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 Entries
- How much underworld slang is still used from 80 years ago?
- Remembering William Safire
- The elephant in the language
- Updates will continue to be slow for Double-Tongued
- Call of nature
- Feedburner URLs that have huge accidental traffic
- I held Samuel Johnson’s 1755 dictionary in my hands
- New: doors are open for Wordnik.com, a dictionary that aims to show all the words
- Boohoo, wah, & diddums: words of fake sympathy
- My book is now available at no cost as an e-book download
- Jitterbug thug and dance
- The Fantods and the Cold Robbies
- A Conversation with Roy Blount Jr.
- Putting In A Good Word: rating words’ chances for success
- Pickle is automatically a funny word
Recent Catchwords
- broccoli journalism n. (10/19)
- strap hanging n. (10/8)
- parclo n. (10/8)
- Dipper n. (10/8)
- jeggings n. (10/5)
- dittoism n. (10/5)
- crop n. (10/3)
- sliming n. (10/3)
- protestival n. (10/3)
- excessing n. (10/3)
- pencil top n. (10/3)
- trophy jacket n. (10/3)
- ball golf n. (10/3)
- Scottish cringe n. (10/3)
- bagel v. (9/30)
- shake and bake n. (9/30)
- supe truck n. (9/30)
- tribrid n. (9/30)
- dead money n. (9/30)
- secret squirrel mission n. (9/30)
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