Linguistics Cartoon Favorites - English Teachers

Thank you to Scribbles and Dots for spotting this one.

Budweiser - An Inaugural Attempt at Wordplay?

Spotted this Budweiser ad on the back cover of this week's Newsweek magazine.

I really got a kick out of the wordplay. I was impressed with the creativity and simplicity of adding the letter "E" to inaugural to change the word both phonetically and semantically. Actually, inaugurale could also be thought of as a portmanteau word (a blend of inaugural and ale), and this is likely one of the messages Budweiser's ad agency was hoping to promote...new president, new beginning, try a new beer. But, was this new word really coined by Budweiser's ad agency's or did someone else come up with the idea first?

Upon doing a bit of research I came across the above beer bottled by Schlafly Beer of the Saint Lewis Brewery. Additionally, according to washingtonpost.com, Capitol City Brewing has been offering InaugurAle since shortly after the Nov. 4 election. And, last but not least, washingtonian.com ran an article on January 13 about a Mount Pleasant, Michigan homebrewer, Sam Chapple-Sokol, who had a friend print labels with an “InaugurAle Edition” emblem modeled after Pabst Blue Ribbon.

Regardless of who first came up with the idea, I still enjoy the wordplay.

Academic Blog Reviews

It was recently brought to my attention that some students from a class at the University of Michigan (SWC 200: The Interplay of Text and Imagery) have started blogs about the phenomenon of blogs and blogging. After all of my hard work with this blog, I thought I would give myself a pat on the back by sharing an excerpt from one of these blogs. This particular post from a blog called New fad Media reviewed three academic blogs, one of which happened to be mine.

"A Walk in the Words for me is like the baby bear in Goldie Locks: just the right amount of humor and intellectual journalism to hold my attention. The design is clean and not cluttered, posts are submitted regularly, and the content is original yet not overwhelming."

Thank you for the favorable review. It is nice to be recognized and appreciated.

Mr. Monk and the Bracketing Paradox

Last week's episode of Monk had the perfect example of a compound word bracketing paradox.

In the episode, Lieutenant Disher is interviewing the cousin of a suspect.

Disher: "Your cousin is a former cop killer."

Interviewee: "You mean he used to kill cops?"

Disher: "No he tried to kill a former cop."

[[former] [cop killer]]

[[former cop][killer]]

Crystal Light's Advertising Word Choice

The wording in this ad for Crystal Light Lemonade gave me pause.

Do I have to mix Crystal Light Lemonade AND the sweet tang from a natural lemon to attain a pitcher of magical sunshine?

Here is an idea for a better choice of wording -

Stir up a pitcher of sunshine WITH the sweet tang of natural lemon in Crystal Light Lemonade.

The Subfields of Linguistics

SR = Speech Recognition; NLP = Natural Language Processing

From: School of Computer Science and Engineering

Peevologists Unite

Surprisingly, I had not previously encountered the word peevologist until I noticed it on Mr. Verb. I say this is a surprise because I am obviously a peevologist myself.

I have since seen the term used on numerous other grammar-related sites - I guess I am behind the times.

Peevology is defined as: The collecting and public airing of language peeves.

I have many language peeves and a large part of this blog is the airing and sharing these peeves.

Peevologists unite - This is a call for all readers to share and air their language peeves. Please click on the comment button below and let them rip.

A Winter Funny

The Washington Post and Frisbeetarianism

In regards to today's earlier post about the common word/alternate meaning contest run by the Washington Post -

It appears that the Washington Post did not do their research on the word Frisbeetarianism. Frisbeetarianism, as it is listed in the contest, is not a common word and the meaning was not conceived by a reader. While the word may have been supplied by a reader, it was coined and defined by the late comedian George Carlin as, "the belief that when you die, your soul goes up on the roof and gets stuck." Thus the meaning listed in the contest is not an alternate meaning, it is the original meaning.

Washington Post's Word Fun II - Common Words/Alternate Meanings

As a follow up to yesterday's post, the Washington Post has also published the winning submissions to its yearly contest in which readers are asked to supply alternate meanings
for common words. And the winners are:

1. coffee (n.): The person upon whom one coughs.
2. flabbergasted (adj.): Appalled by discovering how much weight one has gained.
3. abdicate (v.): To give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.
4. esplanade (v.): To attempt an explanation while drunk.
5. willy-nilly (adj.): Impotent.
6. negligent(adj.): Absent-mindedly answering the door when wearing only a nightgown.
7. lymph (v.): To walk with a lisp.
8. gargoyle (n.): Olive-flavoured mouthwash.
9. flatulence (n.): Emergency vehicle that picks up someone who has been run over by a steamroller.
10. balderdash (n.): A rapidly receding hairline.
11. testicle (n.) A humorous question on an exam.
12. rectitude (n.): The formal, dignified bearing adopted by proctologists.
13. pokemon (n.): A Rastafarian proctologist.
14. oyster (n.) A person who sprinkles his conversation with Yiddishisms.
15. Frisbeetarianism (n.): The belief that, after death, the soul flies up onto the roof and gets stuck there.
16. circumvent (n.): An opening in the front of boxer shorts worn by Jewish men.

Come on readers - we can come up with some better ones. Send comments.

Washington Post's Word Fun - Add, Subtract or Change a Letter

In case you haven't seen the list yet - here are the winners of the Washington Post's Mensa Invitational which asks readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition:

1. Cashtration (n.): The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period of time.
2. Ignoranus: A person who's both stupid and an asshole.
3. Intaxication: Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with.
4. Reintarnation: Coming back to life as a hillbilly.
5. Bozone ( n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.
6. Foreploy: Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of getting laid.
7. Giraffiti: Vandalism spray-painted very, very high.
8. Sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.
9. Inoculatte: To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.
10. Osteopornosis: A degenerate disease. (This one got extra credit.)
11. Karmageddon: It's like, when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it's like, a serious bummer.
12. Decafalon (n.): The gruelling event of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you.
13. Glibido: All talk and no action.
14. Dopeler Effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.
15. Arachnoleptic Fit (n.): The frantic dance performed just after you've accidentally walked through a spider web.
16. Beelzebug (n.): Satan in the form of a mosquito, that gets into your bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.
17. Caterpallor ( n.): The colour you turn after finding half a worm in the fruit you're eating.
18. Vowelmovement: The inevitable verbal diarrhea that spews from ones' mouth when they have nothing significant to say.

My favorites are numbers 2, 4, 7, 8 and 18. Please send me comments with your favorites. Also, I think we should start coming up with more for next year's invitational. Let's brainstorm together.

The Electric Company and Blending Syllables

Having just written about the internal structure of syllables, I found it interesting that the January 19th Newsweek had an article about the 1970's television show "The Electric Company" that mentioned blended syllables. I am of the original "Electric Company" generation and I certainly remember watching the show and blending syllables.

Tiger – “Let’s clap tiger” (Say and clap “ti-ger”) “How many parts?”(two)

According to the article, the new version of "The Electric Company" is about four superhero kids that can throw letters and words. Sounds fun; I love throwing letters and words around. I can't wait to check out the new "Electric Company."

Syllable Structure Diagrams

Counting the number of syllables in a word is something most people learn to do in elementary school. What many people do not think about when it comes to syllables, however, is that syllables have an internal structure. What this means is that syllables can be divided into smaller parts. Following are two syllable structure diagrams that will help explain.

The two main parts of a syllable are the onset and the rhyme (sometimes spelled rime). The rhyme is composed of a nucleus and an optional coda and is the part of a syllable that is used in poetry to form rhymes. The nucleus, as its name indicates, is the core part of a syllable and is always a vowel. Syllables can also appear without an onset; so the smallest possible syllable would be made up of a nucleus only.

In sum:

onset = optional start of syllable = Consonant

nucleus = mandatory core of syllable = Vowel

coda = optional end of syllable = Consonant

Example syllables:

Nucleus only: a

Onset and nucleus: la

Onset, nucleus and coda: lab

nucleus and coda: at

Acronyms - Is it ZIP code or zip code?

One of my favorite blogs, Red Pen, Inc., recently included a post about the acronym "ZIP" as in "ZIP code." The gist of the post was that the "ZIP" in "ZIP code" should always be capitalized because it is an acronym. I am not so sure that I agree with this thinking, therefore, I sent the following comment:

Just like metaphors that are usually classified as either living or dead, I would think that this acronym could be classified as dead because the word "zip" seems to have taken on its own meaning that is not associated with the acronym. Also, this meaning of "zip" seems to have become accepted as part of the standard lexicon of English.

Interestingly, the OED lists the "zip" of "zip code" in lower case letters and does not mention anything about the need for capitalization.

After sending this comment, I continued to think about etymology and language change. Language is constantly changing and when a change in the definition of a word (or acronym, I would argue) becomes accepted as part of the standard lexicon that is when the original meaning is considered dead. The original, acronymical meaning of zip is "Zone Improvement Plan," as named by the U.S. Postal Service in 1963. I think it is noteworthy, however, that the Online Etymology Dictionary states the acronym was, "no doubt chosen with conscious echo of the verb zip meaning 'move rapidly'."

It is apparent to me that the "move rapidly" definition of "zip" has become accepted as part of the standard lexicon, therefore capitalization should be optional and could soon be obsolete as the acronymical meaning fades entirely.

Cold Day???

A "COLD DAY" in Oakland County, Michigan...give me a break. Stop the sissification of our children. We went to school when it was ten below with a wind chill of -50. I think it is all because of our lawsuit-happy generation. Any comments?

Friday Funny - Innateness Theory Joke

A childless Canadian couple decided to adopt a Mexican baby. After they got the baby, they decided to enroll in a Spanish class. When asked why, the wife replied, "so that when the baby starts to talk, we'll be able to understand him."

Uncommon "Nym Words"

As long as we are on the subject of acronyms and bacronyms, I thought I would share some of the other "nym words" that I have come across recently. It is amazing how many there are and I am not talking about the basic nym's like synonym, antonym, homonym, eponym and pseudonym.

Here are some of my favorites:

Aptronym: A person's name that matches it's owner's occupation or character very well (either in fiction or reality); e.g. arctic explorer Will Snow, hairdresser Dan Druff.• From apt (=suitable); coined by Franklin P. Adams.

Charactonym: A name given to a literary character that is descriptive of a quality or trait of the character; such as, “Long John Silver” for someone who is tall and has silver hair.

Capitonym: A word which changes its meaning and pronunciation when capitalised; e.g. polish and Polish, august and August, concord and Concord. From capital letter.

Pecilonym: 1. The simultaneous use of several names or synonyms for one thing. 2. One of various names for the same thing; a synonym or having a variety of names.

Netcronym: An abbreviation that consists of the first letters of each word in a phrase and which is used when discussing a subject in a chat room or when writing an e-mail. Netcronyms are a quick way of telling people what you think; for example, IMO is a netcronym for “in my opinion”.

Acronyms and Bacronyms

Acronyms are everywhere these days. They are so common that most people don't even give them a second thought...but what about bacronyms. Bacronyms are not so common; in fact, many people have never even heard of bacronyms.

A bacronym is, in essence, the opposite of an acronym. Where an acronym is formed by taking a phrase and using the first letter of each word of the phrase to form a word, a bacroynm is formed by taking a word and creating a phrase (usually humorous) using the letters of the word as initials.

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Skiing Expressions Cartoon

For downhill skiers who are also language lovers - I just came across an old cartoon favorite of mine.


"I always thought 'bunny slope' was just an expression."

Blog + Derivations = Blogivations

It is amazing how many words are created on a daily basis; and many, if not the majority, of these words are derived by the combining of morphemes (see last Thursday's post). Most people know that the word blog is a combination of the words web and log. What people may not know is that there are 214 derivations of the word blog listed in the Oxford English Corpus (according to Newsweek's recent review of the book "Damp Squid"). Actually, this Newsweek article was dated December 22, 2008, so there are certainly more derivations by now. The examples listed in Newsweek were: blogstipation, bloggocks, and blogospherical.

Some other interesting blog-derived words are:

blogebrity

blogophile

blogoholic

blogernacle

bloghogging

blogiarism

bloginity

blogfly

And, of course - blogivations

Linguistics Cartoon Favorites - Misinterpreted Phoneme

Morphemes Make Creative Words

A favorite blog of mine documents unusual and creative words that are found across the web. Even the name of the blog (Wordlustitude) exemplifies creativity with a word. One of the ways new words are created is by combining morphemes in different ways and by adding morphemes to existing words. A morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit of a language.

Following is a diagram of the different types of morphemes.

A free morpheme is what its name implies - a morpheme that can stand on its own as a word.

A bound morpheme must be attached to another morpheme.

A lexical morpheme is also called a content morpheme and can usually be defined with a synonym.

A grammatical morpheme is defined by its grammatical function and usually does not have a synonym.

A derivational morpheme creates (derives) a new word.

An inflectional morpheme changes the form of a word.

Here are some of my favorite words from Wordlustitude that come from the creative combination and/or addition of morphemes:

buttlickee
dowhateverer
co-doofus
hoo-hoo-ectomy
diaper-tastrophe
buttmunchosaur
sasquatchtastic
slimeballitude

If you can't think of a word for something - create one.

The Sounds of English - A Speech Accent Archive

I just came across a wonderful resource called the Speech Accent Archive. The archive was established by George Mason University "to uniformly exhibit a large set of speech accents from a variety of language backgrounds. Native and non-native speakers of English all read the same English paragraph and are carefully recorded. The archive is constructed as a teaching tool and as a research tool. It is meant to be used by linguists as well as other people who simply wish to listen to and compare the accents of different English speakers." There are currently 1050 samples in the archive and it is growing daily. Check it out - it is a great way to learn more about dialects and accents.

Chatlish: The Language of Chatrooms

I recently joined a language forum called "Using English" and encountered an interesting new portmanteau word - chatlish. Chatlish is defined on the Urban Dictionary website as: "words or abbreviations that are used in internet chatrooms." I think a more succinct way to define it would be to say chatlish is the language of chatrooms.

Following is what the Using English forum has to say about chatlish:
"Please don't use 'chatlish'; this is a forum, not a chatroom."

Followed by:
"This is a forum for discussing the English language. There is no need to write formally, but this is not a chatroom, so please write normal English, with punctuation, capital letters and words written in full; use you not u, I not i, great not gr8, etc. Don't worry about making mistakes, which is normal when learning a language, but do please try to make your English easy to read."

Whether writing in a forum or a chatroom, or writing a text message, I wish everyone would take the time to write in "normal English," after all, chatlish looks like something a 3rd grader would use in an attempt to be cute.

Reader's Favorites - Iced to Meet You - McDonald's Phonology

McDonald's now sells iced coffee and the advertising campaign to promote it includes a billboard with a photo of the iced coffee and the text "ICED TO MEET YOU." Thank you McDonald's, this billboard is a great exhibit of the fun that can be had with phonology.
The phonemes /d/ and /t/ are both alveolar stops that are only differentiated in their voicing. Because of the close relationship between the /d/ and /t/ phonemes, when they are adjacent to each other they blend and become one sound. The result of this is that when read aloud "iced to meet you" sounds an awful lot like "nice to meet you." This coincidence was clearly a large part of McDonald's intended, though somewhat covert, message on the billboard - McDonald's iced coffee is so good the consumer will think it nice to have met.
Because the /d/ and /t/ phonemes can not be distinguished verbally, this campaign only works in print as it is the act of reading the billboard and reciting it aloud to yourself that makes it fun and gets the intended message across.

Linguistics Humor - Medical Issues and Procedures

"I've just had the most awful time," said a boy to his friends. "First I got angina pectoris, then arteriosclerosis. Just as I was recovering, I got psoriasis. They gave me hypodermics, and to top it all, tonsillitis was followed by appendectomy."

"Wow! How did you pull through?" sympathized his friends.

"I don't know," the boy replied. "Toughest spelling test I ever had."