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Let’s just call it “grammar”
Yesterday’s Rhymes With Orange: A visit to a theme park with a linguistic theme: it deals, at least, in onomatopoeia (rattle for the sound a rattlesnake’s tail makes), palindromes (expressions that...
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Ziplinguists
Prompted by a Zippy posting of mine, Dan Everett posted on Facebook that he had a signed copy from Bill Griffith of a Zippy that was, in some sense, about him (though he’s not actually mentioned in the...
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Advances in the fast food world
An announcement in my Facebook feed this morning, from Adverising Age yesterday: Burger King Introduces Whopperito, a Whopper Burrito: Tex-Mex Mashup to Be Sold Nationally From Aug. 15 Burger King’s...
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On foot patrol, part 1
(Foot patrol, also food patrol.) Yesterday morning, two expeditions involving my feet: first getting a second pair of shoes (I was edgy having only one; a backup seemed like a good idea) and a...
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jackhole
Television report. From The Mysteries of Laura, S1 E20 (5/7/15), “The Mystery of the Crooked Clubber”: So, he’s not our killer, he’s not on the getaway squad, he’s just some jackhole throwing himself...
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Barebackula
(About gay porn, but without explicit images — these are in an AZBlogX posting — or even detailed discussion of man-man sex, but men’s bodies and sex between men are certainly topics of this posting,...
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bromosexual
From the NYT on the 7th, “The Rise of the ‘Bromosexual’ Friendship” by Jim Farber, beginning: A recent ad for the Bravo TV show “Shahs of Sunset” finds two of its male stars lazing on lounge chairs at...
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New Yorker bro-toon
Another marcher in the great parade of brocabulary, from the October 17th New Yorker: broductivity (bro + productivity): (#1) (by Benjamin Schwartz) So much for the self-satisfied fist bump. Hoping...
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More Zwicky postings
There’s now a Page on this blog for things Zwicky (besides me): postings about people named Zwicky and things named Zwicky. In recognition, an assortment of things not already posted: on museli, a...
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Tradenaming
… choosing words as trademarks. NOAD2 on trademark: a symbol, word, or words legally registered or established by use as representing a company or product Such words often come with associations to...
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Montage montage
(Plenty of language stuff, about English and French, but also quite a bit about man-man sex, sometimes in very plain language, so use your judgment.) Over on AZBlogX, the posting “A fucktage”, with an...
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No cigar
In the November 21st New Yorker, this trio of food products that aim towards cigarhood but fall short: The play is on the American idiom (attested since the 1930s) close but no cigar (with several...
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Two POPs
Today’s Rhymes With Orange: Hilary Price is enormously fond of POPs (phrasal overlap portmanteaus). Here we get: gingerbread house + house of correction = gingerbread house of correction gingerbread...
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A New Yorker POP
In the current (January 9th) New Yorker, a Paul Noth cartoon with a cute POP (phrasal overlap portmanteau): (#1) The book title Stranger in a Strange Land overlapped with Land’s End catalog (referring...
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bro-verbs
On ADS-L recently, some discussion of verbings of the noun bro: to bro down, to bro it up, to de-bro. It started on the 27th with Jon Lighter reporting on a recent occurrence of bro down ‘become (male)...
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POP + Pun
Yesterday’s Mother Goose and Grimm: (#1) A POP (phrasal overlap portmanteau) incorporating a pun: Betty Crocker (see below) + cocker spaniel (the dog breed), with Crocker / cocker in the middle. From...
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toonmanteaus
Two cartoons about/with portmanteaus: a One Big Happy and a Zippy: (#1) (#2) smad about having to dwipe. In #1, Ruthie invents portmanteaus to suit her condition: sad + mad, dust + wipe. The Zippy is...
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One more VDay posting
Today’s Steam Room Stories is about “straight guys giving gay gifts”: what does a straight guy give as a Valentine’s Day gift to his best buddy, who happens to be gay? Two straight guys with this...
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Two from the 2/27 NYer
Not only both about language, but both about portmanteaus. A Drew Dernavich with the verb podlisten formed on analogy with the portmanteau verb podcast; and an Alice Cheng with the POP (phrasal overlap...
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A codgerie of shaggy men
Among the stand-out cactuses at the Stanford cactus and succulent garden these days: the wonderfully named Cephalocereus senilis (very roughly, ‘old man candle-head’). One of a large set of stand-up,...
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