Comments by hernesheir

  • I’ll say again, we nemophilists are everywhere.

    As a sometime desert /treeless plain dweller, I’d appreciate terms that denote treeless open plains or desert lovers. In my case rolling hills and bluffs with cliffs, folds, glens, valleys, burrens, rills, mesas, ravines, hummocky terrain, hanging valleys and bergschrunds are my preference.

    April 28, 2024

  • My lists are so old that I’m new here.

    April 28, 2024

  • Ken Kesey, author of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”, in his childrens’ book “Little Tricker the Squirrel meets Big Double the Bear”. Viking Penguin, 1990. Illus. Barry Moser.

    It was a bear, a grizzerly bear, so big and hairy and horrible it looked like the two biggest baddest bears in the Ozarks had teamed up to make one.

    April 28, 2024

  • Writing for Vox in 2018, Emily VanDerWerff came up with a nice, pithy term for the “near-religious zealotry” that some fans exhibit: “fandamentalism.” According to her, the term applies to fans who “aren’t just looking for meaning in the work itself, but for the work to impart meaning” to their own lives.” Chrissy Stroop, “Stop Trying to Save Jesus: Fanamentalism Reinforces the Problem of Christian Supremacism”. Religiondispatches.org, Jan 29, 2021.

    September 5, 2022

  • The term palette springs to mind.

    October 11, 2019

  • Thank you! I’m humbled

    May 11, 2019

  • Archeology: -Drawings made with the fingers of shapes, or objects made in soft sediments in caves or clay objescts.

    October 30, 2017

  • The hummingbird images associated with this descriptive bird adjective are worth the time to see them.

    June 17, 2017

  • “The great summit of declinism, according to Adam Gopnick, “was established in 1918, in the book that gave decline its good name in publishing: the German historian Oswald Spengler’s best-selling, thousand-page work 'The Decline of the West.'”

    June 15, 2017

  • A candidate for political or other office who promotes or appears to espouse declinism.

    Cf. and search declinist and summit of declinism.

    June 15, 2017

  • A wine bottle.

    June 11, 2017

  • Wish this technology could identify and repair the broken sprinkler system in my yard.

    June 10, 2017

  • We nemophilists are everywhere.

    June 10, 2017

  • Like an ostrich. struthonianism

    June 10, 2017

  • Yay!

    June 10, 2017

  • Don't overlook hard switchel, switchy, haymaker's punch.

    June 2, 2017

  • Used by US Senator Al Franken in a vanityfair.com interview published on May 31, 2017.

    "I am hoping for the pendulum to swing back, and that we have an age of neo-sticklerism where everyone is a stickler for the truth."

    June 2, 2017

  • I'll stick to raw oysters on the half-shell from Appalachicola Bay or Cedar Key (FL,USA), with a squeeze of lemon and a schpritz of Tobasco Sauce.

    May 26, 2017

  • Wonderful, qms.

    May 26, 2017

  • See conkers.

    May 24, 2017

  • Hello all, just chalking up a brief visit to Wordnik.

    May 24, 2017

  • A very fine-grained limestone resulting from the precipitation of carbonate minerals. Minimal bioturbation of the accumulating sediments favors exquisite preservation/fossilization of the remains of any organisms therein enclosed. As a German noun, capitalization of the initial "p" wouldn't be frowned upon by me.

    May 24, 2017

  • Another term for the coin/currency collectors.

    March 11, 2016

  • One for the coin/currency collectors.

    March 11, 2016

  • A theramin inside a matryoshka doll. Query YouTube for a listen to this instrumental oddity.

    March 11, 2016

  • Oh, hello everybody.

    March 11, 2016

  • Good one, Bilby Longears!

    November 5, 2015

  • Last Sunday before Michaelmas. Parishoners took nuts to church and cracked them during the service.

    September 27, 2015

  • The king of sea breams has a name.

    September 27, 2015

  • "A river rising in the Wrangell Mountains of southern Alaska and flowing about 483 km (300 mi) southward through the Chugach Mountains to the Gulf of Alaska."

    I could have sworn it was the Irrawady. Thanks, computers.

    October 19, 2014

  • The golden arrow clip replaced the ball clip on Parker Jotter pens in 1958.

    October 12, 2014

  • Portmanteau of "quick" and "ink". Trade name of a quick-drying ink introduced by the Parker company in 1931.

    October 12, 2014

  • One of George Stafford Parker's versions of the writing pen.

    October 12, 2014

  • All hail.

    October 12, 2014

  • Oleic acid. See elaidic.

    October 12, 2014

  • Also called Napier's rods

    October 12, 2014

  • or for some, follow-the-moon.

    October 12, 2014

  • Nice, fbharjo!

    October 10, 2014

  • What earbuds grow into.

    October 10, 2014

  • Antecedent of meander, also named for the path of a river.

    October 10, 2014

  • I had hoped to preserve a few gullet-words in oil, wrapping them up in very clean straw (as we do with snow and ice); but Pantagruel would not allow it, saying that it was madness to pickle something that was never lacking and always to hand as are gullet-words amongst all good and merry Pantagruelists.

    Chapter 56 of Gargantua and Pantagruel by Rabelais describes frozen words that may be warmed in the hands and then heard. Among these were so-called gullet-words such as hing, hisse, brededing, brededac, frr, frrr, bou, ong, ououououong, Gog, magog, "and who knows what other barbarous words".

    October 3, 2014

  • Just think what one could one could pull off with some tazers and cans of pepper spray.

    October 3, 2014

  • A bell that signalled when gleaning could begin or must terminate.

    September 26, 2014

  • meeting bell

    September 26, 2014

  • A bell peal to call people to a meeting place.

    "There must have been a tower here from a very early period if this was the bell that summoned the folk-mote. --Arthur Dimmock, 1900. The Cathedral Church of Saint Paul. G. Bell and Sons, p.52.

    September 26, 2014

  • A pealing of bells to commemorate the anniversary of someone's death. See mind-day.

    September 26, 2014

  • St. Anthony, patron saint of swineherds.

    Cf. tanthony; tantony pig; tantony crutch, tantony bell.

    September 26, 2014

  • An acre of land bequeathed to the bell-ringers of Harlington, Middlesex, to perpetually provide for them a leg of pork in payment for the ringing of the bells on November 5th. Remember remember the 5th of November? Yes, ringing the bells to mark the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot in 1605.

    The churchwarden's accounts at S. Margaret's, Westminster contain this entry:

    1605. Pd the ringers for ringing at the time when the Parliament House should have been blown up ..0 10 0

    September 26, 2014

  • Besides specific bell-calls, I have added a few bell terms heretofore not listed on Wordnik, such as sound-bow, clocarium, and bellfounder.

    September 26, 2014

  • Dutifully yoinked and stuffed into the loculamentum I call The Bindery.

    September 25, 2014

  • Guapo was busy plucking his macaws, but at the word tapir he sprang to his feet, making the feathers fly in all directions.

    --Captain Mayne Reid, The Forest Exiles; or, The Perils of a Peruvian Family amid the Wilds of the Amazon, New Edition. p.145. New York. Thomas R. Knox & Co., 1854.

    September 25, 2014

  • Your lovely comment leaves me very appreciative, ruzuzu. Thanks.

    September 25, 2014

  • I get the sense of jiggly + bubbly. Clement Clark Moore's poem "A visit from St. Nicholas" describes the right jolly old elf's stomach as "shook when he laughed like a bowl full of jelly". That is, jubbly.

    A swollen, rising, restive sea was called a jubble.

    "The sea at this place is seldom calm, even when the winds are still. What is technically called a 'jubble' rises perpetually upon the rocks, and renders it unsafe for very small craft to anchor within their shadow." -- The Literary Souvenir; or, Cabinet of Poetry and Romance, ed. by Alaric Alexander Watts p.80. 1831.

    "..although it blew what the sailors call, with the expressive coarseness of their phraseology, a snoring breeze, and the tide, already beginning to flow, rose, on meeting the opposite wind, in a rough, cross jubble'.“ ibid, p.95.

    September 20, 2014

  • vast majority >51% to political hacks and commentators.

    September 19, 2014

  • I can't read or hear spoken the word gasworks without musing on these lines from the song Dirty Old Town, as covered by The Pogues.

    I met my love by the gasworks wall
    Dreamed a dream by the old canal
    Kissed a girl by the factory wall
    Dirty old town
    Dirty old town

    September 19, 2014

  • Frederick IX 1899-1972. King of Denmark (1947-1972) who signed a constitutional amendment allowing the succession of a woman to the throne.

    Way to go, Daddy-O!

    September 14, 2014

  • Great one, qms. Evokes a scene in the 1937 film Captains Courageous, which I recently watched again.

    September 13, 2014

  • It's a boat, for you listers of a nautical bent.

    September 13, 2014

  • A nice Anglo-Saxon word.

    September 13, 2014

  • But I am pigeon-livered, and lack gall

    To make oppression bitter

    --Shakespeare, Hamlet, II. ii.

    September 13, 2014

  • How are the SPAM handles after using 2?

    September 13, 2014

  • In the dead vast and middle of the night. --Shakespeare, Hamlet I. ii. 198.

    September 12, 2014

  • You say sliming, I say spamming.

    September 12, 2014

  • The young man in the balcony of a theatre who displays a gorgeous waistcoat for the benefit of the fair owners of opera glasses, has very probably no socks in his wardrobe, for the hosier is another of the genus of weevils that nibble at the purse. --Balzac, Le Père Goriot, 1835.

    September 12, 2014

  • A Gullah synonym of dawn; day-break.

    September 11, 2014

  • The provided Wordnik and Twitter examples make me smile. I especially like the tweet that gives us "a singularity of unicyclists".

    September 11, 2014

  • Interesting, though neither shocking nor electrifying (see example).

    September 11, 2014

  • shellack
    shellacking

    September 10, 2014

  • A broody hen. Prince Edward Island.

    September 10, 2014

  • skelp

    September 10, 2014

  • Gas-X®

    http://ow.ly/BhIbU

    September 9, 2014

  • A dripping heap of salted fish, you say? I say you need your eyes checked.

    September 6, 2014

  • This I would never have guessed.

    September 6, 2014

  • Thanks for this word, markusloke!

    September 4, 2014

  • There are some eponym lists, but don't let that stop you from making your own! You might search a few obvious eponyms to identify other lists.

    September 3, 2014

  • A confused noise; an uproar.

    September 3, 2014

  • The basking shark has here (Orkney) got the name of hoe-mother or homer, that is, the mother of the dog-fish.

    --George Barry, 1805. The History of the Orkney Islands, p. 296.
    hoemother

    September 2, 2014

  • An old British term for the celebrations and excesses around the Christmas Season. Cf. Hogmanay, Fête des Fous.
    daft-days

    September 2, 2014

  • A sort of distance line drawn across a curling rink.

    Or up the rink like Jehu roar,

    In time o' need;

    But now he lags on Death's hog-score

    Tam Samson's dead!

    Robert Burns, Tam Samson's Elegy.

    September 2, 2014

  • In Homer's craft Jack Milton thrives;
    Eschylus' pen Will Shakespeare drives;
    Wee Pope, the knurlin, 'till him rives
    Horatian fame;
    In thy sweet sang Barbauld, survives
    Even Sappho's flame.

    Robert Burns, Poem on Pastoral Poetry

    September 2, 2014

  • In a state of ill-humor.

    September 2, 2014

  • To fish for eels by disturbing the waters.

    Wiktionary provides this definition, but the same is also found in older printed sources as well. See for example the discussion under the entry for 'gloit' in Jamieson's <i>Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language</i>. 

    September 2, 2014

  • That too bilby!

    September 2, 2014

  • The sounds of wood-worms laboring within the timbers of an old house.

    September 1, 2014

  • dree

    September 1, 2014

  • A dwarf. A Scottish term, perhaps a borrowing from a Germanic source. See discussion in Jamieson's An Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language, 1808.

    September 1, 2014

  • A fine woolen fabric that was manufactured in Berry, France.

    "Fools never wear out, they are such drap-de-berry things." --Wm. Congreve, The Way of the World, III. X.

    September 1, 2014

  • Let me know if you spot any fish.

    August 31, 2014

  • The flip-side is "utter frustration".

    August 31, 2014

  • A neat, clear, brisk little sound.

    August 30, 2014

  • Here's a word.

    August 30, 2014

  • "potter's earth, that is." - Third Book of Pantagruel, Ch. 5.

    August 30, 2014

  • Thine is the tranquil hour, purpureal Eve!

    --Wm. Wordsworth, Composed upon an Evening of Extraordinary Splendour and Beauty.

    August 30, 2014

  • A source of the Anglo-Scottish occupational surname Panter, which also means "pantry keeper".

    August 29, 2014

  • Not a flower, not a flower sweet,

    On my black coffin let there be strown.

    -Shakespeare, Twelfth Night II. iv.

    August 29, 2014

  • Source: bit.ly/1oAWhaC

    August 27, 2014

  • Alas the poor stellerine,

    A creature you'll ne'er meet.

    Half mammal, half submarine,

    And very good to eat.

    August 26, 2014

  • There's a joy without canker or cark,

    There's a pleasure eternally new,

    'Tis to gloat on the glaze and the mark

    Of china that's ancient and blue.

    -Andrew Lang, Ballade of Blue China

    August 26, 2014

  • Some ask'd how pearls did grow, and where?

    Then spoke I to my girl,

    To part her lips, and shew'd them there

    The quarelets of pearl.

    - Robert Herrick (1591-1674); Hesperides. A Country Life. The Rock of Rubies, and the Quarry of Pearls.

    August 25, 2014

  • Very nicely phrased, qms.

    August 25, 2014

  • A not-infrequent erroneous OCR (Optical Character Reader) scan of "Barbarian" noticed over at Google Books.

    August 25, 2014

  • Due by Wednesday next, Wordniks.

    August 25, 2014

  • An enigmatic word, courtesy of Alan Turing.

    August 25, 2014

  • Once and again.

    August 24, 2014

  • The docent was a nocent.

    August 24, 2014

  • Don't forget ninny-hammer and ninny-whoop.

    August 24, 2014

  • Or do they prefer being called sackbutters?

    August 24, 2014

  • Here's a mouthful. embourgeoisement

    August 24, 2014

  • The bombard-man carried a very large drinking vessel, pehaps leathern, termed a bombard after the name of a cannon, to distribute liquor among a crowd of people. All hail the bombard-man!

    August 23, 2014

  • Cf. fustilugs.

    August 23, 2014

  • Something new, a novelty.

    This obsolete term ought to find new commerce as a lexicographical novelty.

    August 22, 2014

  • Silly; foolish. See neddy.

    August 22, 2014

  • One for the boat-listers.

    August 22, 2014

  • Pairs well with wayward.

    August 22, 2014

  • The pox of such antic, lisping, fantasticoes; these new tuners of accents.

    Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, II. iv.

    August 22, 2014

  • 'HEBDOMADARY . . . well, you're a boss word' I said.

    'Before you're very much older, I'll have you in type as long as yourself'

    -Robert Louis Stevenson, The Wrecker, ch. 7.

    August 22, 2014

  • That beauty is not, as fond men misdeem,

    An outward show of things, that only seem.

    from Edmund Spenser, An Hymn in Honor of Beauty.

    August 22, 2014

  • Very witty, qms.

    August 22, 2014

  • gastrimargia

    August 22, 2014

  • Cf. gastrimargism

    August 22, 2014

  • The first citation provided in the examples, from Percy Bysshe Shelley's poem Adonis, is to me, the best use of the word outwept, ever.

    August 22, 2014

  • A type of large moth. (Cornwall)

    August 22, 2014

  • That which is now a horse, even with a thought

    The rack dislimns, and makes it indistinct,

    As water is in water.

    Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, xii. 9.

    August 22, 2014

  • Meg-with-the-wad - H.G. Bohn. 1857. Dictionary of Obsolete and Provincial English, Vol 1., p. 667.

    August 22, 2014

  • Dzik

    August 22, 2014

  • Said of animals that are streaked or spotted.

    What? Yon garled kine
    Upon the hill
    Are not my beasts to sell.
    No, they belong to Master Brill
    The beast down in the dell.

    August 21, 2014

  • See gepon.

    August 21, 2014

  • A pourpoint; doublet.

    H.G. Bohn, 1857. Dictionary of Obsolete and Provincial English, 1:504.

    August 21, 2014

  • The sense of the word is giant or tremendous.

    My source for gogmagogical is Nares, Robert, A glossary; or collection of words, phrases, names and allusions to customs, proverbs, etc., which have been thought to require illustration in the works of English authors, particularly of Shakespeare, and his contemporaries, New Edition, Vol I, p. 376. London. John Russel Smith. 1859.

    See also:
    Hyamson, Albert Montefiore, A Dictionary of English Phrases London and New York. 1922. p. 162.

    Muret, Eduard, Encyclopædic English-German and German-English Dictionary, 1900, p. 982.

    The entry for "Giants of Guildhall" in Nares' dictionary cited above informs us that the two enormous statues in the Guildhall of London were named Gogmagog and Corinaeus. The entry contains lines from a British broadside printed in 1660 that mention these two mythical giants.

    "And thus attended by his direful dog, The gyant was (God bless us) Gogmagog.

    These sources are available in Google Books.

    August 21, 2014

  • Sprats so named from Inch Garvie in the Firth of Forth where they were caught.

    August 21, 2014

  • Glasgow magistrate: A herring, after the practice of sending specimen herrings to the Baillie of Glasgow. - Hyamson's "Dictionionary of English Phrases".

    August 21, 2014

  • The waist.

    August 21, 2014

  • Be it to all men by these presents knowne,

    That lately to the world was plainely showne

    In a huge volume gogmagoticall.

    - Taylor's Workes, 1630

    August 21, 2014

  • ...the grain payment made to the Kulkurnee is termed Mushaira.
    -Mountstuart Elphinstone, Report on the Territories Conquered from the Paishwa, Submitted to the Supreme Government of British India, Appendix,, p. xxii. 1821.

    August 20, 2014

  • Coined by the 8th Duke of Argyll, referring to British nervousness at the Russian occupation of Merv in Central Asia around 1883, and its threat to the Indian Empire.

    August 20, 2014

  • The hearts
    That spaniel'd me at heels, to whom I gave
    Their wishes, do discandy, melt their sweets
    On blossoming Caesar.

    Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, III., x., 33.

    August 20, 2014

  • Mongrel beef-witted Lord. - Troilus and Cressida, II., i., 14

    August 20, 2014

  • It's a bird, or another bird. Or another.

    August 12, 2014

  • One for the berry-pickers.

    August 8, 2014

  • It's a fish.

    August 8, 2014

  • I added sunfish. Thanks qms.

    August 8, 2014

  • "Computational Linguistics of Twitter Reaveals the Existence of Global Superdialects".
    Emerging Technology from the arXiv, August 7, 2014.

    See also this abstract:
    arxiv.org/abs/1407.7094 - "Crowdsourcing Dialect Characterization through Twitter"

    August 7, 2014

  • Bottoms up!

    August 7, 2014

  • This term is my one-word autoethnography.

    August 7, 2014

  • "eye candy"

    August 5, 2014

  • Oh dear.

    August 4, 2014

  • Thanks ruzuzu!

    August 4, 2014

  • My list of compound derogative terms, Gapeseeds and Muckworms, contains many others.

    March 6, 2014

  • List the obscure ones too Tank!

    March 6, 2014

  • cutpurse

    March 6, 2014

  • Added. Thanks ry!

    March 5, 2014

  • 'You must have invited a lot of people up here for sea-pudding, I should think.' --from the Wordnik Examples.

    March 5, 2014

  • See also Examples for Dudnik and Flopnik.

    February 15, 2014

  • I read the lovely natural history book entitled Hope is the Thing with Feathers. And a book called Hope Floats.

    February 14, 2014

  • abrasive is the correct spelling.

    February 14, 2014

  • Used as an adjective to describe mountain building processes such as folding and faulting of Earth's lithosphere. See orogeny.

    February 2, 2014

  • Nice one, qms.

    January 31, 2014

  • See paysagist.

    January 30, 2014

  • Coined by my former colleague Diane Erwin and her coathor in a 1993 paper in the journal Palaios. Nice contrast with Lazarus taxon, deinonychus.

    January 30, 2014

  • List of ghost towns in South Dakota.

    January 30, 2014

  • Also known as Habsburg lip; Austrian lip. A form of mandibular prognathism caused, in the case of the Habsburg family, by royal inbreeding.

    January 29, 2014

  • Melodious, in both meaning and sound.

    January 23, 2014

  • SPAM

    January 22, 2014

  • barely

    January 15, 2014

  • I maintained a fruit fly colony for biology labs long ago. We used sugar and bread yeast dampened with a bit of water in the traps to catch those that escaped into the classrooms and building wing in which the labs were held.

    January 15, 2014

  • I alerted ruzuzu. This term would fit right in with those on her "This List is Bananas!"

    January 14, 2014

  • Carter Emmart is the Director of Astrovisualization at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

    January 13, 2014

  • I prefer a plaidie.

    January 9, 2014

  • OED
    cf. payola, shinola, crapola, but not Crayola.

    January 9, 2014

  • Let's all have the hecko discussion again. It's high time.

    January 8, 2014

  • *yoinked* - to my list "Artfully
    Eponymous Adjectives". Thanks leaden!

    January 6, 2014

  • An open field; a large, open plain without considerable hills. -from the definitions.

    January 2, 2014

  • turcopole

    December 21, 2013

  • I'm an adjective you don't meet every day. ratheripe, rathripe.

    December 19, 2013

  • Coined because fertilizer was never one of their spelling words at school?

    December 19, 2013

  • Belongs on that list you made when you found the word barouche.

    December 16, 2013

  • This term belongs on a blue list.

    December 16, 2013

  • It's a fish.

    December 16, 2013

  • International Bitnerness Unit

    December 14, 2013

  • A Sriracha bidet.

    December 14, 2013

  • It's a cake.

    December 14, 2013

  • Also known as bluefish and coalfish.

    December 14, 2013

  • an apocalypse of news

    a thundersnow of news

    an avalanche of news; news avalanche

    a flood (tsunami) (stormsurge) ( jökulhlaup) of news

    a landslide of news, news landslide

    a shattering of news

    a taphocoenose of news

    December 14, 2013

  • The Grable test, part of Operation Upshot-Knothole, occurred on May 25, 1953 at Frenchman Flat in the Nevada Test site. A 15-kt atomic shell was successfully fired 7 miles by the M65 Atomic Cannon "Atomic Annie". This cannon is displayed at the US Army Military Museum at Fort Sill, Oklahoma.

    December 14, 2013

  • Three prominent ridges of the Bidean nam Bian mountain complex that extend north into Glen Coe, Scotland.

    December 14, 2013

  • I'm a word you don't meet every day.

    December 13, 2013

  • A particular class of smoke, rich in chemicals but poor in flavor.

    December 13, 2013

  • It's a sword, not a monkey puzzle.

    December 13, 2013

  • acroterion, acroter

    December 12, 2013

  • A group of Scottish writers who depicted life in the Scottish lowlands in a sentimental and romantic fashion. Characters in their works commonly spoke in Scottish dialect. J.M. Barrie, author of Peter Pan, is included in this group, and is perhaps the most august writer amang them a'.

    December 12, 2013

  • Interesting twist on an ancient English custom.

    Old French momeur from momer, to wear a mask.

    December 12, 2013

  • Causing contraction of the pupil of the eye.

    December 12, 2013

  • What a bleak fish.

    December 11, 2013

  • An uncommon palindrome and anagram of slyly.

    Adjectival referent to lysine.

    December 10, 2013

  • See definition under Cadmean.

    December 10, 2013

  • To unholster a handgun.

    December 10, 2013

  • An alloy of gold, copper and silver.

    December 9, 2013

  • See teg.

    December 9, 2013

  • Think Valley Girl talk, the dialect linguists call Southern California English.

    December 6, 2013

  • Lake in Kane County Utah. Nearby is a peak named Mollie's Nipple, one of several buttes, peaks, knolls and hills so named in Utah.

    December 5, 2013

  • Thanks fbharjo. Feel free to add more. I'm opening the list to all.

    December 5, 2013

  • A town in Nebraska.

    December 5, 2013

  • Thanks ruzuzu!

    December 5, 2013

  • Love it! Swiss Chardonay jumps to mind.

    December 5, 2013

  • Pantone's purply-pink color of the year for 2014, opposite on the colorwheel from 2013's emerald.

    December 5, 2013

  • Island in Lake Winnipesaukee, New Hampshire.

    December 5, 2013

  • An island in the St. Lawrence River once known for its eel fishery.

    December 5, 2013

  • A six-mile long cay in the Abacos Islands, Bahamas. Nice visuals.

    December 5, 2013

  • Located in the north coast region of British Columbia.

    December 5, 2013

  • An island in the Niagara River near the Horseshoe Falls.

    December 5, 2013

  • The smallest island in the world with a building on it (a lighthouse), according to the Guiness Book of World Records. It's a Rock.

    December 5, 2013

  • An island in the lagoon of the Aldabra Atoll.

    December 4, 2013

  • A pulley. Also pullishee, pullisee.

    December 4, 2013

  • See pillyshee.

    December 4, 2013

  • A sieve; tamin, temse.

    December 4, 2013

  • Google fight, 10/18/2013 results:

    suicide caucus 396,000 vs. surrender caucus 62,900.

    October 18, 2013

  • Happy Birthday, Noah Webster! --October 16, 1758 – May 28, 1843--
    Read the Widipedia entry for this iconic American lexicographer, spelling reformer, writer, publisher here.

    October 16, 2013

  • Today (10/3/13) is Natl Poetry Day in the UK. What are your favorite poems? Among mine, William Butler Yeats' The Wild Swans at Coole, and A.E. Housman's Loveliest of trees, the cherry now</i>".

    October 3, 2013

  • "I tried using the leg skins unstuffed, but that looked rubbish too." - from the provided examples.

    October 3, 2013

  • The Worshipful Company of Cordwainers is one of London's livery companies, around since 1272. You can follow them on Twitter @Cordwainers. Cordovan, the fine leather from Córdoba in Andalusia, cordwain from cordovan. Fine leathery livery.

    October 3, 2013

  • Thanks Ruzuzu for sharing this word that went straight to my list of adjectival arcana.

    October 3, 2013

  • "There Was Once an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly" - Cumulative verse employing a dose of situational irony, written by one Rose Bonne.

    October 3, 2013

  • Hey, slow down. Slim down. Then shut down.

    What the Obama administration is portraying as a "shutdown" of the federal government -- complete with signs posted at the entrances to government buildings, parks and monuments -- is turning out to be more of a "slimdown," - FOX News

    "It’s time for President Obama and Senator Reid to actually come to the negotiating table and put an end to their government slowdown." US Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann

    October 1, 2013

  • plumb

    September 17, 2013

  • It's a bird.

    September 17, 2013

  • Wall treatments have come a long way since Lincrusta. And so have marketing departments.

    September 6, 2013

  • An offal dish from the cuisine of northern Portugal described as "a steaming black mash that involves the heart, lungs, liver and throat lining of a pig stewed in the animal's blood".

    September 6, 2013

  • There is precious little jam these days.

    September 6, 2013

  • See http://www.sott.net/article/180600-England-Return-of-the-Shug-Monkey.

    "An even more disturbing spectre called the shug monkey, which is described by witnesses as an unholy combination of mastiff and great ape is also seen on occasion..."

    September 6, 2013

  • Quite the opposite of upregulate.

    September 6, 2013

  • A scrimmage in a Border Station

    A canter down some dark defile

    Two thousand pounds of education

    Drops to a ten-rupee jezail. -- from Kipling's poem Arithmetic on the Frontier

    September 3, 2013

  • Also rabauld, ribault, ribaudkin, infernal machine or organ gun.

    September 3, 2013

  • US Infantryman slang for the metal clip designed to hold two 30-round rifle/machine gun magazines together. The formal military name for this article was "Holder, Magazine T3-A1".

    September 3, 2013

  • See examples at parkerize.

    September 3, 2013

  • So who's minding the mint? Some ex-checker or something?

    March 24, 2013

  • Lot's of this going around today.

    March 23, 2013

  • Same context: A once-famous fun-filled foot-long interspecies.

    March 23, 2013

  • It's a bird.

    March 23, 2013

  • Funny, my nephews launched a fusillade of whistling Nerf darts at me today.

    March 23, 2013

  • *stpr - postprocedural

    March 22, 2013

  • For ruzuzu's cattle list:

    n. A cow that does not produce milk.

    n. Australia, dated; A cattle thief; one who alters the brands of cattle.

    March 22, 2013

  • Happy National Bubble Week! 3/20-3/26, 2013.

    Who else can blow bubbles off the tip of their tongue?

    March 20, 2013

  • star-apple

    March 19, 2013

  • Who knew? I wonder whether a mismatch between term and definition is at work here.

    March 18, 2013

  • Time to wake up, tra-la-la.

    March 18, 2013

  • Zing went the strings, reestee.

    March 18, 2013

  • A peñita might perhaps look like the smaller of those rocky milestones that crop out along some or another songline, bilby.

    March 18, 2013

  • It's not a clam. See also the example sentence at Yarsagumbu. YouTube has some great examples worth perusing.

    March 17, 2013

  • @lydunka - my feeling is that the well was nearly dry, so the water level in the well was very low. More rope required to reach the water, and more time and effort required to hoist the bucket.

    March 17, 2013

  • A piñata shaped like a street-piano.

    March 17, 2013

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