npydyuan has adopted no words, looked up 0 words, created 9 lists, listed 263 words, written 262 comments, added 0 tags, and loved 7 words.

Comments by npydyuan

  • Ha! I love it. I guess "There is one here" ≠ "Here is one—there!"

    Then the other thing I'm wondering about is not so much how did it get this way, but why? Is "there needs to be" purely an enabler of passive voice? Why don't we just say, "We need a cherry to be on the cupcake"?

    July 10, 2009

  • Very interesting. Thank you.

    Would you say that "there is a cherry on the cupcake" and "a cherry is there on the cupcake" are semantically equivalent?

    How about "there needs to be a cherry on the cupcake" versus "a cherry needs to be on the cupcake there"? I know you already addressed the irrationality of the cherry's needing to be somewhere, but what I'm getting at is whether "there" as a subject pronoun in the former instances is distinct from "there" indicating precise location in the latter; and in the latter, is it actually an adverb?

    Also, is the lexical marking of "need" as taking "to" before an infinitival a relatively recent convention? Or did "needs be" only ever occur without the infinitival following?

    July 10, 2009

  • An odd construction that may one day sound as involuted and archaic as certain Shakespearean turns, but that really does make perfect logical (if not literally spatial) sense.

    July 10, 2009

  • Wow! Thanks for the random treat, guys. Pruduiap. I love it!

    October 10, 2008

  • thanks for the additions, bilby!

    August 14, 2008

  • see also keming.

    February 21, 2008

  • Holy propaganda, Rummy man! I want a pods are there t-shirt!

    January 25, 2008

  • I understand fully the limits of moral suasion. We have no illusion that changes will come easily or soon. But I also believe that it is a mistake to undervalue the power of words and of the ideas that words embody. In our own history, that power has ranged from Thomas Paine's "Common Sense" to Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream."

    - Jimmy Carter, Notre Dame commencement speech, 5/22/1977

    January 8, 2008

  • Thanks! :-D

    December 14, 2007

  • In Hebrew at sign is colloquially known as shtrudel (שטרודל). The normative term, invented by the Academy of the Hebrew Language, is krukhit (כרוכית), which is a Hebrew word for strudel.

    Thus spaek http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%40 .

    December 13, 2007

  • Ah, let's give old at sign some strudel as a consolation!

    December 13, 2007

  • This is a very momentous bit of information. I must find a way to incorporate it.

    :-)

    November 7, 2007

  • Wow! Thanks for reminding me of Avalon Hill..... Ah, all those coolly thrilling hours at the game table in the basement.

    November 1, 2007

  • I'm still hoping/wishing this word could mean "to infuse with utility; to increase the utility of something"

    That would, in fact, utilize "utilize."

    November 1, 2007

  • I like it because it's the name of a nearly perfect little coffee/tea house I used to frequent. :-)

    October 27, 2007

  • * Everyone's ass needs

    BUTT PASTE!

    *

    (Must check next Tuesday to see if Butt Paste ad appears here....)

    October 26, 2007

  • I had the thankless task last year of trying to get a roomful of rowdy/bored/apathetic/confused/brilliant/asleep eleventh graders interested in this piece.

    Don't know if I succeeded at all, but it sure did get me interested again.

    It's so freakin creepy/awesome how themes from all times in history remain so essential to the present.

    October 26, 2007

  • At last, I know what I want to be when I grow up!

    October 26, 2007

  • >who says "booyah"? And if nobody's *supposed* to say it... How come I keep hearing it?

    Maybe you're having a Zyban flashback, c_b!

    :•)

    October 26, 2007

  • It's a very cute word. Especially in umpteen-point Palatino, as it is. Sassy, yet authoritative, yet ridiculous.

    October 26, 2007

  • Wow! Thanks for the encouragement and discussion, y'all. I'm intrigued by the idea of changing my identity to "someone who doesn't smoke." Maybe I should look into the Zyban thing--oddly, it never occured to me to use drugs to kick the drug. My biggest problem with quitting before has always been the triggers--social or personal rituals that just seem to call out for that little accoutrement, that lagniappe. After the first few days, I don't feel a craving as a physical thing so much, but the psychological pull is sometimes overwhelming. But maybe even that is attributable to the nefarious workings of the nicotine.

    Actually, the point about ashmouthing is peculiarly pertinent. Just deciding to quit because I know I should has never worked; nor have reason, nor logic, nor civic responsibility. What tipped me over the edge this time was a little experience I had while washing my hands in the restroom at work. I was making faces at the mirror (of course), and stuck my tongue out hyperfar--and it was yellow. Way in the back, not where anyone else would readily notice it, but. That, I thought to myself, rather horrified, is disgusting. If I should allow that little microvision of Hellish decay to resurface any time I have a craving, I might actually stand a chance!

    (Sorry if that's, you know, TMI.)

    October 26, 2007

  • I am.

    If anyone, especially anyone who has succeeded long-term at this, has any sage wordies for me, let 'er rip!

    October 26, 2007

  • Thanks for posting this, reesetee. I've heard and used the phrase for years, but was ignorant of its beautifully-worded origins!

    October 24, 2007

  • Hee hee!

    "Expression is the need of my soul!"

    October 24, 2007

  • Why is that creepy?

    October 19, 2007

  • A pleasant, drowsy state resulting from the eating of plenty of cornpone.

    October 19, 2007

  • To manoeuvre the onomasticon biz, get hold of any fistula of dramaturgy or poesy, and supervene upon as many lyrics as woos your phantom limb with beef tea from each oeuvre’s (or an ultimate countersign’s) cookbook debut. Can be a well-nigh sempiternal source of deflexion, as well as a way to meliorate ho-hum subdivisions of black music or clerihew.

    Bonus: Does anyone know what coaybtete-leranous is? (Extra bonus if you don’t have to Google it!)

    October 19, 2007

  • Well said, seanahan.

    October 18, 2007

  • And I still like Vonnegut. Especially his nonfiction, like Fates Worse than Death, and his sort of fiction/nonfiction, like Timequake.

    October 18, 2007

  • Rule #4: Rules 1 through 3 are spot on, and yet... Conventional books are underrated.

    October 18, 2007

  • I'm definitely doing it. It's an excuse to write, really, a way to sidestep the usual routines and subroutines of failing to give yourself permission to screw up and enjoy. The other couple of times I did it, I didn't get anything like a real "novel" at the end, but I did get some mighty stacks of words that I still enjoy reading back through and rearranging and playing with.

    October 18, 2007

  • I used it on ni.

    October 18, 2007

  • phthor

    October 18, 2007

  • Interesting--I would love to see

    October 17, 2007

  • You know what word is nice, though? inutile

    October 17, 2007

  • It is on my bwowsah.

    October 17, 2007

  • "Utilize" could be "to infuse with utility; to increase the utility of something

    October 17, 2007

  • I read that Leonardo da Vinci said something along the lines of "it is a poor pupil who does not surpass his master." Are we largely then a race of poor pupils? Because if we weren't, wouldn't our progress toward perfection have skyrocketed by now? If everyone always got better as the generations wore on, shouldn't we be enlightened, beautiful, sublime, war-hunger-poverty-hate free by now?

    October 17, 2007

  • Seems as if there ought to be information on this page about actual insects, too. Or viruses. The various kinds of bugs could interact.

    October 17, 2007

  • Except Qmen, who takes spicy curry dishes over to his apartment sometimes.

    October 17, 2007

  • They paved paradise

    And put up a parking lot

    With a pink hotel, a boutique

    And a swinging hot spot

    October 17, 2007

  • Don't it always seem to go

    that you don't know what you've got til it's gone?

    October 17, 2007

  • Remember, the best way to keep warm is not to get cold in the first place.

    October 17, 2007

  • Yep. Bless him.

    October 17, 2007

  • Now that is funny. Maybe having those ads up there is actually an asset, entertainment-wise.

    October 17, 2007

  • How many shades of dusk? A brazillion, I'd say.

    October 17, 2007

  • I'm surprised Wordie hasn't had anything to say about this, yet.

    October 17, 2007

  • Kurt Vonnegut said he hated them; I love them. Most of the time.

    October 17, 2007

  • Remember when we could say anything? There was no delete key. We made the same typographical mistakes over and over again. There was no pause for thought. There was no need to pause. Fingers thought. Brains listened.

    Writing was hammering, and oily, and smelled good too.

    October 17, 2007

  • Wow. What an exquisite image.

    October 17, 2007

  • Anyone else have this problem? If there's a link to a Youtube clip in a comment, no further content gets loaded (Safari, Mac) below that comment on the latest 400 page.

    October 17, 2007

  • You winsome and you losesome.

    October 17, 2007

  • Yea, the ea is beautiful!

    October 17, 2007

  • A winsome and handsome list!

    (I see what you mean about the orthographical illusion, though!)

    October 17, 2007

  • Here's an interesting cautionary tale from Hopeless Geek.

    October 17, 2007

  • Oh yeah, I second that one, rt!

    October 16, 2007

  • I think she may have changed some of the words a little bit. My eldest daughter wanted it, so I said okay 'cause I was tired of listening to the Wonder Pets theme song.... There's an animal in trouble! (There's an animal in twouble...)! (Cue 5- and 3-year-old paroxysms.)

    October 16, 2007

  • I like to out of the blue in passing call my boss meathead sometimes.

    October 16, 2007

  • Yeah, Big Rock Candy Mountain.... but Lisa Loeb does a very pleasantly ethereal version of it, I must say. Got it from iTunes, off some children's album.

    October 16, 2007

  • Hey, speaking of that story, I also recommend Terry Bisson's other work. I just read Walking Man a little while ago. Very dreamlike and atmospheric--once you get over the lead girl's always saying "hit" instead of "it," that is.

    October 16, 2007

  • I see. I would have been raised Catholic if either of my parents had kept up with it; as it was, we only went to mass when visiting my grandparents in South Dakota. But I still have a soft spot for Catholic paraphernalia. :-)

    October 16, 2007

  • Hmm.... still religious, apparently:

    "exclamation of surprise, 1803, a disguised oath, probably for Jesu Domine "Jesus Lord." Extended form jiminy cricket is attested from 1848"

    (from www.etymonline.com)

    That Jesu sure gets around.

    October 16, 2007

  • Or maybe just a "meat" shirt.

    October 16, 2007

  • Hmmm.... could I get a "purchase this list for use in meatspace" shirt or mug?

    October 16, 2007

  • Curious: what reasons?

    October 16, 2007

  • bulblamp bulb lampbulb lampbulblampbulblampbulblamp blamp

    October 16, 2007

  • IN THE BIG ROCK CANDY MOUNTAIN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    *collapses in quivering heap*

    October 16, 2007

  • Ha ha!

    I remember from when I was in charge of "relamping" a big retail space, those fluorescent "bulbs" are technically called lamps.

    Still, when you say it that many times in a row, it's just a bit ridiculous.

    October 16, 2007

  • My hump. My hump. My hump, my hump, my hump.

    October 16, 2007

  • Why? Why is the bear torturing me?

    October 16, 2007

  • Aaaaaaaaighhh!!!! Make it stop!!!!!

    October 16, 2007

  • Yeah... EVERYTHING has a place on this site!

    October 16, 2007

  • Oh, ya know I was just playing about that. Unless you were to steal a phrase with, you know, malicious afterthought.

    October 16, 2007

  • Oh, of course. And now I have in my head a slurry of all these bits of ditties swimming around... like an auditory analog of the miasma from the Kmart receiving room I worked in, long ago, particularly the area where health & beauty aids overlapped with all the candies & gums, which was never quite far enough away from the trash compactor!

    October 15, 2007

  • I know a guy named Dick Thickens. Really.

    October 15, 2007

  • A fortuitous inversion of malice aforethought.

    October 15, 2007

  • Personal worst earworm song: "Big Rock Candy Mountain" from O Brother, Where Art Thou soundtrack.

    October 15, 2007

  • When I was a kid, I misheard this phrase as malicious afterthought--like, Wow! I didn't mean to do it, but now I'm really glad I killed that guy!

    October 15, 2007

  • Thanks, rt!

    Hmmm... Some of them I can see, like bed (cool!), but others.... I'm gonna need some help.

    October 15, 2007

  • Hmmm.... is there a word for visual onomatopoeia? "Cilia" kinda looks like what it means, at least in the middle....

    October 15, 2007

  • "two-way mirror glass when used to humiliate or annoy people on one side of said material"

    Hmm. The glass itself could be called television.

    October 15, 2007

  • Oh man, I just gave myself a SImon & Garfunkel-related earworm!

    October 15, 2007

  • Cilia! You're breakin my heart! You're shakin my confidence daily....!

    October 15, 2007

  • for the behavior, i mean

    October 15, 2007

  • glassanism? glassanimism?

    October 15, 2007

  • Right... all I get is "Comments since your last visit" followed by... nothing!

    October 15, 2007

  • No. It's still playing.

    And playing.

    And playing....

    October 15, 2007

  • Like, a see-through mezzanine?

    October 15, 2007

  • Also the slightly brittle, cellophane-like clear part of a windowed business envelope.

    October 15, 2007

  • Why does this word remind me of Hazelnuts???

    October 15, 2007

  • Very nice. :-)

    October 15, 2007

  • Speaking of Safari, I still get this when I try to edit my fave word, etc, on my profile page (using Safari 3.0.3 (522.12.1) on Mac OS 10.4.10):

    October 13, 2007

  • Ha! I had to look that one up. I knew it first as hot sauce, and then as the name of one of my little animated subtext people.

    October 13, 2007

  • one more smoke and then i go

    October 13, 2007

  • Oxford English Dictionary I'd Like to F***

    (thanks, c_b)

    October 13, 2007

  • I think you're spot on with the "ordinary" words. Playing with this sort of thing (Wordie) allows the ordinary to interconnect. You can make transcendent weavings with plain old yarns.

    October 13, 2007

  • That would be todally awesome, though I don't see it happening any time soon.

    October 13, 2007

  • Then my work here is done!

    ;-)

    October 13, 2007

  • Maybe if you wouldn't try to eat the whole sucker at once....

    October 13, 2007

  • A word used more for example than for its meaning. It looks like a cityscape.

    October 13, 2007

  • Wowee zowee. Beautiful.

    October 13, 2007

  • Whoa--that's cool. I used to call Microsoft Word 5.1a "Ms Wyrd." Seems strangely appropriate.

    October 13, 2007

  • see recursion

    October 13, 2007

  • Mound of mustard.

    October 13, 2007

  • Waste of time? ;-)

    October 13, 2007

  • "How can it be an ass if it doesn't have "ass" in it?"

    Nice koan.

    October 13, 2007

  • *faking shits*

    I have to--

    nevermind

    October 13, 2007

  • One time my southern girl friend ordered "ice(d) tea" in a northern clime, and they brought her a glass of champagne... Asti, to be exact.

    October 13, 2007

  • Noted chaordic theoretician (nee von Smarty Pants). In later life, advanced lame-ass theory of the non-existence of adjectives; arguing that an adjective is really an adverb modifying an implied verb of existence. The theory rested on some dumb-ass idea that the conventional distinction between "existence" and other "actions" is artificial and misleading; that all verbs are, in their purest state, expressions, like everything else, of pure energy.

    October 13, 2007

  • Wha--?

    Oh, sorry! Professor von Schmartzenpanz took over my computer for a while.

    October 13, 2007

  • That's right. I said it! BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    October 12, 2007

  • Now if they could just get a giant vergerhade to hock the tea, they'd be in business!

    October 12, 2007

  • Thanks! It's funny how things you think you've mastered can come back and smack you in the face.

    October 12, 2007

  • There's no such thing as adjectives.

    October 12, 2007

  • Gunga é meu, gunga é meu

    Gunga é meu, foi papai que me deu

    Gunga é meu, gunga é meu

    Gunga é meu eu não dou a ninguem

    October 12, 2007

  • Yeah! It's one of those awesome (in the real sense of the word, not the diluted popular) phenomena that seems so simple--and is--and then turns out to be more complex than you'd dreamed.

    I don't know if I'd say the music is like jazz--although that's an interesting thought; hopefully I'll think about it some more. I'd have to reread the Nestor Capoeira book, cuz I don't remember what he says about that. But it does guide the game. It kinda calls in the spirits, I think it's safe to say. Plus, the different rhythms (toques) direct the energy in the roda. Certain toques make you play slow, low, and tigerlike, and some make you play high, flying, and, oh, I don't know, songbird-like?

    Playing the berimbau has become one of my favorite things.

    Here's the website of the school my Professor is affiliated with. Amen Santo gave me the name Pirata.

    October 12, 2007

  • That Sturgeon story was my first encounter with syzygy, too!

    October 12, 2007

  • See also metonymy.

    October 12, 2007

  • Nice list! Don't ever let them fool ya!

    October 12, 2007

  • Yeah, for some reason, "penned" is less odious to me. I'm not sure why. Maybe cuz it sounds all old-timey and stuff....

    October 12, 2007

  • This guy explains it a lot better than I ever could. I've heard it compared to chess, in that you can execute moves to try and "set up" the person you're playing with, to get them in a vulnerable position. None of the Mestre's I've talked to, or batizados I've been to, have had anything like scorekeeping, time limits, or any claptrap of that sort. But believe me, you know when you've been taken down. Part of the challenge is to be good natured about that. It's simultaneously cooperative and competitive--kinda like some of the wordplay that goes on around here!

    October 12, 2007

  • They're queueing up by the Ouenouaou, I believe, speaking Uoiauai.

    October 12, 2007

  • I too prefer just the words-n-banter.

    October 12, 2007

  • Well, let's see... *wavery flashback effect*

    In my twenties, I wanted to take Yoga at the YMCA, but the class was full, so on a whim I took karate instead. That lasted a few years, and served to get me over my fear of martial arts.

    *whirring flash forward effect*

    Then, barely in my thirties, after a long spell of not enough physical activity or community, I looked to see what the YMCA was offering, and saw the description for Capoeira. Mispronouncing it horrendously, I read that it was a dance, a fight, and a game, set to its own traditional music. "That sounds gay enough," says I to myself, and I went down to check it out.

    It proved addictive. It's curvy and improvisational, where some other martial arts are angular and rigid. It has a vast, expanding history, and draws together lots of vibrant, diverse people from all over.

    October 12, 2007

  • And then drown your eater's remorse with a healthy dose of nepenthe!

    October 12, 2007

  • We're not talking about dysplasia, after all!

    But seriously, Capoeira doesn't have to be painful. Depends on the tenor of the game you're playing, whom you're playing with, etc. The roda varies as much as conversations do; it can be a game, a tease, an interview, a challenge, a joke, a fight....

    October 12, 2007

  • If it were Grug Maria, maybe!

    October 12, 2007

  • I actually think that blobfish is kind of cute.

    October 12, 2007

  • Shiitake mushrooms! My list is redundant!

    October 11, 2007

  • Capoeira? Or releasing the hips?

    October 11, 2007

  • Not professionally or skillfully! But I play Capoeira, which is part dance.

    October 11, 2007

  • Grrrr...!

    October 11, 2007

  • Thanks!

    I re-stumbled upon it yesterday when looking back through some of my old, slightly embarrassing journals--in one, I told myself I was no longer going to berate myself for reading poems that I didn't really understand!

    I won't claim to understand fully all of it now, but diving back into it has proven to be a good example of the benefits of rereading at different life moments.

    October 11, 2007

  • like a clown

    October 11, 2007

  • Ha! Yeah, always a toss-up between those two.

    October 11, 2007

  • Poetrie: Sailing to Byzantium

    October 11, 2007

  • Is there a word for the words one utters, if one's conversation and urge are intertwined, during the process of lighting the cigarette? The muffled lip, the relaxed remove, the leaning easily to the left, or right, to facilitate digging in the pocket for the lighter.... It is an inbetween moment, a smoker’s favorite kind of moment.

    October 11, 2007

  • Beautiful.

    I've had the condition twice: once on I70 in Missouri, and once in my backyard in Wisconsin!

    October 11, 2007

  • "Surely you can disable something without breaking it?"

    Hmm... yes. I'll keep letting this one simmer, though...

    :-)

    October 11, 2007

  • Breakproof.

    October 10, 2007

  • Perrrrhaaaaaps.... But you can't prove a thing!

    October 10, 2007

  • Oh, way to take all the fun out of getting wasted, rocks....

    ;-)

    October 10, 2007

  • And an absurdist is someone who green sandwich in the TV studio under the stairs?

    October 10, 2007

  • Please excuse more nosestickinery. I am not in favor of a time limit on editing/deleting comments. Why throw up an obstacle to someone's rhythm? This is Wordie, after all, not--you know, some other place. Different physical laws may apply. If people want to rewrite history, I say let them.

    That's kinda what we're doing here anyway, isn't it? ;-)

    October 10, 2007

  • Any mistake—large or small—that you would never have made, had you not been chemically influenced.

    October 10, 2007

  • I love it....

    So, what are y'all talking about?

    Oh, just what our giant animatronic clippy people are going to wear when our computers become life-sized 3D sentients....

    October 10, 2007

  • O boy o boy o boy! It's almost November!

    October 9, 2007

  • Dude, you got issues!

    ;-)

    October 9, 2007

  • Maybe the giant, animatronic clippy-person will be customizable. Mine's definitely going to wear heels. And a corset.

    October 9, 2007

  • I actually dreamed I was on Wordie last night. I had a slew of words to enter, and I was alternating between Wordie and other applications, looking into the meanings of the words and entering them on my list. By the time I got to vergerhade, my computer had become a wall-sized, 3-dimensional affair, and on entering the word, automatically a life-sized professorial-looking guy popped up in front of an enormous, animated map, and began explaining the history of the word to me. It turns out it's an apocryphal island, somewhere near Australia or maybe Antarctica. Some people claim to have inside knowledge of it, some intimate they have actually seen it. No-one can verify exactly where it is, however, or whether it is submerged, stationary, etc. My brother was watching the giant computer with me. I said, "So they don't even know if it exists?" and he said, "It has nuclear weapons on it," as if that explained everything.

    I can't remember the other words in the dream, except for berger.

    October 6, 2007

  • A game played on a table having a semi-circular end at which are nine holes. The balls used are struck from the opposite end of the board with a cue. The name is sometimes applied to a modified form of billiards known also as semi-billiards.

    September 24, 2007

  • Or a limerick?

    September 24, 2007

  • Isn't it aphelion? :-)

    September 24, 2007

  • Because you might get a shock, right? :-P

    September 24, 2007

  • Never heard that (about rain dogs), but it makes sense, and makes the Tom Waits song even better!

    September 23, 2007

  • Any relation to Tom Waits's Rain Dogs?

    September 23, 2007

  • Wow. I'd like to see those.

    Monster Raindrops... another good band name, too.

    September 23, 2007

  • "Elves last less than 1/1000th of a second."

    Funny, I always thought they were immortal!

    September 23, 2007

  • You know what's just as irksome as verbing? Nouning. I HATE HATE HATE how everybody on the radio now says, "There's a disconnect...."

    That being said, I'm not sure I see the distinction between "sectors of society artificially forcing a change in usage...and the natural evolution of words." I mean, words, like organisms, flourish in certain environments at certain times. How can you pick and choose which sector's influence is "artificial" and which "natural?" It's all natural. (Some of it is just more asinine!)

    Oh, and my "favorite" example of verbing: "Authored." Why the #@$! can't you just say "wrote"?

    September 22, 2007

  • Yes... I thoroughly enjoyed it. I love the way the guys harangue and cuss at each other, but it all still sounds so civilised. Anyway, I finished it, so I'll stop inundating all these words with Crane quotations, for a while at least.

    September 22, 2007

  • "Poverty isn't anything to be ashamed of."

    "Great heavens! Have you the temerity to get off that old nonsensical remark? Poverty is everything to be ashamed of. Did you ever see a person not ashamed of his poverty? Certainly not. Of course, when a man gets very rich he will brag so loudly of the poverty of his youth that one would never suppose that he was once ashamed of it. But he was."

    Stephen Crane, The Third Violet

    September 22, 2007

  • I guess so, sure. But I have no affiliation with the Wookieepedia!

    September 22, 2007

  • The Language Instinct seems to be available through Amazon.

    ps: I usually pronounce it something like "piddy wan."

    :-D

    September 22, 2007

  • "Later, when the cigarettes had become exhausted, Hawker volunteered to go after a further supply, and as he arose, a question seemed to come to the edge of Florinda's lips and pend there. The moment that the door was closed upon him she demanded, "What is that about the two violets?"

    Stephen Crane, The Third Violet

    September 22, 2007

  • Whoops: delayed page refresh. Uselessness beat me to the reference recognition comment.

    *cool points demerit*

    September 22, 2007

  • Inconceivable!

    September 22, 2007

  • Even the most bleeding-heart adaptivist among us probably harbors a secret list, longer than he or she might want to admit, of words that "don't and ought not to"! :-)

    September 22, 2007

  • "We'll get some more claret," observed Hawker musingly. "And some cognac for the coffee. And some cigarettes. Do you think of anything more, Splutter?"

    As they came from the shop of the illustrious purveyors of potato salad in Second Avenue, Florinda cried anxiously, "Here, Billie, you let me carry that!"

    "What infernal nonsense!" said Hawker, flushing. "Certainly not!"

    "Well," protested Florinda, "it might soil your gloves somehow."

    "In heaven's name, what if it does? Say, young woman, do you think I am one of these cholly boys?"

    Stephen Crane, The Third Violet

    September 22, 2007

  • "The door opened, and Miss Florinda O'Connor, the model, dashed into the room like a gale of obstreperous autumn leaves.

    "Why, hello, Splutter!" they cried.

    "Oh, boys, I've come to dine with you."

    It was like a squall striking a fleet of yachts.

    Grief spoke first. "Yes, you have?" he said incredulously.

    "Why, certainly I have. What's the matter?"

    They grinned. "Well, old lady," responded Grief, "you've hit us at the wrong time. We are, in fact, all out of everything. No dinner, to mention, and, what's more, we haven't got a sou."

    Stephen Crane, The Third Violet

    September 22, 2007

  • AP NEWS. Schmartzenpanz reportedly became apoplectic when asked at a recent press conference about his views on schadenfreude....

    September 22, 2007

  • That's comforting. Thanks. :-)

    September 22, 2007

  • Is there a good word for the sociocognitive dissonance that occurs when you suddenly realize that, despite having several identifiable traits in common with someone else, your assumptions about further commonality or compatibility with them are false?

    Just asking, 'cuz that's happened to me a few times.

    September 22, 2007

  • That imprecision is why I pointed to chaordic. Our vision is too impaired to parse every wavelength in the spectrum. This "communication" program is insanely vast and complex, but it's all encoded "out there" somewhere, on a universal scale.

    Maybe. :-)

    (As a non-programmer almost fetishistically enamored of programming analogies, my understanding of what I'm actually talking about is always suspect.)

    September 22, 2007

  • Ass over applesauce.

    September 22, 2007

  • Parsed or not, I LOVE it!

    September 22, 2007

  • Leaving messages for future deep-link readers.... I love that thought! Reminds me of the initials carved in stone the explorers in Jules Verne's Journey to the Centre of the Earth found, shortly before being volcanically puked back up to the outside world.

    September 22, 2007

  • I view language as art supplies AND mathematical equations.... cf. uselessness's excellent "computer physics model" on chaordic

    September 22, 2007

  • I don't think there's any inherent misuse that's worth worrying about. To me, rules of language are an interpretation of the current situation (a schema?) rather than an authoritarian prescription. I'd say a misuse is more like a bug in one's code. A mismatch between usage and intended audience, or a misapprehension of the mindset of the intended audience, or even a mismatch between intended audience and actual audience, as a result of foreshortened foresight on the part of the developer (author).

    September 22, 2007

  • "Well, after a while something happened——"

    "Oh, no, it didn't. Something impended always, but it never happened."

    Stephen Crane, The Third Violet

    It's always nice to see a word's less common inflections in use. It had never really occurred to me to use this word in any role but the participial!

    Aside: Project Gutenberg rocks!

    September 21, 2007

  • Right on. Well said. Open-mindedness is the ability and willingness to treat one's collected schemata as a lego set rather than a monolith.

    September 21, 2007

  • "Hollanden surveyed this outburst with a critical eye, and then slapped his knee with emphasis. "You certainly have got it—a million times worse than I thought. Why, you—you—you're heels over head."

    Stephen Crane, The Third Violet

    When you think about it, this makes more sense than "head over heels," which pretty well describes a normal state of array.

    September 21, 2007

  • Why is the opposite of malignant "benign" and not "benignant"?

    September 21, 2007

  • My favorite typewriter ribbons are the half black, half red ones, on real metal spools....

    September 21, 2007

  • Zoiks! How 'bout vicious coicle?

    Or if you're a Piers Anthony fan, Viscous Circle....

    September 21, 2007

  • Bookseller's Row in the Haymarket was a grotesque sight—like almost all sights then: destitution and wretchedness were carried to such absurd lengths that they ceased to provoke tears but only decrepit, wise laughter such as the last Romans must have aimed at themselves and the Gauls. Somewhere in the hidden, half-legendary Petersburg cellars precious manuscripts were still being exchanged for equally fabulous, apocryphal things—a pound of butter, a ham; but in the Haymarket they dealt mainly in the literature of the Russian Golden Age, naive literary almanacs in which vulgar quarrels were carried on, with opponents caught in misprints and hidden peccadillos hinted at—so-and-so lost everything at gambling, or had informed on someone, or was a kept man... The public was most picturesque and ill-assorted: here was the beginning of the disintegration of the Petersburg School—zaumniks, "ushkuiniks," pustoglots, nothingists, metaphorists, columbines, going-to-the-peoplists, and the completely enigmatic quasists. Here stood the gnomelike graybeard Trufanov with a bundle of "northern antiquities" transcribed in a decorative style and said to have been collected at the time of the Arkhangelsk rites—in fact they had been taken from a collection of byliny and worked up into a state of complete incomprehensibility; he was seen with his group singing the bawdy songs of No-sow ("My name is because we are not simple peasants: we do not sow nor reap, we are peasants not by calling but by willing").

    http://www.languagehat.com/archives/002879.php

    September 21, 2007

  • Say it again...

    September 21, 2007

  • Can somebody clarify how metonymy is different from synecdoche?

    September 20, 2007

  • Yeah--that's probably the most sane policy.

    September 20, 2007

  • I graduated in 88, too!

    You probably made a good choice with that Plus... Although, I wouldn't mind having one now.

    September 20, 2007

  • My favorite part of the C64 was waiting for the cassette tape drive to find what it was looking for!

    September 20, 2007

  • re: sprite—Wow! It is heartening to see how non-flamey that potentially volatile discussion remained.

    Inspired by one of reesetee's comments there, I feel like volunteering this bit of tangential autobiographica: I am bisexual, and trying to figure out when semi-self-referential ironic gay comments are going to be well received, has often proved a challenging social puzzle.

    September 20, 2007

  • Well, that's a relief. I was referring to the sense of fag identified by SonofGroucho. My logophilia, I'm afraid, is often matched with juvenilia!

    September 19, 2007

  • Hmmm... no emoticon... have I genuinely offended?

    September 19, 2007

  • Ineffectual teapot encirclement.

    September 19, 2007

  • Always makes me think of the board game (from the 80's I think) that was based on Frank Herbert's Dune books. There were lots of ergs in there.

    September 19, 2007

  • Nyah nyaaahh!!

    September 19, 2007

  • Woah.... today, it looks like a heart! The utter cuteness of it all musta melted my lead pipe of grief into a Valentine of acceptance!

    September 19, 2007

  • All thinking people

    oppose terrorism

    both domestic

    & international…

    But one should not

    be used

    To cover the other

    Amiri Baraka

    September 19, 2007

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Comments for npydyuan

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  • Wow! Thanks for the random treat, guys. Pruduiap. I love it!

    October 10, 2008

  • Bilby, your teacher was right: in handwriting and in some typefaces the lower case Cyrillic "d" (д) often looks like a sans-serif "g" in such fonts as Helvetica, Geneva, and Ariel. But there is also a way of making a "д" in handwriting and some fonts (especially italic fonts) that looks somewhat like a reverse "6": д.

    October 9, 2008

  • They have italics in Cyrillic? Makes sense, I just never thought of it. To me it looks like pruvuiap in lower case. My teacher taught me to do a lower case d that resembles the English g in form.

    October 9, 2008

  • I think this can really be called simple randomness. Pruduiap will be happy.

    October 9, 2008

  • npydyuan, do you know your name almost looks like it could be written in the Cyrillic alphabet in italics: прудуиап? This (without italics: прудуиап) doesn't mean anything (in Russian, at least), but it would be transliterated "pruduiap".

    October 9, 2008