kirinqueen has adopted no words, looked up 0 words, created 6 lists, listed 124 words, written 20 comments, added 0 tags, and loved 13 words.

Comments by kirinqueen

  • From Swedish, slut = "finish". spurt as English "spurt". Final push before the finish of something. From Lynne Murphy: http://twitter.com/lynneguist/status/24600541447

    September 16, 2010

  • Term for vegetarian or vegan loaf made with grains, vegetables (and cheese in the non-vegan version) to sort of mimic its meat counterpart.

    July 31, 2010

  • @ Ben Jackson: the word is indeed "swag", but someone (or probably a number of someones) somewhere picked up this alternate version and propagated it. (Perhaps to distance it from the "stolen" sense of "swag"?) I'm pretty sure the claim that it is an acronym of "stuff we all get" is a folk etymology.

    July 30, 2010

  • The OED notes that it comes from "goose" + "summer" -- it's a Germanic rather than a Latinate word. Language Hat has a post on it: http://www.languagehat.com/archives/003920.php

    July 8, 2010

  • A garden path sentence that messes with expected word senses (semantics) instead of syntactic relations. One of my favorites: "If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate."

    June 11, 2010

  • AKA woolsorters' disease (c. 18th-19th century).

    February 25, 2010

  • I have some horsey ones to add: cerapter (a winged, horned horse) and kirin/qilin/kilin (etc) (the Japanese/Chinese unicorn).

    December 17, 2009

  • Arnold Zwicky traces the use of this word and its various spellings through a number of citations in this blog post.

    October 23, 2009

  • Jennings Brewery describes a "sneck lifter" (as in the name of one of their ales, Sneck Lifter Strong Ale) as "a man's last sixpence with which he would lift the latch of the pub door and buy himself a pint, hoping to meet friends there who might treat him to one or two more." As the brewery is in northern England, I theorize that this idiom is particular to northern dialects.

    October 22, 2009

  • German for horse.

    April 23, 2009

  • For some reason I always think there should be fire involved with immolation.

    January 21, 2009

  • I am also anti antihomonuptialism.

    November 22, 2008

  • Seen on Erin McKean's Twitter feed: http://twitter.com/emckean/status/1000897627

    November 12, 2008

  • I did this until I ended up in the hospital with hyperketoacidosis. creepy!

    October 23, 2008

  • I like the "sturdy" and "dependable" senses best.

    October 17, 2008

  • in the communicative sense, of course.

    October 17, 2008

  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rude_boy

    June 20, 2008

  • A brand name for the fiber Lyocell, made from wood pulp cellulose. It is a subcategory of rayon, and is added to fiber made for knitting/crochet/weaving/etc. to provide shine and strength.

    June 20, 2008

  • Also used by type 1 diabetics who use insulin pumps, to describe a dose of insulin given to correct a high blood sugar or to account for the carbohydrates in a meal. May be used as a verb as noted by adoarns, e.g., "My blood sugar was a little high, so I bolused for that, and I'm having pizza for lunch, so I'll have to take another bolus pretty soon."

    June 20, 2008

  • I've only seen this word used rhetorically to mean "previously mentioned."

    June 20, 2008

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