Arnold Zwicky's Blog

🐅 🐅 🐅 three tigers for ultimate October, aka Halloween; by the pricking of my fingers, something wicked this way lingers

Specifically, my fingers pricked out the name Anold for Arnold a little while ago, as they do with regrettable regularity (Gorgo finger not work right), but this time it was in a link on Facebook to this blog, so not self-correcting. But George V. Reilly caught the error and pointed it out to me, so that I could fix it. And then today, I had an inspiration, which I posted as a response (somewhat revised here) to George:

— AMZ > GVR: It has occurred to me to take up Anold the anold as another identity. The anold is a brightly colored arboreal lizard — a type of anole — in its rare and precious Swiss variant. Characterized by its curiosity (in several senses — “Look, Bruce, what a curious lizard!”) and its remarkable, um, snout.

This is the anold’s organ sometimes known jocularly as a Swiss nose. All noses are phallic, but some are considerably more phallic than others. (A lexical note on the noun snout, from NOAD: ‘the projecting nose and mouth of an animal, especially a mammal’.)

Meanwhile, while noses and snouts are phallic symbols, lizards (and dinosaurs and dragons) as wholes are much more impressively so. From GDoS on the noun lizard:

7 (Aus./US) the penis [1st cite 1969], with phrases meaning ‘to urinate’: bleed / drain / flog / squeeze the lizard; and phrases meaning ‘to masturbate’: bleed / gallop / pet the lizard and choke / stroke / whip one’s lizard

So now we’re deep into phallicity. Well, it’s my blog. Phallicity happens.

The visuals. First, a Swiss nose, from Arnold rather than Anold. And then, continuing the theme of return to reality, an actual anole. With an extended dewflap, for extra interest.

(#1) A Swiss nose from 1982

And then from Wikipedia:

Dactyloidae are a family of lizards commonly known as anoles (/ənóliz/ [AZ: like cannolis, not like manholes]) and native to warmer parts of the Americas, ranging from southeastern United States to Paraguay.

… Anoles are small to fairly large lizards, typically green or brownish, but their color varies depending on species and many can also change it. In most species at least the male has a dewlap, an often brightly colored flap of skin that extends from the throat and is used in displays.

(#2) Green anole (Anolis carolinensis) displaying its red dewflap (Oakland Zoo photo)

… Anoles are active during the day and feed mostly on small animals such as insects, but some will also take fruits, flowers, and nectar [AZ: I myself will happily take fruits, flowers, a nectar]. Almost all species are fiercely territorial.

This entry was posted on October 31, 2024 at 5:52 pm and is filed under Holidays, Language and animals, Language and the law, Lexical semantics, Phallicity, Signs and symbols, Switzerland and Swiss things, Typos. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.