The Word Guy™ Blog

newstainment /nyuz’təɪnmənt/GQ Guybill fristjanet_jacksonsuperbowl-nipslip1

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 04:48:59 +0000

Among the many millions of events that happened in 1980, two took place that lead to the appearance of today’s word; newstainment. The first was the launch of Ted Turner’s Cable News Network, known as CNN, the first 24-hour news station. Prior to that, news shows were scheduled at intervals within regular daily TV shows. The [...]

droid /’dɹɔɪd/GQ GuyMotorola-droidImperial probe droidHermaphroditus

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 03:47:45 +0000

There was a frisson of excitement in the cellular telephony market a few days ago with the launch of a new mobile phone called the Droid. As the owner of a very old Motorola® MOTOKRZR™ phone and tied to the Verizon network, this new technology could be the ersatz iPhone® I have been looking for. So, [...]

pimp /pɪmp/GQ GuyMcCurryJaffa Quakefaggot-pimp

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 02:00:04 +0000

I’m not a lawyer and more specifically not an intellectual property (IP) lawyer, but this particular area of the law is one I have been involved in as a patent owner. It’s somewhat weird to think that you can patent ideas such that other folks cannot use them without permission – but there yah go! The [...]

Intermission: Down down down down townGQ Guy

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 03:14:09 +0000

It’s Road Trip time once again and your sun-loving Word Guy has gone north to Chicago. Although I try to ensure all my trips are to areas warmer than Cleveland, inevitably I have to “take one for the team” and go from cold to colder. So in lieu of my regular ramble around a specific [...]

prostitot /’prɒstɪtɒt/GQ Guytom_thumb01

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 05:52:26 +0000

Always on the lookout for new words, I came across one recently that caught my ear. It was close to Halloween and someone told me how a friend was going to let her pre-teen daughter go out Trick-or-Treating dressed “like a prostitot.” It doesn’t take a degree in linguistics to work out that this is a [...]

halcyon /’hælsɪən/GQ Guyceyx and alcyoneKingfisher large

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 01:11:46 +0000

If I haven’t mentioned it before, I will now: If you are only going to read one piece of classical literature in your life, then make sure it’s Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Sure, Homer’s Odyssey is a blast, but I’d put him second on the list. And the reason for recommending Ovid is that the stories he [...]

crematory /’kɹɛmətəɹɪ/GQ Guycrematorylavatorium-at-gloucester

Sat, 03 Oct 2009 19:26:52 +0000

As the saying goes, there’s nothing certain except death and taxes. The truth is that you might escape the latter but never the former. So when you finally shuffle off the mortal coil, buy the farm, sleep with the fishes, or kick the bucket, the only thing left is for someone to work out what [...]

eldritch /’ɛldɹɪtʃ/GQ Guyeldritch21Eldritch mage

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 04:00:15 +0000

Like most people, there are times when I find myself thinking of things that seem to pop out of nowhere. In this case, my mind drifted back to a novel I read many years ao by Philip K. Dick called The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. The name “Palmer” and the link to “stigmata” seems [...]

sarcasm /’sɑ:kæzəm/GQ Guysarcasm best buysarcasm anumals

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 03:58:28 +0000

Many years ago, I spent the princely sum of one pound and fifty pence for a copy of The Lowest Form Of Wit by Leonard Rossiter. Rossiter, who died in 1984, was best known in the UK for his comedic roles as the landlord Rigsby in the series Rising Damp, and Reginald Perrin in The [...]

Intermission: How To Organize Your BooksGQ GuyMelvil_Deweycolor-bookcase

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 15:25:23 +0000

The Word Guy is on the road. The upshot of this is that I don’t have access to my OED and that makes it difficult to provide interesting and accurate word etymologies. This, of course, is a marvelous example of why buying the OED on CD is worth doing. If I were to spring for [...]

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