Comments by madmouth

Show previous 200 comments...

  • as I recall, Mr. Wilde also denied the allegations against him...
    also, any aesthetic tweaking is fine by me, ry.  I have come to accept, through lengthy long-sufferingness, that not everyone is addicted to hyphens

    March 20, 2014

  • well, when you're looking for it I get performance anxiety

    March 19, 2014

  • All hail the great puntiff!

    March 19, 2014

  • Some decisive victory will have been won if this one stays empty!!

    March 19, 2014

  • when I play mahjong against myself, myself, myself and I

    March 19, 2014

  • *sporfle*

    but seriously - where is the fake latin list?!

    March 19, 2014

  • mathematics...of wonton...burrito meals

    March 19, 2014

  • what Little Edie Bouvier calls the cats out to

    March 19, 2014

  • you had to wait a while, but traumatic insemination lives to live again

    March 19, 2014

  • this Venn diagram STRONGLY overlaps with Popeye speak

    March 19, 2014

  • I vote we name the inherent sound of fun ruzuzurrus

    March 19, 2014

  • oh, he do

    March 14, 2014

  • Heavy foregut on each Gorgut;

    B'lieve in cream instead of yoghurt;

    Riffs and screaming thrice a day;

    At 46 still drinking in Longeuil

    March 12, 2014

  • a) that's exactly right

    b) I think of you as the only near-whitey invited ^-^

    March 12, 2014

  • gut- != -gut

    YARBLY

    March 12, 2014

  • I submit personal starvateur - a must in achieving that Hollywood waste-line

    March 12, 2014

  • sweet tooth fairy denoting a kink?

    LIST IDEA!

    March 12, 2014

  • drive-in sex box is the logical extension of the coffee drive-thrus staffed by the bikini-clad...or does it already exist?!

    March 11, 2014

  • puppy water - beauty's help

    distilled from Tripsy's darling whelp!

    March 11, 2014

  • I am awed by this list's brevity, wryness, and the fine glint of Waughsian foreign-correspondent lunacy in its eye

    March 7, 2014

  • cf. South African sarmie:

    "Fokken larney

    Nutella on my sarmie"

    March 6, 2014

  • the thing is less tasty than the concept, I warrant - unlike corn dogs

    March 6, 2014

  • I want an Ethnologue-combing app, too! Or did you - gasp - comb it yourself?!

    March 6, 2014

  • I didn't know that heretofore I had lived to witness "This reminds me of that zombie ant fungus"

    What sentence can top it now?!

    March 6, 2014

  • I am reading your slides and snaffling up compounds for the list, yaar
    you're an admirable stafflist

    March 6, 2014

  • oh, you!

    March 1, 2014

  • lushed up to the nuts is a very tasty concept

    March 1, 2014

  • I strongly suspect we are of a generation!!

    February 24, 2014

  • the -slang is cognate to 'schlong', which if isn't a key to fun madeupical compounds I don't know what is

    February 24, 2014

  • I am taking the opportunity to add words that have lots of fricatives in them - if this is not what it's meant for, do complain!!

    February 24, 2014

  • shrink gun, kuntilanak, gryphoemia

    February 10, 2014

  • the mouthfeel is meant to outweigh the cringefactor, b/c "consonant esteemer" doesn't scan so tasty.

    Consonant Steamer? The good ship Slavograph

    February 10, 2014

  • it's a mushin injection; absent of will or willfulness

    spotted dick, cat bus, shrink gun,...

    February 8, 2014

  • it's the Chris Morris of sweet tooth fairies

    incubus, spotted dick, cat bus, ...

    February 7, 2014

  • This is - IMHO - the much more pungent Korean idiom for "golden boy". Omma-chingu-adeul

    February 5, 2014

  • Gustave Doore?

    February 5, 2014

  • I hadn't meaningfully interpreted CCle yet - thank you!!

    February 5, 2014

  • it's a legitimate Tardis Scrabble word, though

    February 5, 2014

  • I just bust a lung over Convict Wristwatch
    And bilbyfilth..ersnatch

    February 5, 2014

  • on the 09th day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:

    http://aphs.worldnomads.com/jubaloo/8358/HPIM2777.jpg

    February 5, 2014

  • also a love letter to an ex-neighbor husky named Demon, who moved away when his dude did :(

    February 5, 2014

  • Because being good at nudity also pertains to Arctic temperatures and your bum-steak would freeze first!

    #dontmesswithimogen

    February 5, 2014

  • complete this sequence:

    soft drink, incubus, ...

    February 5, 2014

  • not to be confused with the language of the Arctic expeditions

    February 5, 2014

  • to be pronounced with a thick Brazilian Portuguese inflection

    February 5, 2014

  • Plz to invent Bilby's Ramson n' Damson Chutney

    February 5, 2014

  • BWAHAHAHAHA

    February 5, 2014

  • Extreme temperatures in Vatican City!!!

    February 3, 2014

  • I never SAW such SPAM in my LIFE

    January 30, 2014

  • in SBC, this refers (misogynistically?) to one's sister-in-law

    January 27, 2014

  • ECAFFACETIME is how I mathed y'all concepts

    January 27, 2014

  • Humans are quite my favourite species, said the 4th Doctor

    January 27, 2014

  • skypigs, Burquitlam, Queen E park

    I heard before there is some regionalistic term for the pill bug, but I forgot it

    January 27, 2014

  • I've witnessed the verbing of this!

    January 27, 2014

  • Tbe category mandalas and such belong to, according to the editor of my book of Mughal paintings. Useful though unwieldy!

    January 27, 2014

  • a.k.a. Krump dance (see troupe Buckness Personified)

    January 23, 2014

  • psst - you can create a word list named after a book you're reading and disburden thereby the comments section of repetitive citations

    January 22, 2014

  • hahahahahaha

    January 20, 2014

  • I concur - well-informed copypasta especially

    January 20, 2014

  • Loved!

    January 18, 2014

  • well, shucks and welcome to your hoo-ha

    January 18, 2014

  • <3Ɛ>

    January 17, 2014

  • The perfect crime - a Christmas crime!!

    January 16, 2014

  • "In what torn ship so ever I embark,

    That ship shall be my emblem of Thy ark;

    What sea soever swallow me, that flood

    Shall be to me an emblem of Thy blood"

    -Donne's trip to Germany

    January 13, 2014

  • I love the Mercer, but this is a weak offering from His Mouthness

    January 9, 2014

  • Brave Knights of Spam

    January 9, 2014

  • a.k.a. zen's $5 cousin

    January 8, 2014

  • geo-profiling??

    January 8, 2014

  • yep. Apparently a good chunk of English words take antepenultimate stress but we can't tell because they don't have enough syllables

    January 6, 2014

  • Does it alternate with coprolalic or poss. coprolaliacal?

    January 6, 2014

  • My father, an incurable Slavic article-dropper, says "chewing fat" instead of "chewing the fat" (though most of his ragchew moments also feature a square of pancetta in his mouth)

    January 6, 2014

  • it's the next Dwile Flonking

    will the 2060s be as groovy as their predecessor?

    December 29, 2013

  • I can't believe I've lived without "dim-lit shot of dangling balls" so far

    December 27, 2013

  • tendonitis?

    December 27, 2013

  • fifths!

    December 27, 2013

  • they consider themselves people enough for a hundred people's considerations. cat ego is almost a unit of measurement

    December 27, 2013

  • hurt feelings when clumsy cultural appropriation is pointed out - coined by a guerilla commenter

    December 26, 2013

  • the breastfeeding age, from "Esme", Joanna's gift to her friend's newborn.

    December 26, 2013

  • nothing the swinish multitude loves better than cooking up a tasty language meal!

    Nok Nok
    Who's there?
    Dudes, mostly

    December 26, 2013

  • I envision a hard-hitting documentary of shelves shelfie-ing in public and how that is EXACTLY WHAT WE LOOK LIKE DOING IT

    December 26, 2013

  • I first heard this line pat to the moment, having that evening seen a film full of baby goats

    December 23, 2013

  • see Sylvia Plath's "Metaphors"!

    December 23, 2013

  • I have homaged your idea with Newsom Strings, because her phrasing gets me even more than her vocab

    December 23, 2013

  • ie. mother Nature

    December 23, 2013

  • to decay; rot - or cause the same.

    December 23, 2013

  • 'gyle' being an obs. form for "brew"

    December 23, 2013

  • in the filthy America, this could easily be synonymous to Cupid's house of commerce ^^

    December 23, 2013

  • schmancy old form of "jargon"

    December 23, 2013

  • Apparently the obsolete meaning of this is akin to 'rash'

    Much more sophisticated, that. "I can't go anywhere til I get some medication for my mordication"

    December 23, 2013

  • Here's a party game in the spirit of Absolute Piffe (Piffle Absolut?):

    http://i42.tinypic.com/15pmuxe.jpg

    Each row contains one fake and one real Japanese band, directionality being no hint. Guess!!

    December 18, 2013

  • a unit of measurement both madeupical and unfrivolous - world first; you got it from hernesheir

    December 18, 2013

  • likelihood of being a Cute Word increases 30% with the addition of "plum" to anything (cf. plumptious)

    December 18, 2013

  • the meter is funky - a bit to the left of the limerick
    I like it!

    December 18, 2013

  • Says Nina Simone, of a gentleman she disenjoys: "You're funkier than a mosquito's tweeter

    You've got a mouth like a herd of boll-weevils"

    December 14, 2013

  • LOVED - on the strength of retchwort alone!

    December 12, 2013

  • Yo, it's an open list now. The people's love will not be stopped!!

    December 12, 2013

  • It has that goopy autological mouthfeel

    November 29, 2013

  • luuuurve

    November 28, 2013

  • ...expects Nobel Prize for viscous deviltry

    November 28, 2013

  • 13-tog celebrity duvet fling could be a new Sailor Moon attack - like dwile flonking, but more relevant

    Let Elizabeth May cast the first duvet

    November 26, 2013

  • ^.^

    November 26, 2013

  • Calling all Wordniks!

    November 26, 2013

  • sadly, the google offers me no clothing samples from Violence Jack Off

    October 5, 2013

  • Collapsed Pudding, Mortshire

    October 5, 2013

  • fakat, a Yugo dialectal form of fakt (meaning "fact") sounds when articulated exACTly like f*ck it

    October 5, 2013

  • Acronym awaaaard

    October 5, 2013

  • getting salty

    October 5, 2013

  • Well, the Queen is watching - Huggles only!

    October 5, 2013

  • Thank you kindly for Futility Closet!

    April 16, 2013

  • Capt. Haddock's dream brother lexicon

    April 16, 2013

  • OED suggests this is a variant on the spelling of "wraths", "wrath" being the name of this fish as derived from Cornish. A beautiful exclamation when a single wrath will not do, also compoundable, e.g. wrasse and ires! Of course it is a different meaning, but beautifully suggestive nonetheless

    April 16, 2013

  • so good for mouthfeel!

    of interest is the obverse: http://briansteel.wordpress.com/tag/english-loanwords-in-hindi/

    March 22, 2013

  • a suffix onto "dogođaji" (events) that creates the meaning "blah blah eventcakes" or "big fat useless events". Perhaps one could term it a dismissive suffix, akin to that evident in Hindi in "filmi-shilmi" and "beauty-shooty" (e.g. "who cares about your beauty-shooty salon?")

    March 22, 2013

  • lit. blood-vine, meaning "family line" or "lineage"

    March 22, 2013

  • is a-a-u-u Antipodean for hubba-hubba?

    March 19, 2013

  • great stats both as regards mouthfeel and meaning

    March 19, 2013

  • Apropos of Dylan Thomas' "Now"

    March 10, 2013

  • This one wins the word game by basically inventing criteria for lexical coolness - there is nobody in thirtytwomo's freaky league

    November 29, 2012

  • fattrels and cant! fattrels and cant!

    November 29, 2012

  • bosoms awry!

    November 29, 2012

  • We need a word for the beauty of a user with 1 list with 3000+ items (of good quality!!) on it!

    November 29, 2012

  • most excellent

    November 24, 2012

  • Archaic term for 'cheerful', lending in compound to hoddypoll a.k.a. cuckold or fool (with noddypoll and doddypoll having roughly the same meaning)

    November 18, 2012

  • have done, with its buddy unbosom, which serves also perhaps as a very funky noun.

    November 13, 2012

  • it trickled into Bosnian (sp. 'raja') to mean rabble (folk) and/or buddies. I don't know what you'd call tax-exempt buddies, though

    August 25, 2012

  • c/o Dylan Thomas, from the longer but more sublime "venomous porridge unknown to toxicologists"

    August 25, 2012

  • I back now. In time for blackberry season - will likely be wording about trifle before long

    What's new in the marsupial world?

    July 7, 2012

  • archaic euphemism for Dr. Condom's marvelous invention

    July 6, 2012

  • o what can ail thee, spam-at-arms,

    alone and palely festering?

    July 6, 2012

  • variant of vernicle with more kicks to the humerus

    March 13, 2012

  • great title!

    December 29, 2011

  • if mispronounced, fun to say. catachoomin! cata-cumin!

    November 17, 2011

  • insufferable gynocrats, the lot of 'em

    November 17, 2011

  • hehehehehe

    November 17, 2011

  • as a preteen I fantasized about having a sandworm for a pet, those big scary ones from Beetlejuice...and a big giant roomful of sand for it. yeah.

    November 17, 2011

  • good work, foxy - combining gooses and cabooses

    November 17, 2011

  • once again fbjarjo rides in on his Magnificent Incomprehensibilitator...mortals beware ^-^

    November 17, 2011

  • I am smelling the composition on voles in Waugh's Scoop all over this, yarb old boy

    November 17, 2011

  • my, how thy thews shew in the snew

    ...but the shrews in your trews disagrews?

    November 17, 2011

  • has occasioned dwive, poss. d'wive, a hypothetical abbreviation of a more gender-specific synonym for 'divorce' :D

    November 17, 2011

  • that one is getting odder as one ages is a comforting thought ^^

    ruzuzu, there needs to be a title for your special kind of assistance round these parts - Wee Wordie Wirgil?

    November 10, 2011

  • that's 1 sucker per second!

    November 9, 2011

  • Apparently Yeoman of the halter is the hangman's assistant.

    November 9, 2011

  • "an Officer belonging to his Majesties pantry" (OED)

    November 9, 2011

  • ...was so aligned on the left as to make me think there was a cool new list with such entries as "airbrush, banana" and "squash, enameled"

    November 9, 2011

  • "daddy, why aren't you in bed yet?"

    "I can't sleep...someone on the internet is wrong"

    -Eddie Campbell

    November 3, 2011

  • all sculptures I have seen seem to indicate that Shiva sits you, not the other way around ^^

    November 3, 2011

  • with wadmeal gloves, yes? or would that be 'yaaaairs' a la White

    November 3, 2011

  • NICE ONE

    how does one, now that the profile comment function is as dead as the list comment function, get hold of a bilby? it is the sad of all

    November 3, 2011

  • cf. sharaab

    November 3, 2011

  • where is that list of madeupical collective nouns?

    November 3, 2011

  • Not to be confused with Mright

    November 3, 2011

  • def.: one who wishes herpes upon another. as coined by a dear friend

    October 11, 2011

  • or GSYBE! cover band composed entirely of butchers?

    October 5, 2011

  • distant faunal cousin of the bonobo

    October 3, 2011

  • fun to say, at any rate ^^

    I wouldn't wish anthracnose on anyone really

    October 3, 2011

  • in no way like arsiversie? this makes me sad

    October 3, 2011

  • eerily eligible for the list of cutest words ever made o.0

    October 3, 2011

  • what that princess pulled, eh?

    October 3, 2011

  • is there a list for Weird Wiki Pages?

    October 3, 2011

  • the literal translation for 'kai lan'

    October 3, 2011

  • and hereby is born the to-be-well-known salutation of departure:

    "Godspeed and may life give you sausages"

    October 3, 2011

  • no! How. Can. You. Be. Real??

    September 6, 2011

  • she forgot ayrak - the best/worst part!

    September 6, 2011

  • exciting alternative naming strategies - cast the I Ching

    Preponderance of the Great Moss (it's weak at the top, you see)

    September 6, 2011

  • there is something really...all-encompassing about "cow pie", isn't there? o.0

    September 6, 2011

  • duly corrected.

    and now -

    I admit it - I've 'ad tea. Indian tea!

    September 6, 2011

  • Wiki: "Phallus impudicus, commonly known as the stinkhorn, is a widespread fungus recognizable for its foul odor and its phallic shape when mature, the latter feature giving rise to several names in 17th-century England. "

    September 5, 2011

  • 4 of clubs in slang!

    September 5, 2011

  • apparently bugloss derives from the Greek meaning "ox tongue", making this a double candidate for Love Across Kingdoms :D

    September 5, 2011

  • an unprepossessing specimen to say the least

    September 5, 2011

  • a lichen, diploschistes muscorum

    September 5, 2011

  • a lichen not to be confused with bleeding-heart. Genus mycoblastus sanguinarius

    September 5, 2011

  • a moss type

    September 5, 2011

  • yes, I'm ignoring the intended grammar of the phrase, but the rusty steppe is a dreamy sort of image - a plain traversable only by mares of the oil-hoof clan...

    September 5, 2011

  • Oddly Specific o.0

    September 5, 2011

  • OMG Wordnik Currency Exchange needs to be listerated!!

    August 23, 2011

  • I bet they pay the pompadourists in...sand dollars?

    you know, camels? sand? anyone?

    *bitter shame*

    August 19, 2011

  • I have a terrible pun to unload but it's too bad for that, even

    August 18, 2011

  • yes and yes, also - squinty.

    August 15, 2011

  • this guy right here

    August 15, 2011

  • a.k.a. avocet

    August 15, 2011

  • Beyoootiful! Always something new to love

    July 29, 2011

  • it's starting to look a bit like Watership Down in here, come to think of it

    July 29, 2011

  • ho ho! Wordniky vindication is mine!

    July 13, 2011

  • Specifically, "the rubymeated hearts that hung within them".

    Odd word, "meat". It arrests the ear so.

    June 22, 2011

  • I'm a nut-shucking junkie, myself.

    June 16, 2011

  • matacaballo - killhorse, rather (as per list title ^^)

    sionnach, you're probably right, but I don't delete words from free-for-all lists because it makes me sad. call it a besetting sin.

    chokestuff is one for Hoptoads, being something like "stuff that chokes", yes? foreign schmoreign; I think mollusque is more permeable than that

    as for Dotheboys Hall, I think it should go in a big glorious Fictional Proper Nouns That Mean Stuff list (provisional name only), along with Prunesquallor and Sourdust and Stilton Cheesewright and Lord Monomark and John Beaver and all the other glorious markers of the English imagination

    June 16, 2011

  • cf. honey buzzard

    June 15, 2011

  • go Anglo-Saxon, go!

    June 15, 2011

  • does Spanish have a word for that structure? some language must; I warrant this is a compounding strategy that occurs elsewhere also - too intuitive not to.

    also - reasonably fun bilingual game! perhaps even really fun if one were fluent enough in both. gonna give 'er a crack: buscavida = seeklife; cuentagota = dropcount. in this way garden-variety compound nouns in Spanish could be refurbished into punchy new English ones?

    /yammer

    June 15, 2011

  • HOT DOG. second to the OED, you're my favourite thing about the internet, bilby

    June 15, 2011

  • oh yes oh yes oh yes

    Patrick White put me on a hot trail after Aussie authors

    June 14, 2011

  • -Leonard Cohen

    June 14, 2011

  • these are mighty double standards - last time a cat was involved in a zen koan, it got its head bitten off!!

    June 14, 2011

  • can you aught but bob in a hashmagandy?

    maybe splutter, also

    June 14, 2011

  • and/or - a lesser-known specimen of the aspic phylum?

    June 14, 2011

  • yes, but it meant well

    June 14, 2011

  • oh, Yarb-thing - why in the world haven't we had a coffee yet??

    June 13, 2011

  • -Chuck Palahniuk

    June 13, 2011

  • -Bender Bending Rodriguez

    June 13, 2011

  • -Bill Hicks

    June 13, 2011

  • Broccoli has "crown" in the title. Inherent dignity!

    June 13, 2011

  • I wararnt tanuki balls can compensate for a lifetime of silence. Just listen to their whistly flapping - whooom .... whooom ....

    June 11, 2011

  • immortalized by one Piggy in "I can't hardly see with all them creeper-things"

    June 11, 2011

  • well, pick my woolly tufts if sionnach didn't just win the Internet

    ...again

    June 11, 2011

  • The lamb of Tartary should be up to sitting on both those chairs at once, n'est-ce pas?

    June 10, 2011

  • paging bilby!

    June 10, 2011

  • there tend to be piquant phrases floating around in a place one has never been, emerging strangely from strange contexts

    June 10, 2011

  • this is better than a surprise birthday party!!

    June 9, 2011

  • update! "Red mercury bejeweled for palm" in the search engine pulls up, among other things, "Red tube-wanking homies"

    Full online keyboard is like the entrance to a broken spoke funhouse

    June 8, 2011

  • "A few questions on assent before the divine sooner had they entered. Herself as well as be a winsome woman interference seemed of the he kept."

    AND

    "Suggests may be divided on waste produced in adapted to swift running builds. The site of the great dikes of dense Louisburg destroyed in Shark dissection."

    This search phrase apparently produces Engrish gold

    June 7, 2011

  • *psst* there's also an open one, sizeable indeed. I am stealing left and right from this list to feed its insatiable maws ^^

    June 2, 2011

  • a state of phone in the 21st century, apparently.

    May 29, 2011

  • ...

    an host of overjoyed

    noncoms(first knocking on the head

    him)do through icy waters roll

    that helplessness which others stroke

    with brushes recently employed

    anent this muddy toilet bowl,

    while kindred intellects evoke

    allegiance per blunt instruments

    ...

    -e.e. cummings

    May 3, 2011

  • What do you stuff inside a high-anxiety pillow?

    XD

    April 30, 2011

  • Having a bit of a piss as the list rules seem delightfully loose; delete as you will

    April 30, 2011

  • synonymous with "peach on a fellow". Looking for a list of narking synonyms (Gossiphoning is related but not quite it) and want to see if there is one there before I fire it up!

    April 28, 2011

  • Can't believe it's not listed!

    April 23, 2011

  • The OED filed oodles of words when Urquhart translated Gargantua; that year was a bumper crop of vocab. See Rabelation also

    April 23, 2011

  • constipulation. Thanks, Puritanism (Ward - Simple Cobbler of Aggawam in America)

    April 17, 2011

  • OED: Obs. The breadth of the fist.

    April 17, 2011

  • all you-all're something of a hot dog, aren't you?

    April 12, 2011

  • it was burgeoning excitement (rudeness would have three exclamation points ^^)

    or did mis-peg your wryrony?

    April 11, 2011

  • Go Fug Yourself!! The name of the list!!

    April 11, 2011

  • badump-chh

    April 9, 2011

  • ...am henceforth naming children Litmus and Lacmus, irregardless of sex

    April 8, 2011

  • aces! aces!

    April 8, 2011

  • YES!

    April 8, 2011

  • CALLING the nonce collective words list! this needs to go on it

    April 6, 2011

  • "My dear, I should like to stick you full of barbed arrows like a p-p-pin cushion...Where do you lurk? I shall come down your burrow and ch-chivvy you out like an old st-t-toat." -Anthony Blanche in Brideshead Revisited, Waugh

    April 6, 2011

  • slang. Obs. Bad liquor, esp. adulterated spirits. (OED)

    April 5, 2011

  • akin to flimmer (says OED)

    April 5, 2011

  • akin to instigatrix (OED says)

    April 5, 2011

  • anything for birubii :}

    April 5, 2011

  • another name for yew

    April 5, 2011

  • Obs. An opprobrious epithet for a woman.

    1596 W. Warner Albions Eng. (rev. ed.) xi. lxviii. 288 "How tedious were a Shroe, a Sloy, a Wanton, or a Foole."

    (OED)

    April 5, 2011

  • "Obs. A sluggard." (OED)

    April 5, 2011

  • shaped like a "celt, n.2

    Etymology: (reputed) Latin celt-es (or ? celte, ? celtis) ‘stone-chisel, sculptor's chisel’.

    An implement with chisel-shaped edge, of bronze or stone (but sometimes of iron), found among the remains of prehistoric man."

    April 5, 2011

  • A guy called Charles Morrow Wilson compiled them, the title being the list name :}

    Highly recommend a tale called "Satyr in Arkansas".

    April 1, 2011

  • I'm gonna cheat and put it on LAK on name alone

    March 8, 2011

  • sexually...active...popes?

    I LOVE YOU PROLAGUS

    March 8, 2011

  • me, too!

    March 3, 2011

  • This one curls my toes with pleasure

    March 1, 2011

  • So sayeth Berlusconi

    February 22, 2011

  • c/o the Oatmeal

    February 15, 2011

  • hahaha--heshe, then

    Chubbz has been ousted from all his territory by a cat half his size (the indomitable spitfire Liz from Korea), but is too old/fat/dignified to condescend to do anything about it. So, there is peace and love--of a sort--in the feline universe of my parents' place.

    February 4, 2011

  • I know; it was a wretched thing to happen. Before it veered into the laughter of the damned, though, friends were critiquing the hierarchy of pity re: animal slaughter (e.g. who's crying for the factory cows?)

    I wonder whether what seems to be a fundamental human lack of pity for the death of tiny things means there is a fundamental pity for large, smart things--or if the whole thing is so much PR

    February 2, 2011

  • Cropped up in a laughter of the damned conversation about those sled dogs they killed :/

    February 2, 2011

  • or...

    January 26, 2011

  • way to tickle the suists :}

    January 25, 2011

  • an illuminating cartoon message appears on the image search

    January 25, 2011

  • that's one freaky song

    January 25, 2011

  • trousseau! xDDD

    January 25, 2011

  • I added some synonyms for "apothecary" that OED's historical thesaurus gave me. Punchy, n'est-ce pas?

    January 24, 2011

  • not to be confused with all aboard

    January 19, 2011

  • I'm getting the scientists working on the zombie guts technology as we speak

    January 13, 2011

  • fun to say!

    January 13, 2011

  • snicker-snack!

    December 30, 2010

  • indeed, "plomba" is the SBC word for filling now

    December 28, 2010

  • byhore is an obsolete variant, apparently

    December 27, 2010

  • OED: Obs. rare. A porpoise.

    December 27, 2010

  • what's a brownsmith? 0.0

    December 27, 2010

  • one may as well favourite England ^^

    December 24, 2010

  • if I had my deserts it'd be kurakkan-gurainda

    December 21, 2010

  • IRELAND - THE LAND OF CRUT

    December 16, 2010

  • YES

    December 10, 2010

  • a tasty variety

    December 7, 2010

  • the cat of an oddball (I assume) Japanese office lady with lots of leisure time in which to arrange elaborate things for Maru to do (play the tambourine with his tail; pass obstacle courses; leap into things that are impossibly high; stare uncannily at the camera)

    December 7, 2010

  • cf. lady jungle (which has, as one might expect, been exploited for the fact it rhymes with "fungal" :S)

    December 7, 2010

  • You fill in the blanks

    December 7, 2010

  • Director of the Central Institute of Forensic Science in Bangkok, presiding over David Carradine's death. WHOA

    November 14, 2010

  • oh, the memories

    fail wail and manthem account for so much of music *ahem I'm getting old* these days

    November 9, 2010

  • "The first ingredient you add to the soup must be some dried ocre (a West India vegetable), the quantity according to your judgment." (The Lady's Own Cookery Book)

    Seems to be a variant of okra

    November 9, 2010

  • this really reminds me of an old Amitabh film

    November 8, 2010

  • this is eerily and impressively extensive

    November 7, 2010

  • and I like to think he is merely voicing the inherent and somewhat obscured bigotry in the franchise, not creating any

    November 7, 2010

  • then I will call this a purist's appendix :}

    November 6, 2010

  • arose from a bumble in putting "he spelt how he felt" (re: old Shakey) into the present tense

    November 5, 2010

  • One prof in particular is a veritable wellspring of Frackademic language. It helps that many of his own articles are on our syllabus so we can get black-on-white access to avant-garde coinage -_-

    November 5, 2010

  • brought disturbingly to life by Nathan Barley rapping 0.0

    November 3, 2010

  • me-ow

    November 3, 2010

  • a people!

    There are also the White Tai :D

    November 2, 2010

  • lit. "with the throat into the strawberries", meaning "running throat-first into the strawberry field", i.e. helter-skelter, heedlessly, letting your stomach lead you

    November 2, 2010

  • how so? it looks just as I typed it in the list from my browser, and clicking on it is no problem 0.0

    October 28, 2010

  • referring to sage :}

    October 26, 2010

  • courtesy of Avaaz

    And they say activists are sensationalistic!

    October 21, 2010

  • The word (and meaning) has given us flan, and indeed the schmancier of us pronounce this dessert as 'flawn'

    October 20, 2010

  • bingo

    October 20, 2010

  • "The following is paid advertainment. Apinions expressed are not necessarily those of anyone." (Rabbit and Mouse)

    October 19, 2010

  • "To yell, yelp, howl, bellow." (OED)

    October 19, 2010

  • filmi samples (yours to take or leave as you see fit):

    exactly and approximately

    do the needful

    shorthand to mean "lack of skill" e.g. "Tumhara ladies department shorthand" (you're no good with the ladies) as heard in Dhoom 2

    as for Konglish, one-piece as in "one-piece swimsuit" seems to have a risque connotation; one of my students brought it up as an example of clothing items and everyone tittered 0.0

    not that that's specifically useful for this list

    October 16, 2010

  • funny--once in translation these Indonesian snippets look like Trinnie English patois c. 1958 i.e. the time Naipaul wrote The Suffrage of Elvira. The phenomenon (how current now I'm not sure) is due to Hindi et al., I believe, using adjective reduplication instead of "very" (indeed I have heard Punjabi speakers transfer the pattern into English).

    From the novel:

    "Is this election sweetness that sweeten you up, Baksh. But see how this sweetness going to turn sour sour. See?"

    October 16, 2010

  • var. of gnash

    Miss Jackson if you're gnasty?

    October 15, 2010

  • SBC. "bat" (the animal)

    October 14, 2010

  • that would go on Love Across Kingdoms which is an open list as well so please contribute!

    October 6, 2010

  • "Obs. rare. Filthy talk" (OED)

    October 5, 2010

  • Thank you! I culled drappie from the article and it's making my world a better place

    October 4, 2010

  • which is not to say they don't also doddle and maffle

    October 4, 2010

  • e.g. Floor Pong, which I invented, and got injured in the process of, myself :D

    October 4, 2010

  • north. dial. "Boughs or branches of crooked and angular growth; used for rustic work or firewood." (OED)

    October 4, 2010

  • "1935 in DORLAND Med. Dict. 1970 R. REINBOTH in Benson & Phillips Hormones & Environment 515 In an ambosexual animal both male and female characteristics are associated normally in a single individualemeither simultaneously or in a temporal succession. 1978 Japanese Jrnl. Ichthyol. XXV. 101 Histological examination of gonads indicated that all individuals..are ambosexual as juveniles. "

    October 4, 2010

  • This may, though the "brain looks like a bunch of noodles stuck together" theory has a certain visual appeal", be the origin of use your noodle

    October 4, 2010

  • obs. form of outcome

    October 4, 2010

  • it is entirely unsurprising that there should be a Carp list and that ruzuzu should be behind it ^^

    October 4, 2010

  • the byproduct of unprepared-for lactation?

    October 3, 2010

  • a Konglish collocation indicating a thing is the same as another.

    October 3, 2010

  • It seems to be in use as a garden-variety spoonerism (or whatever one calls that linguistic phenomenon)

    October 3, 2010

  • 'to scratch oneself vigorously' in Afrikaans (source)

    October 1, 2010

  • 'Nadia Wadia you have gone fardia

    Whole of India has admiredia

    Whole of world you put in whirlia

    Beat their girls for you were girlia

    I will buy you a brand new cardia

    Let me be your bodyguardia...'

    October 1, 2010

  • Used by Lady Sovereign to mean 'smashing party'

    October 1, 2010

  • yam mash, as described in Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart; one of the dudes contemptuously envisions the neighboring village as a place where the men pound the women's foo foo. Imagine!

    October 1, 2010

  • late to the party, but it's a list now :D

    September 30, 2010

  • used to mean 'drunkenly' in The Returne from Pernassus (presumably auth. unknown):

    "Swaggering full moistly on a tauernes bench"

    September 30, 2010

  • a.k.a. mirliton, chayote

    September 29, 2010

  • Seems to be an old-timey, regional British variant of "catch"

    September 28, 2010

  • " 'Mr. Copeland's in such a hoo that he's forgotten all about choking me off.' "

    -From Overture to Death, Ngaio Marsh

    September 28, 2010

  • " 'The lady let him down, did she?'

    'With a thump that shook the crockery.' "

    -From Overture to Death, Ngaio Marsh

    September 28, 2010

  • dassies to bells is the unlikeliest culinary evolution I've heard of yet 0.0

    September 28, 2010

  • "All other griefs allow a part

    To other griefs, and ask themselves but some;

    They come to us, but us Love draws,

    He swallows us, and never chaws"

    -From Donne's "The Broken Heart"

    September 28, 2010

  • this is the silliest-sounding word I've ever heard in my life :D

    September 28, 2010

  • "Eefe to do" is such a neat little mouthful

    September 28, 2010

  • OED offers the very old and very obsolete meatkin :D

    September 28, 2010

  • employing the -ways synonymous to -wise suffix

    September 28, 2010

  • obs. variant enhuile; pretty cute

    September 28, 2010

  • "Now Sc. regional (chiefly north-east., Orkney, and Shetland). A maggot, a grub. Also: an insect egg from which a maggot may hatch." -OED

    September 28, 2010

  • A lot of obsolete entries in the OED sound like they were coined by drunk 21st century celebrities

    September 28, 2010

  • coined in a conversation about Shakespeare, I believe, before the glass of wine even came into the picture

    September 28, 2010

  • O up then started our goodman,

    An angry man was he:

    “Will ye kiss my wife before my een,

    And scad me wi pudding-bree?”

    September 28, 2010

  • var. of chine

    September 28, 2010

  • a.k.a. cheese-running (now obs.)

    September 28, 2010

  • we ought to bring this cutie back, and its imaginary invert weedcase

    September 28, 2010

  • I took Aman instead; Gondwanaland is the very stuff of the list title. Thanks, b

    September 22, 2010

  • Oh they're coming alright -_-

    September 17, 2010

  • birder alert!

    September 17, 2010

  • a.k.a. lady-smock

    September 17, 2010

  • Creepy stuff, bilby--the machine told me that you JUST added brittle so I can't do it 0.0

    September 17, 2010

  • obs. term for umbel

    September 17, 2010

  • This phrase makes me feel like I'm in the future 0.0

    September 17, 2010

  • Dunno how it hasn't shrunk to Vaggis yet xD

    September 16, 2010

  • *snort*

    September 14, 2010

  • hot dog!

    September 7, 2010

  • 'Freak him, freak her, whatever your choice

    I didn't come to judge, I just came to get you moist'

    -Missy Elliott

    August 27, 2010

  • !

    It reminds me of this really drunk dude from the UK I met while in Korea. We were in a bar called Led Zeppelin, and the conversation went as follows:

    mm: So, where'd you guys go before coming here?

    ddfUK: D'yknow a place called Led Zeppelin?

    mm: Uh...yeah. That's where we are.

    ddfUK: Oh...not that one, then

    Were you looking for Led Zeppelin?

    August 27, 2010

  • In some parts of Alberta, Canada, you flip the shitty instead of banging a u-ie

    August 27, 2010

  • *blush* only Wordies can really understand

    August 27, 2010

  • If we could get some Cantonese speakers in here the 'choy' part could be expanded considerably, as it is a garden-variety (ho ho ho) suffix for vegetables, many of 'em cruciferous

    August 26, 2010

  • And here I thought Hubert J. Farnsworth invented this one

    August 26, 2010

  • "dude, I totally tharf to barf"

    August 26, 2010

  • copremesis, hoping no one ever experiences it firsthand 0.0

    August 26, 2010

  • "Fetid discharge from a wound; pus, sanies." OED

    August 26, 2010

  • apparently 17th century English is really chavvy

    August 26, 2010

  • OED: "Of or pertaining to the Furies; dire."

    August 25, 2010

  • Obsolete coinage for 'drumstick'

    August 25, 2010

  • all baculiform appendages to exit the bum-fiddle at once

    August 25, 2010

  • Why this isn't on Zamboni Palin is what I'd like to know

    August 25, 2010

  • was I looking for sop soos? don't mind if I do!

    August 25, 2010

  • teehee!

    August 25, 2010

  • Call 1-800-FBHARJO for any and all palindromic services

    August 25, 2010

  • variant on "bite the dust" found in Gray's "The Fatal Sisters: An Ode"--

    Low the dauntless earl is laid

    Gor'd with many a gaping wound

    Fate demands a nobler head

    Soon a king shall bite the ground

    August 25, 2010

  • the first textual example of 'soup'!

    August 24, 2010

  • "A derisive name for a tailor." (OED)

    0.0

    August 24, 2010

  • obs. lip-smacking onomatopoeia. makes me want a Mix-Max

    August 24, 2010

  • obs. variant of hutch, adding one more layer of good times to the which/witch common errors in usage list

    August 24, 2010

  • there's a swikeful also

    August 24, 2010

  • obs. variant of headship, which could technically be realized as headhead *kerplotz*

    August 24, 2010

  • is there a list for sets of words whose letters are subtly switched around, e.g. ransoms ramsons?

    August 24, 2010

  • THERE'S ALSO queemly :D

    August 24, 2010

  • obsolete variant of morse

    August 24, 2010

  • best.typo.ever.

    August 24, 2010

  • *thumbs up*

    August 24, 2010

  • apparently genicle is an obsolete term for "a joint in the stalk of a plant". It doesn't quite sound awful, though, so I don't know how great a candidate it is for the list.

    August 24, 2010

  • Now archaic. "The releasing or setting on of a relay of hounds before the other pursuing hounds have passed; the relay of hounds so released" (OED)

    August 24, 2010

  • OED: "Austral. slang. Orig. uncertain: perh. f. TREY n. + -IE. A threepenny piece."

    can we get a Strine for confirmation up in here?

    August 24, 2010

  • This seems, though perfectly sensible a

    derivation of an old one, a new word

    August 20, 2010

  • var. of sour

    August 19, 2010

  • var. of poureth

    August 19, 2010

  • "It was 'baker's bread' -- what the quality eat -- none of your low-down cornpone."

    -Huckleberry Finn

    August 18, 2010

  • Thar she blows

    August 18, 2010

  • Maybe not blowhole but blowcash works for the nonce! These nouns sound really punchy to me (hence the list), whereas the verb-creating compounds are too far integrated into the regular stream, IMHO. I'm picking my brain for a verb made from a compound like this that can match lickspittle--that'll motivate a new list.

    August 15, 2010

  • What is the word for this type of compound? It's driving me nuts!

    August 12, 2010

  • a type of fish, apparently 0.0

    August 12, 2010

  • We may strive and scrat and fend, but it's little we can do arter all

    -"Silas Marner"

    August 12, 2010

  • an occupational hazard for the ice-skating types

    August 12, 2010

  • I thought it may have an etymological link to tiramisu, but not so

    August 8, 2010

  • an alternative to eating a whole chocolate cake when you've been chucked

    August 8, 2010

  • Bring Your Aunt's Roumanian Boytoy -- a must at every do

    August 8, 2010

  • why, thank you, SoG old boy

    in passing, a wins it with 'plot hole'

    August 8, 2010

  • There is something lurid about the phrase "a genus of fleshy sponges" 0.0

    August 7, 2010

  • Nigella: "I don't go in for prinking"

    August 7, 2010

  • oh, it made me cry alright, the more so for the hilarious headline (a Waughsian effect, of sorts)

    August 7, 2010

  • here it is

    August 7, 2010

  • ah so; makes more sense this way

    August 7, 2010

  • Not mine; my dick in your lack thereof was actually coined by a dear friend

    August 6, 2010

  • Colleen, wordie of such eminence, where are you already?

    August 4, 2010

  • synonym for AWOL heard in this news piece

    July 30, 2010

  • I'm saving that beautiful piece of philological storytelling in my private files!

    July 26, 2010

  • walnut might apply.

    July 26, 2010

  • With the Rockies themselves, I bet

    July 21, 2010

  • Thanks, ruzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzu! (ruzzers?)

    July 21, 2010

  • "It seemed impossible to rouse the poor zib to a sense of his position" (The Inimitable Jeeves).

    July 20, 2010

  • Wodehousian phrase denoting beardedness (e.g. "Few people have ever looked fouler than young Bingo in the fungus")

    July 20, 2010

  • A disaster; "From the moment he invited himself I felt that the thing was going to be blue round the edges, and it was." (The Inimitable Jeeves)

    July 20, 2010

  • Angry, as in "He'll be fed to the gills if he finds out you're the fellow who ragged him in the Park" (The Inimitable Jeeves).

    July 20, 2010

  • I like 'em both

    July 19, 2010

  • okay, so does THIS describe something like pulchritudinous (or matinal crepuscule)?

    July 17, 2010

  • it gives me the cringies

    July 17, 2010

  • re: a pivotal vehicle in the murder case, from the mouth of the clueless owner thereof: "I thought someone had just buzzed off in it for a lark" (from a Marple episode; Body in the Library)

    July 17, 2010

  • "Besides this, the weather continued topping to a degree" (The Inimitable Jeeves)

    July 16, 2010

  • dud horse, if I'm reading it correctly.

    "'An absolute sitter came unstitched in the second race at Haydock Park,' said young Bingo, with some bitterness, 'and I dropped my entire month's allowance.'" (The Inimitable Jeeves)

    July 16, 2010

  • "Hasn't got the nerve. Thinks you so much above him, don't you know. Looks on you as a sort of goddess. Worships the ground you tread on, but can't whack up the ginger to tell you so." (The Inimitable Jeeves)

    July 16, 2010

  • is it equivalent to haul ass?

    July 16, 2010

  • This is the second time Crowley's come up in so many days. *determined to read*

    July 14, 2010

  • Is what I had for breakfast every day during that long-ago sojourn in Italy. They also come in chocolate.

    July 14, 2010

  • flute-girl sounds like a more cultivated alternative to 'lady-boy' (see skin flute)

    July 14, 2010

  • Coined by a birding friend when I showed him bilby's The Porn Birds

    July 13, 2010

  • George Eliot lends us splashed up to the chin

    July 13, 2010

  • There is an Alfonsus by the same surname as well :D (emoticon denoting extreme happiness in the saying rather than derision, lest confusion arise)

    July 12, 2010

  • Due to more varied immigration patterns in my neck of the woods, yearbook lists are getting more awesome every year. Honourable mention goes to Dragon Wei immediately followed by Zen Wilson (they only work in tandem, IMO)

    July 12, 2010

  • Thank you, Facebook.

    July 6, 2010

  • They sling such magnificent phrases on the show; I was surprised it was the first of its kind (there is one called Bender Bending Rodriguez, though).

    July 2, 2010

  • it's listed and selected in "preferences", but it doesn't show up in the "open blockable items" list. just gonna employ my selective vision

    June 17, 2010

  • it might just be Welsh, though

    June 17, 2010

  • I followed ze instructions. It's still there T.T

    June 11, 2010

  • In conjunction with BBC Food's celebration of British Sausage Week 0.0

    June 10, 2010

  • "Course they making boocoos of money, say Shug."

    -The Color Purple

    May 28, 2010

  • I wouldn't call them dreadful, just...not very fun to read (though authorities assure me there's a very good reason for that?)

    May 24, 2010

  • "...

    But in our amours amorists discern

    Such fluctuations that their scrivening

    Is breathless to attend each quirky turn

    ..."

    -Wallace Stevens, fr. Monocle de Mon Oncle

    May 24, 2010

  • there's a 'tweet' and 'like' button on them now :{

    May 24, 2010

  • What is it?

    May 15, 2010

  • the dehyphenated suggestion Wordnik gave parsed on first view as Shite Me, Game Gahit!--I like that one better (it is a brutal Tagalog game show in my...world of sexy fantasy?)

    May 8, 2010

  • Naipaul defines them as "the business executives of foreign, mostly British, firms" (An Area of Darkness, p.61)

    May 7, 2010

  • can't believe I forgot 'dilwala' (dil-wallah), lit. "heart-dude", meaning "loverman" or "he who is devoted to matters of the heart", immortalized in the 11-year-run but still shite mega-megahit Dilwale dulhaniya le jayenge ("The 'dil-wallahs' will get the brides")

    May 7, 2010

  • The "edit comment" feature seems to cut off all but the 2-3 visible lines of text; I can't scroll down to the bottom of a long comment to fix it up :{

    April 29, 2010

  • " ...

    Dwight: Dude. Who whipped an egger?

    Cubert: He who smelt it, dealt it.

    Dwight: Yeah? Well, he who denied it, supplied it.

    Cubert: Well, he who articulated it, particulated it.

    Dwight: Well, he who refuted it, tooted it.

    Cubert: Stalemate.

    ... "

    -Futurama, Infosphere

    April 29, 2010

  • :D :D :D

    April 29, 2010

  • that's not what the Old Testament said :/

    April 29, 2010

  • in SBC, it means "stage fright", presumably from the root meaning whence the Italian also comes.

    you are probably having an, "oh, Wordnet!" moment there

    April 26, 2010

  • with a bit of hard cilantrophobe grated over top?

    April 26, 2010

  • beautiful! I'm ganking tons of these for LAK if you don't mind

    April 26, 2010

  • "I was a massausage in her masseur's grip"

    -Professor Steve (see here)

    April 26, 2010

  • *thumbs up*

    I have made several curries which inspired the remark, "This is, like...all cilantro" (by no means in a displeased tone of voice, either).

    April 26, 2010

  • SEE HERE :0

    April 25, 2010

  • thanks! it's almost reaching son-of-groucho levels of magnitude

    April 16, 2010

  • the obvious potential for misunderstanding is what I love about this phrase

    April 16, 2010

  • what is it?

    April 14, 2010

  • like, "I preSENT my PREsent to you"?

    April 14, 2010

  • Were you looking for op and Oö

    nice!

    April 12, 2010

  • "...even if your chest is a boob Oktoberfest"

    -Fug Girls as Kanye

    April 7, 2010

  • I thought hikikomori went way deeper than 'recluse', also that it specifically pertained to the young (whereas we associate reclusivity with older individuals?)

    March 29, 2010

  • She was a redoubtable fighter, and strange cats were vanquished in one round. The fearless little spitfire would even attack dogs and rout them utterly.

    -"Emily of New Moon", L.M. Montgomery

    March 20, 2010

  • Glenn Richards a.k.a. Colonel Helpchunder

    March 20, 2010

  • aand they couldn't resist a wink-wink title. I grimace-grinned

    March 20, 2010

  • he sounds like a barrel of laughs.

    so, there we were, my co-host and I, ready to interview AM for dinky community radio.

    she has a remarkable psychosomatic capacity in relation to liquor; placebo effect all over the place.

    in short, what's his face--the lead singer--held her hair back during the *ahem* ejective process the whole night while I listened to the rest of the band complain about how boring it was to go on tour (read: no groupies), but really they're very happy to have done so well for themselves, being a tiny little Strine band and all.

    I hold it an eternal example of the success of the unconventional in achieving one's goals (my friend having been, needless to say, quite soppy about the fellow).

    glamorous, eh?

    March 19, 2010

  • exactly!

    March 19, 2010

  • 0.0

    :{

    Pokus?!

    brain overload; will tell later

    March 19, 2010

  • cf. zmay or zmaj

    March 19, 2010

  • this one's also sort of a fun concept...you got your toilet shitters, your balcony shitters, and your bathtub shitters--the sickest mofos of all.

    March 19, 2010

  • ...would lead to my wreck and ruin

    I have a fun story involving Aggie Match

    March 19, 2010

  • It's Louie, man! You haven't heard that marvelous song?

    March 19, 2010

  • Has the unique advantage of being 100% indistinguishable from, say, Imaginary Japanese Band Names

    March 19, 2010

  • wiki: "Often overlooked, downy spells its name with a lower-case "D". This helps to distinguish it from like-named bands, such as Downy Mildew."

    March 19, 2010

  • They're not kidding

    March 19, 2010

  • who keep right on trucking with the album titles. to wit, Proglution and Bugright

    March 19, 2010

  • What is the word for this class of hilarious mishearing, of which mathematics of wonton burrito meals is an additional example?

    March 19, 2010

  • Lazybones sleepin' in the shade

    How you gonna get yo' cornmeal made?

    What cornmeal, man?

    I like nothin' but short'nin' bread!

    March 19, 2010

  • pronounced by Jennifer Paterson as 'yog-hort', two separate words, practically. to wit, "none of this nonsense about yoghurt instead of cream. yoghurt is not instead of cream"

    March 17, 2010

  • he looks like a Jumblatt

    March 13, 2010

  • the far more delightful English equivalent of bouquet garni

    March 7, 2010

  • flapping isn't connected to length. for example, Canadian English distinguishes 'riding' and 'writing' by length, the latter having a short /ai/, but they both have a flap where their 't' or 'd' ought to be. now, Hindi, besides flapping Ts and Ds, also does the N! it's a positive addiction.

    /off-topic

    March 6, 2010

  • moreover, I've found that the phonology of borrowings exhibits a strange combination of awareness and lack of awareness. In the form "chilLAY", the majority of speakers (or announcers, rather) seem to be more strongly aware of length than vowel quality. while /i/ is the vowel in the original country name, it is a short /i/, nigh impossible in Standard English--to this end, they have employed /I/, which satisfies the length component at the expense of the vowel. now, the question is, why should YOUR linguistic system feel the vowel quality is more important than length?

    March 6, 2010

  • if the stress is on the 2nd syllable and it rhymes with 'delay', then it sounds like a good compromise between naturalness and authenticity. to me, there's nothing as American as the /ei/ used to approximate the pure /e/.

    March 6, 2010

  • a...word, I guess you'd call it, coined by a largely white 90s R&B band in the height of jiggy fever, bless their evanescent hearts.

    the full text is:

    duwajiggyjiggycumjiggyju

    I just wanna drink Cristal wit' you

    moreover, this is not the only mention of 'jiggy' in that particular song.

    March 6, 2010

  • really cool people get taravana, not the bends

    March 5, 2010

  • let's compromise with at awl

    March 5, 2010

  • I like the way you think

    March 4, 2010

  • coined (perhaps?) by Cher Horowitz as a euphemism for menstruation, giving a faint scent of literariness to what is, after all, meant as a...*ahem* remake of Jane Austen's Emma

    anyway, the association to 'wave' is fairly clear

    March 4, 2010

  • I'm not crazy--they're crazy. I swear!

    March 4, 2010

  • prosody?

    March 4, 2010

  • Aubrey Beardsley

    March 4, 2010

  • the turning around kind?

    March 4, 2010

  • today itself I ran across this meaning of 'pan' in the Canterbury Tales!

    "...'who shall yeve a lovere any lawe?'

    Love is a gretter lawe, by my pan" (1164-65)

    March 4, 2010

  • ah, equine eroticism--where would classical poetry be without you?

    March 4, 2010

  • It has been my long-held opinion that owls need to make some other face AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. this sort of thing verges on the obscene.

    March 4, 2010

  • What an uncharitable view of eyeballs!

    February 26, 2010

  • "The fruit on the island, thought Miss Marple, was rather disappointing. It seemed always to be paw-paw."

    February 16, 2010

  • or 16! It could be an exponential sequence (if I've got that right)

    February 16, 2010

  • a VERY fine find, if I do say so myself

    January 18, 2010

  • it's a sartorial sweet tooth fairy!

    January 17, 2010

  • Fanny Cradock used this to mean "it's so fattening"

    January 16, 2010

  • SBC for 'cream', the root being vrh (meaning "top"), so--"the stuff on top".

    January 14, 2010

  • "It was very consoling, he thought, the way in which an act of kindness, in the fullness of time, returns to bless the benefactor. One gives a jolly-up to a girl in a ship. She goes her way, he goes his. He forgets; he has so many benefactions of the kind to his credit. But she remembers and then one day, when it is least expected, Fate drops into his lap the ripe fruit of his reward, this luscious creature waiting for him, all unaware, in the Malt House, Grantley Green."

    -from Put Out More Flags

    January 14, 2010

  • "Basil had attended Sonia's levees (and there were three or four levees daily for, whenever she was at home, she was in bed) off and on for nearly ten yerars, since the days of her first, dazzling loveliness, when, almost alone among the chaste and daring brides of London, she had admitted mixed company to her bathroom."

    -from Put Out More Flags

    January 14, 2010

  • "'My dear,' Ambrose had said, 'you can positively hear her imagination creaking, as she does them, like a pair of old, old corsets, my dear, on a harridan.'"

    -Ambrose on the painteress Poppet, from Put Out More Flags

    January 14, 2010

  • "In a sea-side house to the farther south,

    Where the baked cicalas die of drouth,

    And one sharp tree--'tis a cypress--stands,

    By the many hundred years red-rusted,

    Rough iron-spiked, ripe fruit-o'er-crusted,

    My sentinel to guard the sands

    To the water's edge. ..."

    -from De Gustibus--

    January 14, 2010

  • "Get up, sweet slug-a-bed, and see

    The dew bespangling herb and tree."

    -from Corinna's Going A-Maying

    January 14, 2010

  • "'Sailors' wives may grumble, but the spark stays alight and besides, it's very easy for them to indulge a fredaine if they want.'"

    -from The Fatal Gift

    January 14, 2010

  • just once it's been listed? once?!

    January 14, 2010

  • I warrant it relies on the meaning of "punch" which is rather "poke" than "hit"

    January 14, 2010

  • oops! it was supposed to be freak out squares. John, howdya delete a variant?

    January 8, 2010

  • I'd thought the top was

    January 3, 2010

  • 'bally' is a British pronunciation of extreme quaintness

    December 28, 2009

  • Internet--couldn't we do any better than this?

    December 28, 2009

  • I'm gonna meditate on that and make some steps toward enlightenment. dude

    December 25, 2009

  • right here

    December 24, 2009

  • In SBC the root for the country name is 'polj-', whereas 'half' is 'pol-'. So, this makes sense.

    December 24, 2009

  • what today we'd call blinged out

    December 23, 2009

  • "I was personally acquainted with two girls he gave the time to."

    (Caulfield on Stradlater, Catcher in the Rye)

    December 23, 2009

  • I nominate Wilfred J. Funk for the most beautiful word in the English language

    December 22, 2009

  • lowercase 'tmi' is a valid word-initial syllable in SBC (e.g. tmina - gloom)

    December 22, 2009

  • it is now!

    December 22, 2009

  • your (cranky, full-lipped penguin) robot

    December 21, 2009

  • not to be confused with bzooty, though of course they are known to go together rather well.

    December 21, 2009

  • a quadruple-whammy from Phyllis Chesler's big facepalm of a dissertation, Women & Madness.

    December 21, 2009

  • I'll do my best--this is hairy without LING terminology.

    in an imaginary language with 5 consonants, say, you could have two different types of 't' and 3 different types of 'p', or, on the other end of the spectrum, each of the 5 in totally different places (e.g. one is bilabial, one is dental, one is velar, one is uvular and the last a totally different manner of articulation--non-pulmonic, such as a click). while the first situation describes a consonant class which is the most natural for our mouths to create, it's actually harder on the brain to contrast them with one another; a set with consonants which are very different from each other is easier. does that make sense? distinguishing 'pa' from 'ba' (which is, by the way, really hard for a lot of language groups) is more difficult than distinguishing, say, 'ta' from '!a'

    there are different axes of ease and difficulty in the human linguistic process. something which is intuitive and simple on one level creates problems on another level, and vice versa.

    December 21, 2009

  • I've seen certain Japanese-speaking students make their Ds like Ð; even more mysterious (in that asking why lent litle clarification). Very confusing to me personally, if not other teachers, in that Ð is a different phoneme in Bosnian

    December 21, 2009

  • the human mouth is also naturally inclined toward contrastivity, though--it's necessary to reach outside the 'unmarked' places of articulation to make as many clear distinctions between sounds as possible, if that makes sense.

    December 21, 2009

  • my ophyron is a little hollow. is that normal?

    December 20, 2009

  • One of the pitfalls to avoid when making paneer. Recipes stress the necessity of a purely washed cloth for straining purposes.

    December 20, 2009

  • why, thank you! some of the more consonant soupy SBC words look horrific to the English eye and need to be heard to be salvaged.

    so, are you another Euroslavian?

    December 20, 2009

  • or Wenty, Witty, Wiki?

    December 20, 2009

  • "When sucka MCs try to chump my style

    I let them know I'm versatile"

    December 20, 2009

  • JEsus

    I mean, seriously--JEsus CHRIST

    *reason fails, mind implodes, Satan's kingdom upon the earth &c.*

    December 19, 2009

  • "I hope you don’t mind the off color lingo

    But is that a pee spot atop your bajingo?"

    -Pooh the Piglet, via Go Fug Yourself, addressing Pam Anderson

    December 19, 2009

  • questionable transcription

    December 18, 2009

  • a word more beautiful than what it describes (as far as flowers go, anyway)

    December 18, 2009

  • looking up purpura separately, though, is distinctly unromantic

    December 17, 2009

  • by far my favourite emotion, in fact it runs through Yugo veins--nay, gallops

    December 17, 2009

  • then you'd have access to some of this panty bicycle/queen-shitting? with photos?

    December 17, 2009

  • the eye flies to "panty bicycle; naked girls from squamish" in the sole text example. congratulations, Wordnik--you've justified yourself to me!!

    December 17, 2009

  • how sweet you sound, and how attractive you make everyone who plays you.

    there's no beating floor lyres for aesthetic impact.

    December 15, 2009

  • ie. covered with, e.g. "I'm all over spots". very British

    December 14, 2009

  • "Well", while correct, is so unnatural--in North American speech, at least--that I feel awkward teaching my students to say it in reply to "How are you?", going so far as to try to avoid the question altogether.

    December 14, 2009

  • The incident of Canadian pair figure skaters Sale & Pelletier being "robbed" of Olympic gold by them wily Ruskis. After a LOT of palaver and too-close-for-comfort investigation into the judges' decisions, they released a second gold medal for pair skating that year. The old judging system was dumped and a new one instated after Skategate.

    December 14, 2009

  • after 'serpent', connected by the Greek motorway to "herpes"?

    December 13, 2009

  • Tila Tequila's job title

    December 13, 2009

  • 1) I thought it was chocha? Cho-cho is a hard-done-by literary heroine, innit?

    2) This is a problem of the English language itself. There are no garden-variety words to describe genitalia--the elevator stops at the clinical, vulgar and ludicrous only.

    December 13, 2009

  • in all of character map, I couldn't find ONE thumbs-up squiggle.

    December 13, 2009

  • Popeye was here

    December 13, 2009

  • I've been trying to dig for the name of the thing ever since, to no avail :{

    you make light now, but a glimpse of the mustachioed WASP protagonist bulging out of his slacks is enough to turn one into a passionate advocate of sporing

    December 12, 2009

  • ...and she is come to bring the jest full circle

    *heads solemnly bowed*

    December 12, 2009

  • best/worst euphemism for pregnancy ever, heard on a rotten 70s Canadian (!!) sex farce

    December 10, 2009

  • who's to say that isn't exactly what they call, say, club bouncers on the subcontinent, though?

    December 10, 2009

  • the etymology, to boot (if wikipedia can be trusted) has nothing to with Hindi--deriving "from the Shoshone word 'tcaxxwal' or Cahuilla 'caxwal', transcribed by Spaniards as 'chacahuala'"

    December 10, 2009

  • ie. diamonds

    December 10, 2009

  • "If you hadn't done what you did we'd be a thousand dollars to the gravy right now!"

    -Castor Oyl

    December 10, 2009

  • ie. pearls

    December 10, 2009

  • excellent name for a Shakespeare clown

    December 9, 2009

  • the text example implies this is the plural of 'albumen'--can anyone corroborate?

    December 9, 2009

  • It was in Auchtermuchty, wannit?

    December 8, 2009

  • god made it funky

    December 8, 2009

  • absolutely right. ramyun is where it's at

    December 6, 2009

  • erotica + pottery? Internet putrescence, I rather think. Happy Breastmas!

    December 6, 2009

  • Grinches are in season right about now

    December 5, 2009

  • if pronunciation of "speak" is what we're going by, this applies to loads of language groups, though actually, not Spanish speakers, given 's' isn't acceptable word-initially in Spanish.

    though I suppose one can't expect a high standard of linguistics in the field of racial prejudice.

    December 5, 2009

  • I've heard "car mull" more often than "car a mull"

    December 5, 2009

  • an interesting romanization of what I have heretofore seen as sabzi

    December 4, 2009

  • I'm sure they're very nummy, but then Marilyn is, too--try 'er out

    December 4, 2009

  • Speaking of which, what happened to the profile link that allows us to view a user's comments?

    December 4, 2009

  • this conversation makes vegemite sound intriguing, exciting even

    December 4, 2009

  • you haven't seen Gentlemen Prefer Blondes?!

    FOR SHAME

    December 4, 2009

  • "bye-bye, baby

    remember you're my baby

    when they give you the eye

    though I know you care

    won't you write and declare

    that though on the loose

    you are still on the square?"

    December 4, 2009

  • while T-T's tears are blinding, j-j bawls with its eyes wide open to the horror

    December 3, 2009

  • according to the other verses, it might be "huggee and kissee nice" :{

    December 3, 2009

  • a local business school thought this would be a good acronym for its internship program o.0

    December 3, 2009

  • ...Back in Nagasaki

    Where the fellers chew tobaccy

    And the women wicky-wacky-woo

    -Dixon & Warren, "Nagasaki"

    December 3, 2009

  • a fatcat always smokes a fat seegar

    December 3, 2009

  • The character of spaghetti is compromised by cutting, it seems to me. There are plenty of short pastas out there, after all--why not eat those?

    December 2, 2009

  • also stoled

    December 2, 2009

  • "You sure smacked 'em permanent, Popeye!"

    "I always smacks 'em pernament"

    December 2, 2009

  • 'has no scruples'. this usage shows up in Grease: "You got your crust, I'm no object of lust--I'm just plain Sandra Dee"

    December 2, 2009

  • ie. shut your filthy clam

    December 2, 2009

  • to turn down. also give the gate (to)

    December 2, 2009

  • "The ship's in shipshape shape"

    -from Some Like it Hot

    December 2, 2009

  • meaning, "I don't give a rat's clacker" (which latter is still one of the most disgusting-hypnotic phrases I've seen)

    December 2, 2009

  • not to be confused with in bed with the law

    December 2, 2009

  • surely the most thematic exclamation in Popeye comics

    December 2, 2009

  • as in "onct I crack 'em, they stay cracked" (referring to a sock upon yer button)

    December 2, 2009

  • I passed by Chuckanut Dr. near the US-Canada border

    December 1, 2009

  • According to my grammaticality judgement, both "The series were on for years before being cancelled" and "The series was on for years before being cancelled" check out fine

    December 1, 2009

  • AAAND it's back from the 16th century, everyone!

    November 28, 2009

  • cf. fuckler, a demon from the brain of Babycakes

    November 28, 2009

  • I thought Assniiga was the 800-hour oral epic of the Lappish foothills

    November 28, 2009

  • nutty and bacon-like? that's a bit of an overload

    I'd really like to be hardcore enough to eat a bug, but the only way it's gonna happen is if they start cutting bread flour with ground crickets on the sly

    PS: PU, I'm ganking that one for "Just because..."

    November 28, 2009

  • in one of L.M. Montgomery's Anne volumes, the titular heroine fights a local battle, coaxing a fatcat out of painting an ad for some tonic or other onto the fence along the main road. so, the first wave of large-scale advertising is successfully beaten back. reading this scene from the 21st century is heartbreaking; little did she know just how ugly it would get :(

    November 28, 2009

  • sometimes I can't help but conclude that the advertising universe is run and staffed by more advanced amoebozoa

    November 28, 2009

  • at first glance I thought it was frinking cheese. d'oh

    November 27, 2009

  • unctious ochre

    November 27, 2009

  • Castor Oyl: Why POPEYE! I thought you were SHOT!!!

    P: Whatcher think these is, button holes?

    November 27, 2009

  • gonna for the quainter set

    November 27, 2009

  • that is, cashola

    November 27, 2009

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