Monday, September 24, 2001
"On Friday, Verizon asked voice mail customers to delete messages they did not need, in order to avoid overtaxing the system. What Verizon did not say was that it wanted as many messages discarded as possible so it could turn off the so-called electronic janitor that automatically deletes messages, and allow people to retain last-minute messages they received from loved ones who may have perished in the twin towers, according to Eric Rabe, the chief spokesman for Verizon."
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
- 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
- Find me in American Way Magazine
- Recent catchwords: read-alike, violin hickey, throw a Porsche at someone, Q-tip cruise, 1-800 car
Recent Catchwords
- stumper n. (8/21)
- polliwogging n. (8/21)
- grizzle v. (8/21)
- white water n. (8/20)
- gunning for the stops n. (8/20)
- post-shellular adj. (8/20)
- high water mark n. (8/20)
- waz adj. (8/20)
- time bomb n. (8/19)
- bedder n. (8/19)
- gasoline siding n. (8/19)
- night lunch n. (8/18)
- mudjacking n. (8/17)
- skeet-shooting n. (8/17)
- permabear n. (8/17)
- DFD-er n. (8/15)
- dropout factory n. (8/15)
- slotting n. (8/15)
- hydromowing n. (8/15)
- suicide gown n. (8/15)
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