Today’s Pearls Before Swine, in which Pig once again misinterprets a word:
From NOAD2:
a surgical operation to remove a breast.
ORIGIN 1920s: from Greek mastos ‘breast’ + -ectomy.
Pig recognizes the -ectomy ‘removal’ part, extracts mast as the first part, and so misunderstands mastectomy.
July 30, 2013 at 5:37 pm |
Guess the cartoonist doesn’t know the word “mast” in the sense of acorns and other nuts, when they serve as food for bears – or pigs. When we get a good mast crop up in the east TN mountains, the bears don’t come into town looking for food.