (used, as hernesheir said, as an apostrophe) encoded in UTF-8 and subsequently mangled by Microsoft Windows, which obtusely uses its own character encodings in place of Unicode.
Nov 11, 2011
leaden commented on the word The Dangers of Epileptic Lagomorph Driving
See comments at the dangers of epileptic lagomorph driving and moro reflex (sic).
Nov 11, 2011
leaden commented on the word If Ruzuzu is infinitely powerful, can she also be infinitely good
Note that omnipotence further implies responsibility for everything, which leads directly to the topic implied by the title of this page, e.g., the problem of pain.
Wait a minute . . . . Is this turning into a panel discussion? Curse you, yarb!
Nov 10, 2011
leaden commented on the word If Ruzuzu is infinitely powerful, can she also be infinitely good
I agree, rolig, that omnipotence implies (at least the capacity for) omniscience. The converse, however, is false. (Consider Cassandra.) Ruzuzu's statement, parsed as claiming the two ain't equivalent, therefore still stands.
Nov 10, 2011
leaden commented on the word Von Kármán vortex street
Please tell me that somewhere a city council has had the wisdom to so name an appropriate boulevard.
Nov 8, 2011
leaden commented on the word tsunamis
(Offpage) [sound of gnawing]
Nov 8, 2011
leaden commented on the word tsunamis
No, no--seething. It's like teething, but comes earlier alphabetically. Good night. Wanders off to find his [tsunamiform seething ring]
Nov 8, 2011
leaden commented on the word tsunamis
Still seething Done.
Nov 8, 2011
leaden commented on the word tsunamis
With a [vaguely tornadoform scribble over his head] Fine.
Nov 8, 2011
leaden commented on the word tessanne@avantgarde-dom.com
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language has once again completely changed my understanding of history.
Nov 8, 2011