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hip
Today’s hip Zippy: Full of hippie slang, from days now gone. Some references: 1. Jazzbo Collins. From Wikipedia: Albert Richard “Jazzbo” Collins (born January 4, 1919, Rochester, New York — d....
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Dingburg bubbles
Today’s Zippy: (#1) Fleer’s product was pink (hence the strip’s title, “In the pink”), apparently because that was the only coloring the inventor had on hand. From Wikipedia: Dubble Bubble is a...
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jerk-off
From several sources recently, reports of the Great Northern Jerk-Off. No, nothing to do with masturbation; jerk-off here refers to a competition — like bake-off, a competition in food. A story from...
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Three more for Friday
Three cartoons today, on diverse topics: Calvin and Hobbes on explanations, Zits on means of communication (again), Bizarro on word play turning on ambiguity. (#1) Inventive but screwy explanation,...
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For National Cartoonists Day
This morning I discovered that yesterday was not only Cinco de Mayo, but also National Cartoonists Day. In honor of the occasion, three cartoons for today. Then some account of Cartoonists Day, which...
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Apostrophes for the season
On Facebook, Chris Hansen (looking forward to London Pride this weekend) reports this advert for Fortnum & Mason: You wouldn’t expect the venerable F&M to get their apostrophes wrong (they are...
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queens
Yesterday I reported on Fortnum & Mason’s use of queen in an advert in support of Gay Pride: “Proud to be the queens’ grocer”, with the plural possessive of the common noun queen, rather than the...
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From the Zwicky diaspora
Google Alerts has, well, alerted me to a story about a skateboarding cop, as has Horton Copperpot in e-mail. From a site provided by Copperpot, this story of June 25th, “Holy Kickflip Batman! Is that a...
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The animal report
In the NYT Book Review yesterday, a set of three reviews of quirky books about people and animals (elephants, a tawny owl, and the giant squid); and then today in the Daily Post (Palo Alto and...
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Neon Vegas
Today’s Zippy, with Griffy and Claude at odds on sources of information: (#1) The setting for all three panels is Neon Las Vegas in its heyday. But first a brief note on the text, in particular the...
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geosocial
It starts with today’s Doonesbury – (#1) and ends with shirtless lycanthrophy. In between: Roland Hedley, III, the apps Tinder and Grindr (with some shirtlessness), geosocial networking (aka...
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Further annals of sexual slang
Some time ago on ADS-L one of the list members wrote to ask about the verb fapp, which he’d seen in print but couldn’t interpret in context. The answer, from Urban Dictionary: fapp ‘to masturbate...
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lady parts
Today’s Zits: (#1) Jeremy and his buddy Pierce, and the slang euphemism lady parts. Two questions about lady parts: What is its referent? And how long has it been around? On the semantic question,...
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Two for Thursday
Two cartoons this morning, a Rhymes With Orange and a Bizarro: (#1) (#2) A POP (phrasal overlap portmanteau) on a usage-peeve theme; and borrowed vocabulary put to slangy uses. The Rhymes. Grammar...
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Name that dress code
Today’s Dilbert has Catbert giving advice on naming the company’s new dress code: (#1) (in fact, a dorky name for it). Now on dork and dorky. On this blog, look at “geek, dork, etc.” of 9/1/13, about...
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doxxing
A slang term (also spelled doxing) from the Gamergate controversy (see below), for “researching and publishing personally identifiable information about an individual” (Wikipedia), in a form of...
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Ask AMZ: two queries
… from Karen Schaffer: on trickle treat, and on gangbang and gangbanger. Trickle treat. Karen wondered about this Mumsnet posting: To take my kids out tonight – not trickle treating, just out? with...
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Quirky Berkeley lexicography
In the NYT yesterday, a piece “A Step-by-Step Guide to Berkeley’s Many Quirks” by Malia Wollan, beginning: Tom Dalzell looks too strait-laced to be the arbiter of the eccentric. Nonetheless, almost two...
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Proleptic toast
Musing on the line “You’re toast!” — a usage that turns out to be only about 30 years old. The OED (draft additions December 2002) takes things back to Ghostbusters: colloq. (orig. U.S.). A person or...
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Bromancing the Bone
My current favorite gay porn title of the outrageous pun variety: Romancing the Stone > Bromancing the Bone. We start with the portmanteau noun bromance. From Wikipedia: A bromance is a close,...
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