Susan Cheever in Newsweek for August 13th and 20th, p. 6,“Gin Without the Tonic”, on the rich:
There are still titans with a conscience in the 21st century — Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and Oprah Winfrey, for instance — but some of the rich hang on to their money until the eagle grins.
The point of interest here is until the eagle grins, an idiom that will probably baffle most non-Americans (and some Americans as well).
In the tradition of “Possibly unfortunate names” [for businesses] and “More notable business names”, yesterday came a new one. Passed on by Jeff Shaumeyer on Facebook, this posting by Andy Hopkins of the 12th (reproduced here verbatim):
Here in Toronto there is a new business that caught my eye. It is surprisingly called “Glory Hole Doughnuts”. I don’t think the owner new the double meaning of “Glory Hole” like so many gay men who are looking for some other kind of foot long cream filled treat that is sticky & sweet.
On the various senses of glory hole, see my posting here (with a link to AZBlogX).
Via Emily Menon Bender on Facebook, this 6/7/12 Rhymes with Orange cartoon:
The dialectal feature illustrated here is known as “Canadian raising”; it’s a stereotype of Canadian speech.
Two passages from Rory Stewart’s review of Diana Preston’s The Dark Defile: Britain’s Catastrophic Invasion of Afghanistan, 1838-1842, in the New York Review of Books 8/16/12:
As General William Nott, who commanded at Kandahar throughout the campaign, remarked: “If a man is too stupid or too lazy to drill company, he often turns sycophant, cringer to the heads of departments and is made a ‘Political,’ and of course puts the government to enormous expense, and disgraces the character of his country.” (p. 80)
It is true that, to the fury of military officers like General Nott, the “politicals” who survived could not avoid a knighthood, a governorship, an honorary degree, a medal from a learned society, or even a parliamentary seat, but it was not easy to survive (pp. 80-1)
This is nouning of the adjective political as ‘political person’ — specifically, in this case, as ‘political officer’. Nouning of this adjective, in several senses, began in the 19th century.
I came across this in the Wikipedia entry on Batavia NY this morning:
In 2006, a national magazine ranked Batavia third among the nation’s micropolitans based on economic development.
The link takes us to an entry on micropolitan areas. The adjective micropolitan is based on the adjective metropolitan, with the combining form micro- ‘small’ replacing the combining form metro- in metropolitan; in these usages, both metropolitan and micropolitan are technical terms (defined by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget). And then micropolitan has been nouned, by truncation from micropolitan area, so that it can be pluralized: micropolitans. (The adjective metropolitan has been nouned by truncation in the same way.)
No, not Wally World (either the fictional theme park in the movie National Lampoon’s Vacation or the nickname for Walmart), but the cartoonist Wally Wood, creator of “Panels That Always Work”:
Today’s Bizarro, on geese around the world:
A little play on spelling conventions: the default spelling for the phoneme /v/ of English and French is V, but the spelling for the phoneme /v/ of German is W. So Canadian geese — note that this is a type name; Canada geese (sometimes called Canadian geese) are by no means limited to Canada, and other goose species, for example the snow goose, are found in Canada — will fly in a V formation, while German geese (this is not a type name) will fly in a double V formation, making a W. But only if the German geese know how to spell in German.
From Victor Steinbok, a pointer to yesterday’s NPR piece “The Straight-To-DVD World Of ‘Mockbusters'” by Mandalit del Barco. Mockbuster is a portmanteau of mock and blockbuster; these films are also known as knockbusters (knock-off / knockoff + blockbuster). From Wikipedia:
A mockbuster … is a film created with the apparent intention of piggy-backing on the publicity of a major film with a similar title or theme and is often made with a low budget. Often these films are created to be released direct-to-video at the same time as the mainstream film reaches theaters or video outlets.
Passed on by David Beaver, a Bizarro from 2007:
One pun in the cartoon proper, another in the title.
The speaker’s words in the cartoon play on two senses of tone: (1) musical quality (appropriate for a choir), (2) ‘modulation of the voice expressing a particular feeling or mood’ (NOAD2), as in tone of voice (the usual sense in “I don’t like your tone”).
The title plays on the movie title Shootout at the OK Corral, with chorale (the choir context again) for corral. This is a perfect pun for me, but some have /o/ rather than /ǝ/ in the first syllable of chorale, and some have /a/ rather than /æ/ in the second syllable of that word.
Both puns juxtapose the choir world to the cowboy world.
