Join two wayward radio hosts on A Way With Words, the call-in radio show about writing, speaking, slang, old sayings, and more.

Login   •   Register  

Tuesday, January 24, 2006

KPBS “A Way With Words” Episodes

I’ve received a flood of nearly two emails asking for the episodes of the KBPS radio program A Way With Words that I co-hosted earlier in January. Go crazy: Jan. 7 episode (23MB MP3), Jan. 14 episode (23MB MP3). Special thanks to Mrs. Trellis of North Wales. (Source Link)

Holy crap! People are communicating with abbreviations, acronyms, and rebus!

Another lame-ass article, one of a gafuckillion, on texting. We already know it’s here. It’s been here for decades. When is anyone going to have something more to say about it than, “hey, look at this—it’s wacky!!!!!!!!”? (Source Link)

Sunday, January 22, 2006

Chitting

Already in OED, so no point in recording it as a cite, but worth pointing out: chitting ‘sprouting, germination; spec. the process of allowing potatoes, etc., to sprout.’ In the gerund/noun form, it dates to 1727. The verb to chit ‘of seed: to sprout, germinate’ dates to 1601. (Source Link)

Panniculus

“When he walks, his knees hit the skin that’s literally hanging down to his knees.”

That’s what happens when you lose 650 pounds: it leaves as much as 100 pounds of excess skin and tissue that used to hold in the fat.

A panniculus is “a sheet or layer of tissue.”

(Source Link)

Whopping cough

“...an outbreak of pertussis, commonly called whopping cough...”

The New Oxford American Dictionary includes as a run-on definition of whopping ‘the regular pulsing sound of a helicopter rotor’ which makes a whopping cough the perfect ailment for a foley artist working on a Vietnam War movie.

(Source Link)

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