Saturday, August 25, 2007
A lost wilderness. “Squirrels are highly intelligent, agile enough to tightrope-walk along telephone wires, and poor conductors of electricity. Somehow they have realised that by biting through to the bare wires and short-circuiting the 50 volts that run through them into their own bodies, they can heat themselves up. In this way, Roger said, each squirrel becomes a sort of low-voltage electric blanket—and will sit up on the wires with a stoned smile for hours.”
This is the personal weblog of Grant Barrett, editor of the Double-Tongued Dictionary, a collection of words from the fringes of English. More about this site...
Recent Catchwords
- hole doping n. (8/29)
- foot drop n. (8/29)
- springboard injunction n. (8/28)
- turabosis n. (8/28)
- Truman Show delusion n. (8/28)
- relokill n. (8/27)
- toothpick rule n. (8/27)
- age-doping n. (8/27)
- narcisurfing n. (8/27)
- chemical rapping n. (8/27)
- LPU n. (8/27)
- peanut buttering n. (8/26)
- whipsawing n. (8/26)
- momtourage n. (8/26)
- thin file n. (8/26)
- two minute man n. (8/26)
- family forest n. (8/26)
- squircle v. (8/25)
- pocket litter n. (8/24)
- cuckoo smurfing n. (8/23)
Recent Entries
- Wilf? Yuffer? Get real!
- Lexicographer Laurence Urdang Dies at 81
- A thesaurus can be harmful
- Can bad language punditry be stopped? Can false attributions for classic quotes be fixed?
- There’s one in every country
- Scottish Language Dictionaries fundraiser
- SouthWest Writers
- Disfluencies: What do they mean by “I mean”?
- A hearty endorsement of shout quotes: scare quotes used for emphasis
- How to buy a dictionary
- Jinx and padiddle: games we play
- Saying it wrong on purpose
- Nicknames from the Underground: Busharraf, Chillary, and Killadelphia
- New slang unpacked
- UPDATED: Crosswords in Black and White
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