Linguist Arnold Zwicky shuts down grammar Nazis

May 4, 2025

Not how I expected to begin Dave Brubeck Day (in 5/4 time, as was his pleasure) / Four Dead in Ohio Day (dreadful memories from 1970, which come with a CSNY soundtrack), but there it was, listed by Google Alerts for the morning: on YouTube, on the “Today I Found Out: Feed Your Brain” channel, the segment

“In which linguist Arnold Zwicky shuts down grammar Nazis”

with Simon Whistler reading with great relish a passage from a posting of mine and savoring its vocabulary.

First, Google identifies me as a Public Figure (not just some mook off the streets, but in a class with, oh, Neil deGrasse Tyson). And now the tireless YouTuber Simon Whistler, with an audience of 2.52m subscribers to Today I Found Out, admires my word-slinging.

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Posted in Events and occasions, Music, My life, Peeving, This blogging life, Usage attitudes, Variation | 11 Comments »

After years, the thin-skinned injustice collector extracts his revenge

May 3, 2025

Today is both Opal Armstrong Zwicky’s college graduation day — 🎓 that’s a mortarboard — and also Kentucky Derby day — 🏇🏼 that’s a jockey on horseback. It also seems to be Rain Day, in both Pittsburgh and Louisville. In any case, two occasions packed with sentiment for me.

(Opal’s graduation from Pitt is straightforward on the sentiment front, but the Derby might need some explanation: Ann Walcutt Daingerfield (later Zwicky) was born — to a celebrated family of owners, breeders, and trainers of thoroughbreds — on Derby Day in 1937, and her father, Keene Daingerfield, ended his working life as the senior state steward for thoroughbred racing in the commonwealth of Kentucky, serving as a judge overseeing racing at both Keeneland in Lexington and Churchill Downs in Louisville. Note: Ann died in 1985, Keene in 1993.)

I hope to post separately about today’s Derby and about my odd long-ago life in the elite social world of central Kentucky and in the complex culture of thoroughbred racing. But today I bring you something completely different, an especially fine Bizarro cartoon, one that comes with a sting.

The 4/30 Bizarro “Chief Petty Officer” (to which Wayno gave the alternative title “Pulling Rank”):


After years, the thin-skinned injustice collector extracts his revenge (if you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Wayno says there are only 2 in this strip, and they’re easy to find — see this Page)

My comment on Facebook when Wayno posted this cartoon:

— And this is, who would’ve thought it, a political cartoon. A pointed one.

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Posted in Language and politics, Linguistics in the comics, Memes, Psychology | Leave a Comment »

Schadenfroggy

May 2, 2025

A Victoria Roberts schadenfrog cartoon in the 5/5/25 New Yorker:


(#1) The surviving frog — call it Schadenfroggy — takes malicious pleasure in its companion having been flattened to death; it’s a cruel, cruel ranine world

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Posted in Comic conventions, Language and animals, Lexical semantics, Linguistics in the comics, Portmanteaus | Leave a Comment »

Well, nobody’s perfect

May 1, 2025

🐇 🐇 🐇 rabbit rabbit rabbit for the first of May, and hordes of aroused bunnies are streaming in the streets, aggressively singing “L’Internationale”

Meanwhile, I had a wonderful dream last night, starring — a dream first — my grand-child Opal Armstrong Zwicky, who in real life is just about to graduate from the University of Pittsburgh. In the dream,  Opal and another young woman wrote a zany hit musical show in both English and Spanish. During the flurry of production, I met the grandfather of Opal’s collaborator, a charming man with whom I developed a friendship. My clothing, in the dream as in real life, clearly conveys that I’m gay, so this man, not wanting to be leading me on, admitted, gently, “You know, I’m straight” — to which I replied, quoting one of the great films of all time, “Well, nobody’s perfect” — a line I use frequently in my postings, after I celebrate some good friend, woman or man, whose nature runs contrary to tight gender norms, explaining that they’re straight, but, well, nobody’s perfect.

The movie is Some Like It Hot, and it’s a French farce given a distinctly American twist, with mobsters and eccentric millionaires. I am astonished to see that I haven’t ever written it up on this blog. But now its day has come. It seems to afford no place for the Industrial Workers of the World, but, well, you can’t have everything.

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Posted in Actors, Gender and sexuality, Holidays, Movies and tv, Music, Quotations | 3 Comments »

hoozamaflazamadoozamajillions 2

April 30, 2025

🐅 🐅 🐅 tiger tiger tiger for ultimate April; tomorrow the rabbit operatives of the revitalized Industrial Workers of the World will smash the tiger lackeys serving the corrupt octopus of big business and government; the Wobblies will, of course, dance onto the scene, tossing flowers to the audience (public service warning: do not eat the muguets; they are beautiful and sweet-selling, but toxic)

Previously on this blog. In yesterday’s “hoozamaflazamadoozamajillions 1”, a Lynn Johnston For Better or For Worse strip, (re)published on 6/19/24:


(#1) There are three linguistic things going on in this cartoon: the ambiguity of the verb count; the invented –illions words; and the thing [my correspondent Masayoshi Yamada] was puzzled by, the gigantic “nonsense nonce coinage” (as he put it) hoozamaflazamadoozama modifying jillions

Yesterday, things 1 and 2; today, thing 3.

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Posted in Accent, Connotation, Events and occasions, Language play, Linguistics in the comics, Nonsense, Poetic form, Pronunciation, Prosody, Rhyme, Semantics | 2 Comments »

hoozamaflazamadoozamajillions 1

April 29, 2025

👨‍🏭 👨‍🏭 penultimate April: in only two days, a gaggle of rabbits, strewing lilies of the valley promiscuously, will dance around an International Workers pole; be prepared

Meanwhile, Masayoshi Yamada, Emeritus Professor of Linguistics in Shimane University, in western Honshu (author of, inter alia: A Dictionary of Trade Names and A Dictionary of English Taboo and Euphemism), has appealed to me by e-mail on 4/24 with another puzzle from cartoons in English (his last query, reported on in my 9/25/24 posting “This idiom has had the radish”, had to do with the idiom have the radish in a Zits strip). This time it’s about one of Lynn Johnston’s For Better or For Worse strips, (re)published on 6/19/24:


There are three linguistic things going on in this cartoon: the ambiguity of the verb count; the invented -illions words; and the thing MY was puzzled by, the gigantic “nonsense nonce coinage” (as he put it) hoozamaflazamadoozama modifying jillions

After some background words about the strip, I’ll take up these three things one by one, expanding on things I wrote to MY.

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Posted in Ambiguity, Language play, Linguistics in the comics, Mathematics, Onomatopoeia, Sound symbolism | 6 Comments »

Today’s eccentric character

April 28, 2025

If this blog were the New Yorker, this posting would be a Talk of the Town piece (after the first one, which is an editorial), a sketch of some intriguing person. Today’s eccentric character on this blog (other than me) is Mark Saltveit. In brief, from Wikipedia, much extended:

Mark Saltveit (born 1961 [Harvard ’83]) is a Vermont-based [but Oregon native] stand-up comedian, palindromist and writer, known for being the first World Palindrome Champion [AZ: also chronicler of the San Francisco 49ers (that’s American football, for my readers around the world) and scholar of Daoism (aka Taoism); and, he now — 4/28 — tells me he’s also interested in ancient coins].


MS (photo from him)

In more detail, from his WiX site:

Staff writer, NinersNation.com (leading San Francisco 49ers website)
Professional standup comedian, since 1999
Editor, The Palindromist Magazine
The first ever World Palindrome Champion (2012-2017)
Editor, Taoish.org (a website of contemporary, secular Daoism)

But why, you wonder, am I writing about him today? Because he wrote me yesterday about the TG/TB (“That’s Good” / “That’s Bad”) joke routine that I first talked about here in a 7/22/19 posting “Oh that’s good” — citing an ancient Chinese forebear of the routine. So: TG/TB back in the mists of time, though it came up on this blog through the American tv show Hee Haw.

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Posted in Jokes, Movies and tv, People, Prosody | Leave a Comment »

Valentine Marx redistributes

April 27, 2025

❤️ ❤️  In the great pile of things on my work table, a silly Valentine’s Day card from Ann Burlingham (from back in February, as is calendrically appropriate), a Guttersnipe Press card (“purveyors of fine, anti-social media since 2012”) showing a little-known member of the Marx family, Karl’s love child Valentine Marx, with an amatory reshaping of his father’s dictum on the redistribution of wealth, From each according to his ability; to each according to his needs:


Give me all your love, as Whitesnake said it in 1987 (official music video here)

 

Posted in Holidays, Jokes, Music, Quotations | Leave a Comment »

Hallucinated proverbs

April 26, 2025

In the Business section of WIRED Daily, a piece by Brian Barrett on 4/23/25 with the headers:

‘You Can’t Lick a Badger Twice’: Google Failures Highlight a Fundamental AI Flaw

Google’s AI Overviews feature credible-sounding explanations for completely made-up idioms

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Posted in AI, Formulaic language, Idioms, Linguistics in the comics, Proverbs, Slogans | 2 Comments »

Suzerains of sheldrake

April 26, 2025

Today’s (4/26) morning names: sheldrake (or Sheldrake) and suzerainty. I have no idea how the gorgeous big duck (or the parapsychologist) got into my head; suzerainty might have popped up because of its prominent medial /z/ — I am ever Z-alert — though I don’t recall having seen it in print recently (I don’t think I’ve ever heard it spoken), so it might have come to me just for its oddness. The workings of my mind are often mysterious.

(The music playing at the time — well into a performance of Handel’s Messiah — provides no obvious source for any of these words.)

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Posted in Alliteration, Language and animals, Language and politics, Morning names, Music, Names, Nicknames | 2 Comments »

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