Archive for the ‘Compounds’ Category
September 26, 2023
We start with wine, a drink whose enthusiasts, knowledgable fans, aficionados, connoisseurs, and the like are legion, so not surprisingly we have a name for them, with alternative spellings: oenophiles / enophiles. Beer is equally appreciated and enjoyed by many, but there are relatively few beer connoisseurs. But, even if there are few of them, they presumably have a name — maybe an obscure one, but a name nevertheless. What’s the solution to this proportional equation?
wine : oenophile :: beer : X
It turns out that there are (at least) two solutions for X, one Latin-based (like vinophile for wine, which is so rare that it doesn’t make it even into the OED), the other Greek-based like oenophile (Greek to accord with the Greek second element –phile). You’re unlikely to have come across either of them, but the second, Greek-based one, is especially delicious for me, because it’s a Z -word (like Zwicky), and because it came to me through a Facebook friend, Martyn Cornell.
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Posted in Compounds, Greek, Language and food, Spelling | 2 Comments »
August 18, 2023
A typo in writing — CARPTENTER, with an anticipation of the T in CARPENTER — which was then not caught by a proofreader, so that it got published looking like CARP-TENTER ‘someone or something for tenting carp’, but written solid. Exposed by Michael Palmer on Facebook on 8/15. The published display, with the beginning of the accompanying news article:
US Senator Sherrod Brown August 15 at 11:09 AM: Today our Butch Lewis Act saved the pensions of 5,400 carpenters in Southwest Ohio, restoring full benefits with NO cuts. When work has dignity, workers can take comfort that the pensions they’ve earned over a lifetime will be there for them when they retire
And then, of course, the playful Facebook comments, starting with Michael Palmer’s initial salvo:
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Posted in Compounds, Errors, Homosexuality, Masculinity, Punctuation, Semantics of compounds, Silliness, Typos | Leave a Comment »
August 15, 2023
Provoked by the Merriam-Webster site‘s “Words We’re Watching: ‘Nibling’: An efficient word for your sibling’s kids”: some reflections on the portmanteauing that gives rise to nibling ‘niece or nephew, sibling’s child’; on “having a word for X in language L”; and on neologism and its discontents.
First, the fun. There’s a book for kids, and there’s a t-shirt for kids, too.
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Posted in Books, Categorization and Labeling, Clothing, Compounds, Derivation, Gender and sexuality, Lexical semantics, Lexicography, Naming, Portmanteaus, Trade names | 5 Comments »
August 9, 2023
(Intimate talk about male bodies, mostly mine, in plain terms, though not so racy as to ban kids — but I will freely use the vernacular noun and verb piss, nouns dick and balls. In any case, some people will find the topic of crotch odor unsavory.)
I’d hoped to be able to post about meat dreams and crotch pong on the same day — just for the sound of the two off-color compounds together, but meat dreams took a lot longer than I’d expected (I somehow ended up in the 16th century), so crotch pong had to wait a day. So it goes.
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Posted in Alliteration, Assonance, Clothing, Compounds, Dialects, Language and the body, Language of sex, My life, Signs and symbols, Slang, Smell, Taboo language and slurs, Underwear | 1 Comment »
August 8, 2023
Today’s Wayno / Piraro Bizarro, a complex composition in which two centipedes look for bar snacks:
(#1) First bit of language play: the portmanteau barthropod = bar + arthropod, centipedes being arthropods, creatures in the gigantic phylum Arthropoda — also encompassing insects (including silverfish and springtails as well as flies, butterflies and moths, beetles, and more), spiders. crustaceans (among them, shrimp, crabs, lobsters, and barnacles), and millipedes (if you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 3 in this strip — see this Page)
Then there’s a more subtle bit of language play in silverfish serving as bar snacks in a world in which centipedes drink in bars — given that Goldfish crackers (gold fish, silver fish, bring out the bronze) are often served as bar snacks in the real world.
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Posted in Compounds, Language and animals, Language and food, Language and gender, Linguistics in the comics, Metaphor, Portmanteaus, Spelling | Leave a Comment »
August 5, 2023
Georgia Morgan (now retired from linguistics in Brattleboro VT, where she creates and sells amazing jewelry) on Facebook on 8/3:
— GM: I will be at the Brattleboro Area Farmers’ Market this Saturday in the Rosie’s Wonders booth. Bringing these, and lots more …
(#1) Including this peapod pendant
— AZ: Love the peapod. I would wear that (except that I can no longer manage any kind of jewelry with my poor disabled hands)
— GM > AZ: If you ever want one, I do make pendants with an adjustable sliding closure that just go on over your head
— AZ > GM: Georgia, if you can do that for the peapod, I want one.
And it has been done. Georgia is working on the pendant; the check is in the mail. It’s my birthday present to myself; I have a prime birthday, my 83rd (I still can’t quite believe that I have somehow managed to live this long) in a month from now, 9/6.
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Posted in Art, Compounds, It's Just Stuff, Language and food, Language and the body, My life, Signs and symbols, Spelling | Leave a Comment »
May 19, 2023
Coming on the heels of my 5/18 posting “A fellatio-adjacent pitch for The Wiener the World Awaited”, Oscar Mayer’s heralding their new wiener on wheels, the Frankmobile. Here’s the story from the Out Traveler website (for Out magazine), “Say Goodbye to America’s Favorite Wiener on Wheels: The unexpected move is part of the rollout of Oscar Mayer’s beefy new hot dog recipe” by Jordan Valinsky of CNN Business on 5/17:
(#1) THE ALL BEEF BEEF FRANK FRANKMOBILE, that’s what it says on the label
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Posted in Compounds, Homosexuality, Language and food, Language and the body, Language in advertising, Phallicity, Semantics of compounds, Signs and symbols | 1 Comment »
April 18, 2023
A footnote to yesterday’s posting “DISNEY ON ICE”, which was about (among other things) ice shows, in the sense ‘shows on ice, entertainment productions primarily performed by ice skaters’. The N + N compound ice show is then a location compound, conveying that the referent of N2 is located with respect to the referent of N1, as being in or on it. So now a few words about the (many) interpretations of compounds.
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Posted in Brevity vs. Clarity, Compounds, Semantics of compounds | 1 Comment »
April 9, 2023
An exercise in nostalgia (much transformed) for Easter lunch today: sandwiches of slices of Kentucky country ham — KCH for short — and melted cheddar cheese. The nostalgia is in the ham:
(#1) Thinly sliced ham from Broadbent B & B Foods in the little country town of Kuttawa KY (in Lyon County in far (south)western Kentucky)
To come: on country ham the compound noun and country ham the foodstuff; on my personal history with KCH (associated in my household with Christmas rather than Easter); and on the Broadbent company.
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Posted in Compounds, Holidays, Language and food, My life, Semantics of compounds, Style and register | 4 Comments »
February 13, 2023
(#1)
Thanks to this year’s alignment of the Gregorian and Roman Catholic church calendars and the schedule of official US holidays, the month of February 2023 has two periods of presidential pleasure in it — festivals of Lincoln and license (food and sex) embracing first 2/12 (Lincoln Darwin Day), 2/13 (today, LDV Day), and 2/14 (Valentine’s Day), and then 2/20 ((US) Presidents Day) and 2/21 (Mardi Gras).
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Posted in Compounds, Gender and sexuality, Holidays, Language and food, Language of sex, Logos, Mascots, Phallicity, Poetic form, Semantics of compounds, Signs and symbols, Underwear | 1 Comment »
