Comments by slumry

  • Ouch, I say. "...That extreme celebritude aside..." Kurt Andersen in a NYT review of Thomas Mallon's novel about GW Bush, today.

    February 11, 2019

  • Feel facts: They are not technically true, but you just feel they are.

    December 14, 2018

  • fear of being irrelevant; comes wit]h advancing years cf superannuated

    December 8, 2018

  • Also happens when you sit too long on a vinyl chair while wearing a bathing suit.

    December 7, 2018

  • And it sounds like a German word to boot...

    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/05/world/europe/merkel-storm-translation-germany.html

    December 6, 2018

  • Glad you mentioned this because I've been wondering exactly what that construction is supposed to convey. "Got me right in the feels" makes more intuitive sense than the first sentence--does it mean something like "A breakup story...will touch you emotionally?"

    October 12, 2015

  • banana slug

    October 7, 2015

  • Also distanciation; see distantiate

    October 5, 2015

  • Not to mention the Napoleonic Wars

    October 3, 2015

  • A comment box, apparently. A portmanteau word.

    September 30, 2015

  • from Pigwiggen?

    September 26, 2015

  • Well, I tried...I think I will just go on not pronouncing it at all.

    September 26, 2015

  • Many years ago I took my young husband a cup of hot coffee before he was fully awake in the morning. He roused himself a bit and said something like "Oh that's so hot...careful or you will have Stephen flamboy."

    September 26, 2015

  • short for false friend of a translator

    September 24, 2015

  • New usage: a person gulled by phishing; from Phishing for Phools: The Economics of Manipulation and Deception, by George Akerlof and Robert Shiller.

    September 20, 2015

  • see quirk

    September 18, 2015

  • bless their hearts

    September 18, 2015

  • Said of a word (slang, usually) that is not included in any dictionary.

    From The Language Wars by Henry Hitchings:

    "Slang is a kind of sport; Otto Jespersen remarked that like all other sports it essentially belongs to the young. Slang is playful. . . Words undictionarized are considered smart and snappy; they have yet to be tamed."

    September 18, 2015

  • An early form of private elementary school, usually taught by women in their own homes.

    September 15, 2015

  • Sothe, nithe, lathe, withe, rithe, and tithe are also nouns

    September 13, 2015

  • Viqueens!

    September 9, 2015

  • rubber bridge

    September 6, 2015

  • hm...chocolate covered bilby is not listed either. What kinda dictionary is this?

    September 6, 2015

  • chocolate bilby...surely it has been said before...

    September 6, 2015

  • That's for damn tootin'!

    September 6, 2015

  • according to etymonline, bedizen dates to the 1660s and is derived from be + dizen, "to dress"

    September 6, 2015

  • driven to alternative spelling: portentus (corrupt)

    September 6, 2015

  • Douglass's spring-parsley. Found only in Idaho mountains.

    September 6, 2015

  • riding?

    September 5, 2015

  • NPR just told me male is a taboo word. So hard to keep up. . .

    September 4, 2015

  • Nope, not all of us...

    September 4, 2015

  • Not in the bic pigture.

    September 4, 2015

  • Evidently a lot of people think prodigal is spelled with a c.

    September 4, 2015

  • Chuck Close displayed a banana and the entire audience said banana.

    September 3, 2015

  • I keep thinking Hogwashian

    September 2, 2015

  • have at it

    September 2, 2015

  • have (something) will travel

    September 2, 2015

  • Mesopotamia is etymologically, as well as physically, a land between rivers.

    September 1, 2015

  • New in OED, I hear.

    August 29, 2015

  • the farm team for the Wallabies are the wannabies

    August 26, 2015

  • The Deltoid Pumpkin Seed is a book by John McPheee. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AEREON_26 for more.

    August 26, 2015

  • This is a good one--it strikes a nerve with me. I need a good socionym for someone who habitually uses socionyms, many of which are unfamiliar to me. It is usually not denigrating, but I find it tiresome.

    August 24, 2015

  • I am glad you enjoyed the list, qms. I often wish I had saved some amazing figures of speech I have come across when doing editing.

    August 24, 2015

  • How 'bout I stick my hat out and throw my neck in the ring? I could put my nose to the grindstone and keep my ear to the ground until something better comes along.

    August 24, 2015

  • I decided to try this, but it has me stumped... Really, I can't quite make sense of this one. Irons in the fire? Break a leg? Put some skin in the game? In the course of my "research," I did come across this list, which has me doubling over in stitches http://tigger.uic.edu/~rramakri/Readings/Fun/Mixed-Metaphors.htm

    August 24, 2015

  • Oh, the excrementitious ramblings of spammers.

    August 24, 2015

  • Erin, that makes me so happy. I am working on the list in memory of a TA in a taxonomy class I took many, many years ago. Also am trying to recall what I once knew!

    August 23, 2015

  • Assembling the Fungal Tree of Life Project

    August 21, 2015

  • No, nor with superseriousness

    August 18, 2015

  • oops...perhaps you mean interlard

    August 18, 2015

  • see also eye dialect

    August 18, 2015

  • the bending of rocks into an anticline or dome, according to Merriam-Webster

    August 18, 2015

  • Geocaulon lividum (aka Comandra lividum; Bastard Toadflax) Fruit is "edible but not palatable"

    August 18, 2015

  • This site, http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/special-snowflake, traces the use of the term to the 1999 movie Flight Club.

    August 16, 2015

  • As always, a pleasure.

    August 15, 2015

  • The generic name, Adiantum, Greek for “unwetted,” refers to the fronds’ water repellency. The specific name, pedatum, is Latin for “like a (bird’s) foot” and refers to the splayed pinnae. The common name, maidenhair fern, appears to be an inexact translation of capillus-veneris, (literally, “Venus’s hair”), the epithet of a different species found in subtropical regions of both the Old and New Worlds. (Venus’s hair is a good choice for gardeners whose climate is too warm to grow A. pedatum.)

    http://www.motherearthliving.com/plant-profile/an-herb-to-know-46.aspx

    The etymology appears to be a little more circuitous than Wiktionary would have it.

    August 15, 2015

  • According to OED, soup, stew or broth. http://findwords.info/term/shackles

    August 15, 2015

  • *tries again*

    wavewing is the common name of several plants in the carrot family (Apiaceae) The name refers to the undulating wings of the plant's seed pods.

    August 14, 2015

  • I like this list!

    August 13, 2015

  • From an 1891 book called Slang and its Analogues Past and Present, v2, compiled by J.S. Farmer: "chisel, chizzle, or chuzzle verb (common): To cheat... Current during the first half of thee present century, it seems to have appeared in literature about 1840."

    If Dickens intended this slang sense of chisel/chizzle/chuzzle, that would make the character a cheatwit. Is it an active or passive sense of cheat? More research required.

    August 13, 2015

  • head of the Hoo-Hoos

    August 12, 2015

  • from http://www.takeourword.com/TOW120/page2.html comes this discussion of loophole:

    The narrow, slit-like windows often found in Medieval castles were called loopholes. Loop is a now obsolete word for "window", so a loophole was a "window hole". These narrow windows were used for defense of the castle - it was easy to launch arrows and other projectiles out of the castle through such slits, but awfully difficult to get them in. So it would make sense that this word might come to mean "some means of escape" and then "some technicality that allows one to evade some consequence of a contract".

    However, that's not where today's loophole comes from! Well, at least not directly. Instead, it has been suggested that it comes from Dutch loopgat, the loop part of which comes from loopen "to run" (related to English lope and leap). It was probably influenced by the similar word loophole "window slit", perhaps even by folk etymology of the type we tried to fool you with above.

    Loophole in the "technicality that allows evasion" sense was first used by the poet Andrew Marvell in 1663.

    August 11, 2015

  • My pleasure!

    August 11, 2015

  • fond memories of a picnic lunch in the Nebraska National Forest

    August 11, 2015

  • pyrite

    August 11, 2015

  • factoid

    August 11, 2015

  • I like it. Sounds like syncopation with a little clop thrown in.

    August 10, 2015

  • I have occasionally heard someone use violent this way, but in a self-aware and humorous manner.

    August 7, 2015

  • Having hell as the center of the cosmos.

    August 6, 2015

  • Apple killers! What, you say a pear of them?

    August 6, 2015

  • The turtle lives 'twixt plated decks. . .

    August 3, 2015

  • Kew has published a monograph on the genus Erythronium I want it.

    August 3, 2015

  • See cantilever for a more complete definition. Also cantaliver. Vowel play.

    August 3, 2015

  • Way too many wineries to count now.

    August 1, 2015

  • Don't forget the wine cellar, she shouted from Walla Walla.

    August 1, 2015

  • Thanks, TH for commenting on the word. I like it. No, I love it. And thanks, Zu for having the list.

    July 31, 2015

  • My grandfather allowed how sarvis tastes like a fool, but with some lemon juice the berries make pretty good jelly.

    July 31, 2015

  • Reminds me of sarvis, aka serviceberry

    July 31, 2015

  • I guess it would be stop-loss rather than stoploss, if at all.

    July 31, 2015

  • What do you think about quitclaim, stoploss and maybe loosestrife


    July 31, 2015

  • the 99%

    July 30, 2015

  • the great unwashed

    July 30, 2015

  • Thanks TH and zu! Keep 'em coming!

    July 30, 2015

  • three men

    July 30, 2015

  • VM, I think this is just a description of her appearance, painting a picture of a hard-working woman whose arms are likely weather-worn by wind or sun or cold or all three. Orwell describes this scene:

    "a monstrous woman, solid as a Norman pillar, with brawny red forearms and a sacking apron strapped about her middle, was stumping to and fro between a washtub and a clothes line pegging out a series of square white things which Winston recognized as babies' diapers."

    July 29, 2015

  • Tongs used by people as they share a pot of shabu-shabu.

    July 29, 2015

  • Stored in the same part of my brain as Qiana.

    July 29, 2015

  • In the sense of awesome, said to date from the advent of vacuum tubes.

    July 29, 2015

  • Borrowed from this https://www.wordnik.com/lists/hazel intriguing list.

    July 29, 2015

  • The laundry setup I first remember: A wringer washer, two galvanized tubs for rinsing, and clotheslines. Pray for a rainless afternoon.

    July 29, 2015

  • Or here: https://www.wordnik.com/lists/hats-off. Let's find all hatlists.

    July 29, 2015

  • Could go here: https://www.wordnik.com/lists/names-of-hats, thus revivifying the list.

    July 29, 2015

  • Dare I suggest also https://www.wordnik.com/lists/sweet-tooth-fairy? Well, evidently I durst.

    July 28, 2015

  • In boating, a wave direction that matches the heading of the boat.

    July 27, 2015

  • Neolentinus lepideus

    "Another strong mushroom which does not decay easily; recycles wood, including railroad ties."

    Mushrooms of Northwest North America

    Helene M.E. Schalkwijk-Barendsen

    July 27, 2015

  • highlighting this Century definition:

    n. In Oxford University, a noisy, disorderly outbreak, in violation of established regulations: originally peculiar to English university life.

    July 27, 2015

  • I love that book!

    July 27, 2015

  • Or, as some would say, turn on the waterworks

    July 24, 2015

  • Adhesion?

    July 24, 2015

  • They told me, "cheer up, it could be worse," so I cheered up and sure enough, it got worse.

    July 24, 2015

  • Ha, VM, thanks for the laugh. I tried to edit a typo in my comment probably as you were making yours. Somehow I got the dread page-not-found and therefore deleted my comment. But, as I was saying, the next step is the self-declared weed. My name is Himalaya Blackberry and I am a weed. A very bad weed indeed

    July 24, 2015

  • wonderful...I just wish we could see the cut of the egg under plover

    July 24, 2015

  • The wood grouse, largest of the grouse family, renowned for its mating display.   aka Cock of the woods or cock-o-the-woods Also the name of a Scottish band.

    July 23, 2015

  • As for the word Benelux, I keep thinking it should be the name of either a watch or a mattress. Good quality and luxurious.

    July 23, 2015

  • Makes me think of some of the proposed reconfigurations of various states in the western US: Cascadia, Jefferson, State of Kootenai and Lincoln. I think Lincoln has been proposed for a couple of different locations.

    July 23, 2015

  • Like a taboo. For example, "I resent that they make it unsanitary to even discuss that subject."

    July 23, 2015

  • Yes, I am also inclined to believe this is folk etymology, mainly because I can find no citations. Furthermore, I haven't found any evidence of "suffering savior" used as an oath.  So I guess we will never know whether succotash suffers or is merely to be suffered.

    July 23, 2015

  • Definition: busy; active

    Indeed, Calvinists were constantly up and doing , searching for signs that they had received God's gift of grace.

    Divine, Robert A. (editor) & Breen, T. H & Frederickson, George M & Williams, R. Hal AMERICA PAST AND PRESENT (1995)

    Definition and citation from Collins Dictionary

    July 23, 2015

  • a proustite called ruby silver

    July 23, 2015

  • What about come non-corn corns--cornucopia, cornflower, Cornus

    July 23, 2015

  • went over like a lead balloon

    July 22, 2015

  • Hm..swimming rama...chicken swimming in peanut sauce?

    July 22, 2015

  • Not sure about this. Unbuckle?

    July 22, 2015

  • A standing dead tree without bark. Evidently the barklessness can allow the wood to remain sound (and salable) for many years.

    July 22, 2015

  • According to the blog idiomation, the phrase suffering succotash originated as a bowdlerization of Suffering Savior

    July 22, 2015

  • People speculate about different explanations for bounding in this term. World Wide Words concludes that ". . .the bounding main is the open ocean with its waves that surge, billow and break."

    July 22, 2015

  • a person who is overly dependent

    July 22, 2015

  • A bridge over the Tacoma Narrows which from the time that it was constructed moved vertically in the wind. It collapsed in 1940.

    July 22, 2015

  • From the world of blacksmithing

    July 22, 2015

  • Oh, I would like to add screaming meemies, but I am afraid that it is not the meemies who actually do the screaming. . .what is a meemie anyway?

    July 21, 2015

  • Someone I know uses unsanitary to mean something roughly synonymous with politically incorrect. I am wondering how widespread this usage is.

    July 21, 2015

  • Ha! No pretense in this definition that an ironing basket is a repository for things that will be ironed.

    July 21, 2015

  • Like crepe, if you iron it with a too-hot iron, you will sear the sucker right out of it. Or so my mother told me. As one friend told me, the ironing basket is where she puts clothes she will never wear again.

    July 21, 2015

  • Just make sure you don't over-sad-iron the crape, or you will iron the crepe right out of it.

    July 21, 2015

  • At one time white-haired ladies used a little bit of bluing to counteract the yellow tinge in their hair; a bit too much and the hair was blue; hence, bluehairs.

    July 21, 2015

  • Chinook Jargon: dead, to die, etc. mamook memaloose is to kill, to murder, to execute

    July 21, 2015

  • restored to life

    July 21, 2015

  • Common name, Bitterroot

    "Meriwether Lewis first collected it in 1806 in Montana When his pressed, dried specimen was examined months later, it still showed signs of life and when planted, it promptly grew so it was called rediviva, meaning 'restored to life.'"

    from "Plants of Southern Interior British Columbia and the Inland Northwest" by Parish, Coupe, and Lloyd

    July 21, 2015

  • see Lewisia rediviva

    July 21, 2015

  • Counterfeit:

    "As in most civilized countries rejoicing in that paper medium which Cobbett tersely denounced as 'rags,' the imitation of bank notes is prohibited and severely punished, however innocent may be the intent. Just as in the last century debtors in the Fleet Prison printed notes on the 'Bank of Fleet,' and later jokers got up drafts on the 'Bank of Elegance,' both of which were employed, particularly when intermixed with genuine notes, to deceive the public, so is there a class still ignorant enough to be fleeced by gross deceptions."

    From Tales of the Bank of England, published in 1882

    July 21, 2015

  • It's what happened when the red ship and the blue ship collided.

    July 19, 2015

  • An expression of surprise. I used to hear this regularly, but have not heard it for years.

    July 19, 2015

  • Thanks for the link, TH. That was fun.

    July 17, 2015

  • ticking timebomb?

    July 17, 2015

  • For example, "What dirty shame-on-it used up the toilet paper and did not put up a new roll?"

    July 17, 2015

  • Really? A botanist called a peanut a drupe? All the botanists I know say a peanut is a legume. A drupe is a stone fruit with a fleshy covering over the seed, including peaches, plums and many others.

    July 16, 2015

  • A Roman emporer, briefly; apparently also the species name of a particular hoverfly.

    July 16, 2015

  • If I knew of a most-disgusting-names list, this would surely go on that list. The name refers to a juvenile hoverfly.

    July 16, 2015

  • Wondering if I really want to list pertussis. The thought of it makes me cough.

    July 16, 2015

  • Thanks for the list. You are most pertinent!

    July 16, 2015

  • I knew a malapert; he was paughty and paunchy, and barely eighteen.

    July 16, 2015

  • a quick search of some -pert words suggests that there is no list.

    July 16, 2015

  • one for the list

    July 16, 2015

  • Outside my window, the sweet susurration of two squirrels scampering on the dry bark of a plane tree.

    July 16, 2015

  • a disspelling?

    July 15, 2015

  • Sometimes they live in McMansions.

    July 15, 2015

  • Ha! Now, July 15, 2015, this word can be redefined as photographing Pluto.

    July 15, 2015

  • Beloved wildflower, followed by great hips.

    July 15, 2015

  • To answer your question, this list is about the discursiveness of Wordnikking on one particular day. The process is necessarily idiosyncratic.Nootka is used in a variety of names--Nootka rose, Nootka Sound, Nootka cedar and, I learned, Nootkatone for example.

    mamuk is commonly rendered mamook in the Chinook Jargon. A typo in one web reference used mamuk instead of mamluk; mamluke is another transliteration of mamluk. There are several others.

    Whew, was that as painful for you as it was for me?

    July 15, 2015

  • VM, thanks--your question prompted me to notice an omission in my comment on Nootkatone. I edited the comment to mention grapefruit.

    July 15, 2015

  • An organic compound typically extracted from grapefruit, but also found in Chamaecyparis nootkatensis, hence the name Nootkatone.

    July 15, 2015

  • Do you earn a badge for that?

    July 15, 2015

  • Gideon Bible?

    July 14, 2015

  • doronicum--leopard's bane

    July 14, 2015

  • Camassia quamash, also known as camas. Chinook jargon: the camas.

    July 14, 2015

  • Variously known as Alaska yellow cedar, yellow cedar, Nootka cypress, or Alaska cypress

    July 14, 2015

  • ill tempered

    July 14, 2015

  • Boulder! A coy oath. Hoover Dam was originally called Boulder Dam. At the time of its construction, it was the biggest dam in the world.

    July 13, 2015

  • hotter than an election

    July 13, 2015

  • It was hotter than lection in western Washington this past June.

    July 13, 2015

  • Thanks, VM. When I was growing up the logger-talk was tedious and incomprehensible to me. Nevertheless some of the words stuck and now I enjoy learning about how that work was/is done.

    July 13, 2015

  • Oh, and never in a month of Sundays

    July 13, 2015

  • never in my born days; never in my wildest imagination

    July 13, 2015

  • Spar-tree—A tall tree that is trimmed of all branches, topped, then rigged with guy lines and blocks, and used as a derrick to yard logs, moving them from where they were felled to a landing where they can be loaded for shipment to the mill.

    From the website of the Center for the Study of the Pacific Northwest

    July 13, 2015

  • Well, now I am curious about the verb to yard. I grew up around a lot of logger talk, and there were frequent references to yarding logs. I called my brother the logger-cum-school administrator for a definition. After a short pause, he said that the pedantic answer would be that to yard is to draw in. I had the misapprehension that one yarded logs out. Very, very wrong. One yards logs in to a spar-tree. The area where they lay around the spar tree is called the cold deck.

    July 13, 2015

  • the Darvaza Crater

    July 8, 2015

  • pannier?

    July 6, 2015

  • Duties paid for unlading goods in port.

    July 6, 2015

  • Often misspelled.

    July 4, 2015

  • scarecrowfest?

    July 4, 2015

  • also known as transumption

    July 4, 2015

  • Females of anautogenous insect species require a meal of blood in order to reproduce effectively. Most species of horse flies are anautogenous.

    July 4, 2015

  • outfit?

    July 2, 2015

  • "A person who actuated the whistle on an old-time steam yarder by pulling on a long wire." from Glossary of Logging Terms at Pacific Forestry Foundation website.

    June 30, 2015

  • cone of silence? Wordnik mining.

    June 28, 2015

  • I went on the interwebs looking for an account of the expression only ever, and what did I find but an account of the pocket shark which has only ever been seen twice.

    June 26, 2015

  • an anechoic chamber, maybe?

    June 25, 2015

  • Deafening silence?

    June 25, 2015

  • You could hear a pin drop.

    June 25, 2015

  • more, perhaps, than you want to know about qualia at http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qualia/

    June 25, 2015

  • Don't let anyone buffalo you!

    June 23, 2015

  • a unit of measure equal to the length of a cucumber, measured in dog years

    June 21, 2015

  • Often misconstrued to mean a good custom that is much flouted, rather than the original meaning of a bad custom that one would do well to dishonor.

    From Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 1, scene 4: "But to my mind, though I am native here / And to the manner born, it is a custom / More honour'd in the breach than the observance." (Wiktionary)

    June 21, 2015

  • two bits

    June 21, 2015

  • hence, swelter

    June 20, 2015

  • to avoid opprobrium?

    June 20, 2015

  • Thinking of a Cossack wearing a cassock and wielding a custock.

    June 20, 2015

  • Makes me nostalgic for a place I have never been...

    June 20, 2015

  • Hmm...conflate appears frequently in my speech. I seem to see acts of conflation everywhere. Theodicy, on the other hand, makes me a bit uneasy.

    June 20, 2015

  • Or perhaps the examples are correct because these are the only instances of the word, typo or eggcorn that it may be.

    June 19, 2015

  • Makes me also think of cut off your nose to spite your face

    June 19, 2015

  • bedbug

    June 17, 2015

  • a skunk

    June 17, 2015

  • a journalist

    June 17, 2015

  • Arctostaphylos uva-ursi

    June 17, 2015

  • Clothing with extra parts: toesocks

    June 16, 2015

  • an eggcorn of crestfallen

    June 11, 2015

  • bee-bite? I was just reading about bees that can sting AND bite. double jeopardy

    June 10, 2015

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