Fan-guistics
On the group blog The Toast on September 30th, a posting by Gretchen McCulloch, “A Linguist Explains the Grammar of Shipping”, about ship names, based on a paper in fan-guistics on the subject....
View ArticleNumb3rs and a soap-opera-handsome hunk
(Mostly about tv and handsome men, rather than language.) Caught in a re-run of the tv series Numb3rs (season 2, episode 5, “Assassin”, originally aired 10/21/05), the soap-opera-handsome hunk Jordi...
View ArticleMorning: The Cockettes
Another from the backlog of morning names here: back to the outrageous 70s (which we tend to think of as “the 60s”). From Wikipedia: The Cockettes were a psychedelic theater troupe founded by Hibiscus...
View ArticleDark loamy POP
Today’s Rhymes, in which a scarecrow gets a medical diagnosis: As a one-time gardener, I thrill to the word loam, and of course I’m tickled by the idea of the scarecrow’s straw stuffing composting into...
View ArticleGoing to the dogs
Two dog (after a fashion) cartoons: one by Dale Coverly (from his Speed Bump strip), one by Phil Selby (from his blog): (#1) (#2) Coverly. Cartoon #1 has a POP (phrasal overlap portmanteau), but one...
View ArticleMonkey Puzzle Trio
I stumbled on this name (on radio station KFJC) yesterday. It caught my eye both because I’ve posted about the monkey puzzle tree (Araucaria Araucana) and because I admired the portmanteau in this name...
View ArticleBullshido, bullshtein, and cork soakers
(All sorts of taboo language and sexual references.) So I posted a brief notice of Mark Peters’s recently published bullshit lexicon, noting in passing the euphemism bullshine, which wasn’t among the...
View ArticleBorn out of breadlock
Today’s Rhymes With Orange, with a pun: The cronut, a hybrid food with a portmanteau name. See section 1 (on the cronut) of my 5/30/13 posting about portmanteaus.
View ArticleRushing Sugar
The latest ad from the Daily Jocks company, with a caption: (#1) The head-scratcher He didn’t know Where he was or How he got there; Last he remembered, He was rocking to “El Bimbo” at the Blue...
View ArticleFoodnited States
Through Facebook friends, this entertaining Mental Floss piece, “All 50 States Reimagined as Food Puns” by Rebecca OConnell: (#1) If you had to assign one piece of food to represent each state, which...
View ArticlePearls POP
Alerted by Andy Sleeper, two recent Pearls Before Swine cartoons: (#1) (#2) The Worrywarthog: a phrasal overlap portmanteau (POP): worrywart + warthog. The first is new on this blog; the second has...
View ArticleMonster Mash
In today’s Mother Goose and Grimm, a mash-up of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young (the folk rock group) and Young Frankenstein (the movie), in a phrasal overlap portmanteau (POP): (#1) It’s a Monster...
View ArticleA Montalbán Hanukkah
Yesterday’s Rhymes With Orange, with a POP (phrasal overlap portmanteau): (#1) That’s The Wrath of Khan + Hanukkah. (Hilary Price is fond of POPs.) Hanukkah began at sunset yesterday — note the one...
View ArticleSupermarionation
Mentioned is a Facebook posting that went by me a while ago, this name is a combination of super, marionette, and animation. The official trailer for a Supermarionation documentary can be viewed on...
View ArticleBCNÜ
(Lots of gay sex stuff in here, so use your judgment.) The most recent Daily Jocks ad: (#1) BCNÜ have launched their all new Varsity collection of sports tanks and shorts! The slick, sporty gear has...
View ArticleVictoria’s Secret Agent
Yesterday’s Bizarro, with a POP (phrasal overlap portmanteau): (Don Piraro says there’s just one of his secret symbols in this cartoon: the eyeball. For an explanation, see this Page.) In any case:...
View ArticleTestigraphmanteau
That’s for testicular photograph portmanteau, in a portmanteau. The Steam Room Stories episode (very fit guys, gay and straight, clad only in a towel, in a steam room, talking about their bodies and...
View ArticleAn eruption of bromanteaus
Just when you thought that the ship of bromanteaus and other brocabulary (involving the (North American) slang term bro ‘brother, buddy’, used especially as an address term) had long ago sailed into...
View ArticleBatzarro
Stumbled upon this while looking for more examples of Bizarro cartoons with Batman in them: That’s a thoroughly perverse counterpart of Batman, an anti-Batman, so to speak: a parallel to the character...
View ArticleNews on the sexuality front: the Jocktion Marketplace
From Mike McKinley this morning, news of the Jocktion Maketplace (website here). The name Jocktion is a portmanteau of jock ‘athlete’ and auction; the company’s enthusiastic pitch: Welcome to Jocktion!...
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