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Four quarks screw up Murray Gell-Mann’s perfect “allusion”.

Comic Sans screws up Murray Gell-Mann's perfect allusion. My eyes!

"Three quarks for Muster Mark!
Sure he hasn't got much of a bark
And sure any he has it's all beside the mark."

-- James Joyce, Finnegans Wake

Four quarks screw up Murray Gell-Mann’s perfect “allusion”.

what: `walk noisily in clogs.' http://www.takeourword.com/et_q-s.html#sabotage

Not quite... wrought is the past tense of work. When used in "wrought havoc" it does form a correct phrase, though the meaning is slightly different from "wreaked havoc".

I'll spare you the full details, there's a good writeup at http://www.takeourword.com/Issue048.html /My language beats your language

Even when it is acknowledged that the correct form is wet your whistle, odd stories about the origin of the phrase continue. The ever-popular one is that mugs or tankards formerly had whistles baked or built into them, so that pub patrons could whistle to the bartender when they were ready for a refill. Apart from some modern creations, no such mug or tankard has ever been found, nor has any historical reference to such things. So, folks, the phrase is a pretty easy one to explain: to wet your whistle is to moisten your whistling organs by having a drink.

I thought it was "whet" as well but deferred to this site:

http://www.takeourword.com/TOW114/page4.html

for the final answer. I also prefered "whet" as in "stimulate" (always a good thing) but went with "wet" since it seemed to come first in the days of olde. At any rate, I spent more time looking up that than anything else pertaining to the submission 'cause I know you guys are all about the details. ;-)

Now, I will go wet my whetstone and whistle while I do it.

Don't know if it applies but found this on http://www.takeourword.com/Issue023.html:

There is an Old English word which was created by taking corn and adding the diminutive suffix -el. Cyrnel thus meant a "little grain" and persists in Modern English as kernel.

You misspelled "all intensive purposes".

Yeah. I know that -- p/q and all that. Didn't mean to imply that the numbers were irrational in the other sense of the word. Honestly, I don't know if that's true or not. I do know we're talking about the same latin root, ratio. The derivatives mean "to think" or more recently "to calculate" -- so it might be close enough for government work. For a nice history of the term, try this site Also try this site.

Marketing in RSS? Heavens To Betsy!

A second reference mentions this here (you have to scroll down a bit)
You might be correct in saying that jerryrigging originated in the world war, but jury-rigging is the original (and more inoffensive) term - hence answers.com is correct.

This Aussi-Gringo...

Umm...you do realize that, by virtue of the fact that the Aussies are not of a Spanish-speaking country, they are, by definition, gringos as well, right? Here, read about how it generally refers to Europeans (of whom many Australians are descended), but can actually refer to any foreigner; after all, it is derived from "griego", the Spanish word for "Greek".

Napery is an old French word for household linen. Nappy and Napkin are derivatives. "Nap", by itself, refers to the lie of threads in cloth. It turns out, however, that diaper is the older word (scroll down a bit).

Well, I hate to shoot myself down, but I found pretty conclusive evidence that "in the sticks" is the correct phrase and "in the Styx" is the abberation.

You may begin making fun of me now.

Fun fact for the day - this is not outside the realm of possibility as an English name of yore. There are records of both "cunt" and "fuck" used in names. In fact both words are quite old in English, and were used when names were more descriptive - I've read of people on the village roll with surnames such as "Wydecunte" and "Fucksalot" at least back to the 16th century.

I'm not certain of the age of "-fest" to make a gerund, though - that's probably pretty recent.

You've got to admit it'd be pretty cool if the 'F' in CF from Renfrew really did stand for something beginning with Fuck. ;)

Another good site for the logophile is Take Our Word For It, the weekly word-orgin webzine.

This week the spotlight is on plural diseases. Ooh! Mumps, Measles, Hives, Shingles. Why are they all plural. That and more fun.

Usually, the prefix dis- implies a loss of something, as in disease, disgust and disgrace. Very occasionally, as here, it means "entirely" or "very". So disgruntled means something like "extremely gruntled ". So, what does gruntle mean? It is a variant of the word grunt with the obsolete meaning of "grumble". The word appeared sometime around 1680 but was originally a transitive verb meaning "to give [someone] extreme cause to grumble". Incidentally, a word formed by lengthening another (like gruntle from grunt) is called a frequentative form of the earlier word.

bashing e-mail forwards though . . . that stuff is practically "spam your friends"

please see this post [slashdot.org] which managed to be informative without trying to bash someone elses post

if someone actually finds something credible that says the wake never had anything to do with seeing if the presumed dead person would wake up (the other post actually DID say that this was part of the wake), i would be very interested!

a long time ago there actually was a problem with burying people who weren't dead but seemed to be dead. thus somebody came up with what is still called "the wake," where everyone sits around to see if the person they're going to bury wakes up.

the phrase "dead ringer" has a similar origin: they'd set up a bell above ground and tie a string or something to it when they buried someone, who could ring the bell and alert everyone that they would like to be dug up as they weren't dead . . .

So get off your high horse, it makes *perfect* sense to talk about this being "very unique".

You are simply wrong and here's the evidence to prove it:

Common Errors in English Usage
Some Common Grammar and Usage Mistakes in Undergraduate Philosophy Papers
Bowdoin College -- A Style Guide
The Dirty Dozen
Additional Writing Hints (first entry)
Unique and Other Absolute Modifiers
See Curmudgeon's Corner...our soapbox where we vent our spleen regarding abuses of the English language.

I am a published writer and experienced editor, so you can stop making a fool of yourself and let this drop. Or you can amuse me further by trying to come up with some explanation of why you believe that you are right.

For example, saying something is 'gay', meaning stupid, a lot of people will say is utterly wrong because it comes from homophobic people using it. It's not wrong because it was used by homophobic people and has since come into common slang for 'stupid' or 'silly' and is completly unrelated to homosexuals.. Of course, you still shouldn't use it simply because it offends some people.

A more interesting example is the word 'black' vs. 'negro'. Black was originally an offensive term used for Africans. In order to be polite people started using 'negro' and 'nigger'. Of course, ironically, the term negro became impolite (well, downright offensive, really) and so 'black' came back into style. (And of course 'African-American' for those PC types).

It just goes to show. A word only means what the majority of people think it means...