Hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia

An update on Monday's post...and some additional long words.

By the way, hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia is a fictional phobia that is defined as the fear of long words.

According to a Wikipedia article hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia is derived from: hippopoto- "big" due to its allusion to the Greek-derived word hippopotamus (though this is derived as hippo- "horse" compounded with potam-os "river", so originally meaning "river horse"; according to the Oxford English, "hippopotamine" has been construed as large since 1847, so this coinage is reasonable); -monstr- is from Latin words meaning "monstrous", -o- is a noun-compounding vowel; -sesquipedali- comes from "sesquipedalian" meaning a long word (literally "a foot and a half long" in Latin), -o- is a noun-compounding vowel, and -phobia means "fear".

Crash Blossoms and Head Waves

From The Week magazine October 29, 2010

My first thought was: The Republican(*s) [Verb wave] [Noun heads] for Washington. (similar to waving hands for Detroit)

Next: The Republican [Noun wave] [Verb heads] for Washington. (similar to the Republican handshake)

And Finally: The Republican [Noun wave] [Verb heads] for Washington. (see 5.c. below)

***

wave:

v.tr.
1. To cause to move back and forth or up and down, either once or repeatedly: She waved a fan before her face.

2. a. To move or swing as in giving a signal: He waved his hand. Nouns

n.
4. A movement up and down or back and forth: a wave of the hand.

5. c. A rising trend that involves large numbers of individuals: a wave of conservatism.
d. One of a succession of mass movements: the first wave of settlers.

Defintions from thefreedictionary.com

The two pictures of people waving on the page didn't help disambiguate the headline for me.

Snowclones in Media are Frequent(*er) than they Seem

Who would ever think that the following phrase would be turned into a snowclone.

Image from here.

I wouldn't have...until I saw a Taco Bell billboard on I-75 in Michigan with a large taco and the caption "Objects on billboard are closer than they appear."

I was not able to get a picture of the actual billboard so this image of tacos from Taco Bell will have to suffice.

At any rate, I will be honest and say that, pragmatically, the message on the billboard caption confuses me a bit. The image of the taco is unrealistically large, so of course it appears closer than it ever actually could be. This in turn makes me think that the location of the restaurant where I (the famished traveller) could get the taco is not that close. As far as billboard advertising goes, this seems counterproductive.

By the way, when looking for images of the actual billboard on the web, I came across this image that further reinforces the snowclone-ability of the phrase "Objects on billboard are closer than they appear."

Image from here.

Unusual Words Defined: A - Z (Part H)

A continuation of the series.

honorificabilitudinitatibus: the state of being able to achieve honors.

It is considered by some to be the longest word coined by Shakespeare (appearing in act five, scene one of Love's Labour Lost), though dissenters might point out that he simply borrowed it from Medieval Latin. It’s the word honorificabilitudinitas, in the plural ablative form.

Thanks to Drew Mackie at Back of the Cereal Box

Articulation Wars

It all started when my sibilant disagreed with my fricative. Next thing you know, I bit my tongue and that was the end of it.

- M.R. Sellars

Image courtesy of ericsosa.com

NEW YORK CITY or New York City - Street Sign Orthography

New York City has used all-capital letters on its street signs for over a century but recently decided to change the signs to both upper and lower case letters. According to The Week magazine (October 15, 2010 issue), the Federal Highway Administration feels that the new signs will be easier to read and thus drivers will spend less time studying signs and more time with their eyes on the road.




Compare this image of New York City street signs to one of Seattle street signs.

I have to say that I agree; it is much easier for me to read signs with upper and lower case letters than just upper case letters. I think the credit goes not just to the combination of the two cases, but maybe even more so to the ascenders and descenders of the lower case letters. If I am looking for a street that ends in the letter "y" it is much easier to identify the street from a farther distance when I can spot the descender of the lower case "y" than when the letters are in all caps and the "Y" is the same height as all of the other letters.

Click on images for credits.

Unusual Words Defined: A - Z (Part G)

A continuation of the series.

greenwashing: the dissemination of information by an organisation so as to present an environmentally responsible public image.

For example, a company that donates a small amount of money to an environmental charity, in return for a large amount of positive publicity, is guilty of greenwashing.

The term 'greenwashing' first appeared in the early 1990s and is a portmanteau (yes, another one!) of 'green' and 'whitewashing'.

From Compendium of Curious Words
Thanks JD

A Humorous Look at Language Acquisition

I recently spotted this hilarious look at the babbling phase of language acquisition on Language Log and I still can't stop laughing. What a great way to relieve stress.

I've just been informed that the video has been removed so here is a link to the video on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=1254261195230

Spotted this at http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2605

Let's Anniversary That

Just in case anyone missed the recent Language Log post, here is my definition of a the new verb.



anniversary v. tr. 1. To make an annual event.

We had so much fun at our spontaneous golf outing with friends that we decided to anniversary it.



I think that Geoffrey K. Pullum hit the nail on the head with his take on the oddity of this particular verbing.



"I don't mean to suggest that there's anything particularly wrong with verbing new nouns, of course: you can pretty much verb any noun you want to verb. But if you pick a solidly nouny noun and use it without warning or precedent as a verb, it may cause a certain shock, and the people who say "Whoa, wait a minute!" are not wrong to object: you are stepping right outside the bounds of their linguistic experience, and you can't expect them to pretend that isn't so."

Unusual Words Defined: A - Z (Part F)

A continuation of the series.

Fractious (frak-shuhs) - Cranky. Unruly. Peevish.
He is an incorrigibly fractious individual, but he has a certain undeniable charm.

From Wayne State University Word Warriors

Where Have "U" Gone?

A friend recently spotted this odd-looking sign and snapped a picture for me.

If you are wondering why it is odd-looking, let me tell "U".

The correct spelling of the street name is "Beaubien", as shown on this sign at a local imbibing establishment.

By the way, the street is named for Antoine Beaubien, one of Detroit's original ribbon farm owners who was also a Colonel in the Detroit Militia.

Phonetics-Based Humor

I just heard this joke and got a kick out of the humor that results when playing with the sounds in a well-known noun phrase.

What do you get when you feed a mallard to a cat?

A duck-filled, fatty-puss.

By substituting a labiodental fricative, /f/, for the first two bilabial stops, /b/ and /p/, and by deleting the second alveolar liquid, /l/, a duck-billed platypus becomes a duck-filled, fatty-puss.

Variation on an Idiom

As the two frogs sat on a lily pad, one commented to the other,

“Time sure is fun when you’re having flies.”

-Mike Ridley

Of course it is also true that...

Time flies when you're having fun.

And viewing these idioms concurrently presents a perfect example of why lexical categorizations should not rely on semantic definitions.

In the first sentence "fun" is an adjective and "flies" is a noun.

In the second sentence "fun" is a noun and "flies" is a verb.

Thanks for the laugh Mike.

Unusual Words Defined: A - Z (Part E)

A continuation of the series.

ex·cau·date:
adj.
Without a tail; tailless.

From thefreedictionary.com

Acronyms in the News

The October 1 issue of The Week magazine mentions that the International House of Pancakes is suing the International House of Prayer (A Kansas City religious mission) for using its acronym. Apparently the International House of Prayer has abbreviated its name as IHOP for the past 10 years without incident and only recently has it become an issue, according to an International House of Pancakes spokesman, because "the church has expanded and now some of the branches are serving food."

I wonder what would happen if the International House of Prayer started giving out MP3 players loaded with prayers and changed the orthography of its acronym to iHOP?