Yesterday’s Strange Planet comic strip by Nathan W. Pyle introduces the delightful verb / noun rollsuck ‘to vacuum’ / ‘vacuum cleaner’ (on Pyle’s strange planet, which has our customs but not our vocabulary):
The verb / noun as in: I am rollsucking the foot fabric ‘I am vacuuming the rug’
The lexical resources of English. Highlights from NOAD:
verb roll: 1 [a] move or cause to move in a particular direction by turning over and over on an axis: [no object, with adverbial of direction] …
noun roll: 1 [a] a cylinder formed by winding flexible material around a tube or by turning it over and over on itself without folding: a roll of carpet. [b] cylindrical mass of something or a number of items arranged in a cylindrical shape: a roll of mints. [c] [with modifier] an item of food that is made by wrapping a flat sheet of pastry, cake, meat, or fish around a sweet or savory filling: salmon and rice rolls. …. 2 [a] a movement in which someone or something turns or is turned over on itself: a roll of the dice | the ponies completed two rolls before getting back on their feet. … 4 a very small loaf of bread, to be eaten by one person: soup with a roll. … [AZ: then from 1b but not in NOAD, 8 slang a penis, in GDoS from 1833 on]
From these. A family of coinages, leading to the V and N in the strip (rollsuck-2, V and N2):
rollsuck-1: V ‘to suck (on) a roll’ (a jelly roll, a dinner roll, a fruit roll-up, a salmon sushi roll, a roll of mints, or of course a penis); N ‘the act of sucking on a roll’ (any of these rolls)
rollsuck-2: V ‘to roll and suck at the same time’; N1 ‘the act of sucking while rolling’; N2 ‘a device that sucks while rolling’
The rollsuck world is a big, wide, wonderful world. Savor it.
June 4, 2025 at 3:08 pm |
From Chris Ambridge on Facebook:
(I suspected that yesterday’s appearance of the strip was a re-play from some earlier time, as you confirm here.)
June 5, 2025 at 6:14 am |
rollsuck-1: V ‘to suck (on) a roll’
I half expected this to go in a direction that your posts often do, but then I guess I can use my own (somewhat adolescent) imagination.
June 5, 2025 at 6:33 am |
I folded that in, in a modest way. I am, by the way, pleased with my own adolescent imagination, still vigorous and a source of great pleasure. Of course, it co-exists with a sizable family of other imaginations, as I’m sure yours does as well.