Author Archives: Angela Tung

by - 4 Comments

Punctuation Soup

Happy National Punctuation Day!

Where would be without those little dots, dashes, and squiggly lines? You wouldn’t know that we were excited about Punctuation Day, nor would you know that last sentence was a question. But where do these punctuation words come from? We thought we’d take a look at eight of our favorites.

ampersand

“The history of question marks and their ilk turns out to be epic, particularly in the case of the ampersand, whose evolution takes in everything from Julius Caesar to a 17th-century typesetter called Amper (who didn’t actually exist) and even Nazi Germany.”

Johnny Dee, “Internet Picks of the Week,” The Guardian, September 2, 2011

Admirable Ampersands

Admirable Ampersands by Brett Jordan

[Photo: CC BY 2.0 by Brett Jordan]

The ampersand – or & – represents the word and. The word originated around 1837, says the Online Etymology Dictionary, and is a “contraction of and per se” and means “(the character) ‘&’ by itself is ‘and’.” Furthermore, “in old schoolbooks the ampersand was printed at the end of the alphabet and thus by 1880s had acquired a slang sense of ‘posterior, rear end, hindquarters.’”

Read more about the history of the ampersand.

chevron

“The arches are almost flat, and decorated with a kind of chevron moulding very rarely met with.”

C. King Eley, Bell’s Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Carlisle

The chevron is also known as the guillemet, “either of the punctuation marks ‘«’ or ‘»’, used in several languages to indicate passages of speech,” and is “similar to typical quotation marks used in the English language.”

While guillemet is a diminutive of Guillaume, the name of its supposed inventor, chevron comes from the Old French chevron, “rafter,” due to the symbol’s similarity in appearance. The Old French chevron ultimately comes from the Latin caper, “goat.” The likely connection, according to the Online Etymology Dictionary, is the similarity in appearance between rafters and goats’ “angular hind legs.” Chèvre, a type of goat cheese, is related.

colon

“The colon marks the place of transition in a long sentence consisting of many members and involving a logical turn of the thought.”

Frederick W. Hamilton, Punctuation: A Primer of Information about the Marks of Punctuation and their Use Both Grammatically and Typographically

The colon is “a punctuation mark ( : ) used after a word introducing a quotation, an explanation, an example, or a series and often after the salutation of a business letter.” The word comes from the Latin colon, “part of a poem,” which comes from the Greek kolon, which translates literally as “limb.”

Then there’s the semicolon. Ben Dolnick professed his love for the hybrid punctuation mark, despite Kurt Vonnegut pronouncing semicolons “transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing,” while Stan Carey admitted to being semi-attached to them as well.

comma

“All the interesting punctuation debates I have are internal, as I debate whether or not a comma is necessary in a given spot, or whether two clauses are sufficiently related to be separated by a mere semi-colon.”

“So It’s National Punctuation Day Again,” Motivated Grammar, September 24, 2009

The comma is “a punctuation mark ( , ) used to indicate a separation of ideas or of elements within the structure of a sentence,” and comes from the Greek komma, “piece cut off, short clause,” which comes from koptein, “to cut.”

The comma is a seemingly simple punctuation mark about which people have a lot to say. Earlier this year, Ben Yagoda discussed comma rules and comma mistakes, and addressed some comma questions. At Lingua Franca, he explored some comma beliefs. Stan Carey responded, as did The New Yorker, who defended what Mr. Yagoda called their “nutty” comma style. Johnson questioned the comma splice while Motivated Grammar assured us that comma splices are “historical and informal” but not wrong.

Finally, let’s not forget the importance of the Oxford comma:

Via Language Log / Jeff Bishop

For even more about commas, check out our list of the day.

interrobang

“A single character combining a question mark and an exclamation — called an interrobang — didn’t catch on because it doesn’t read well in small sizes and never made it to standard keyboards, while, thanks to email addresses, the @, also known as an amphora, has become ubiquitous.”

Heller McAlpin, “Fond Of Fonts? Check Out ‘Just My Type’,” NPR Books, September 1, 2011

The interrobang, “a punctuation mark in the form of question mark superimposed on an exclamation point, used to end a simultaneous question and exclamation,” comes from a blend of interrogation point, an old term for the question mark, and bang, printers’ slang for the exclamation point.

The at or @ symbol’s “first documented use was in 1536,” according to Smithsonian Magazine, “in a letter by Francesco Lapi, a Florentine merchant, who used @ to denote units of wine called amphorae, which were shipped in large clay jars.”

irony mark

“In 1899, French poet Alcanter de Brahm proposed an ‘irony mark’ (point d’ironie) that would signal that a statement was ironic. The proposed punctuation looked like a question mark facing backward at the end of a sentence. But it didn’t catch on. No one seemed to get the point of it, ironically.”

Mark Jacob and Stephan Benzkofer, “10 Things You Might Not Know About Punctuation,” Chicago Tribune, July 18, 2011

BuzzFeed listed some other punctuation marks you may not have heard of, while The New Yorker tasked readers with inventing a new punctuation mark. The winner was the bwam, the bad-writing apology mark, which “merely requires you to surround a sentence with a pair of tildes when ‘you’re knowingly using awkward wording but don’t have time to self-edit.’” For Punctuation Day, The New Yorker has asked for a punctuation mash-up: “combine two existing pieces of punctuation into a new piece of punctuation.” Check their culture blog for the winners.

punctuation

“The systematization of punctuation is due mainly to the careful and scholarly Aldus Manutius, who had opened a printing office in Venice in 1494. The great printers of the early day were great scholars as well. .  . .They naturally took their punctuation from the Greek grammarians, but sometimes with changed meanings.”

Frederick W. Hamilton, Punctuation: A Primer of Information about the Marks of Punctuation and their Use Both Grammatically and Typographically

The word punctuation came about in the 16th century, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, and originally meant “the action of marking the text of a psalm, etc., to indicate how it should be chanted.” The word came to mean “system of inserting pauses in written matter” in the 1660s, and ultimately comes from the Latin pungere, “to prick.”

virgule

“Commas were not employed until the 16th century; in early printed books in English one sees a virgule (a slash like this /), which the comma replaced around 1520.”

Henry Hitchings, “Is This the Future of Punctuation?” The Wall Street Journal, October 22, 2011

The virgule, now more commonly known as the slash is “a diagonal mark ( / ) used especially to separate alternatives, as in and/or, to represent the word per, as in miles/hour, and to indicate the ends of verse lines printed continuously.”

Virgule ultimately comes from the Latin virga, “shoot, rod, stick.” Related are verge, virgin, with the idea of a “young shoot,” and virga, an old term for “penis,” as well as “wisps of precipitation streaming from a cloud but evaporating before reaching the ground.”

For even more punctuation goodies, check out Jen Doll’s imagined lives of punctuation marks; McSweeney’s seven bar jokes involving grammar and punctuation; and Ben Zimmer’s piece on how emoticons may be older than we thought. Also be sure to revisit our post from last year on punctuation rules.

Finally, it’s not too late to enter the official National Punctuation Day contest. You have until September 30.

Happy punctuating!

by

This Week’s Language Blog Roundup: Political speech, feck, Shakespeare, and more

Welcome to this week’s Language Blog Roundup, in which we bring you the highlights from our favorite language blogs and the latest in word news and culture.

In politics and language, Jen Doll at The Atlantic discussed linguistic crutches such as VP Joe Biden’s literally, while The New York Times explored President Obama’s English and other presidential speaking styles (or lack thereof).

Fritinancy’s words of the week were politically inspired: feckless, from John McCain’s statement regarding Obama’s “feckless foreign policy,” and arithmetic, from Bill Clinton’s speech at the Democratic National Convention (“What new ideas did we bring to Washington? I always give a one-word answer: Arithmetic.”).

Lucy Ferriss and Ben Zimmer both examined Mr. Clinton’s folksy rhetoric, while Ms. Ferriss also took a look at pharaoh’s chickens and Mitt Romney, and Mr. Zimmer wondered why everyone from Bill Clinton to Mark Zuckerberg was doubling down.

At Language Log, Ben Zimmer discussed ambiguity in politics and advertising; Victor Mair examined censorship in China; and Mark Liberman delved into mommy and daddy parties and euphemisms and The New York Times. At Lingua Franca, William Germano interpreted signage in the UK; Ben Yagoda explained the nonsensical nature of idioms; and Allan Metcalf analyzed the nasal drawl.

At Macmillan Dictionary blog, Orin Hargraves decoded tech talk while Paul Cook hunted for lexical blends the computational way. Stan Carey put on a sock puppet show, and on his own blog, explored meanings and origins of feck and shared some animated etymology. Johnson told us about the best word ever and place names as shibboleths.

In words of the week, Erin McKean noted the fashionable smasual, smart-casual; Manhattanhenge, “the twice-a-year phenomenon where the setting sun aligns with Manhattan’s roughly east-west street grid”; swellegance, a blend of swell and elegant; and noodnik, “a Yiddish word that comes from a root meaning ‘to bore, to pester.’” Arnold Zwicky posted about micropolitans, “cities [that] do not have the economic or political importance of large cities, but are nevertheless significant centers of population and production.”

Word Spy spotted fiberhood, “a neighborhood that has Internet access via fiber-optic cable”; foodbaby, “a distended stomach caused by overeating”; and mansplaining, “explaining in a patronizing way, particularly when done by a man who combines arrogance with ignorance of the topic.”

Dialect Blog talked about this and that in foreign dialects and the South African ee. The Virtual Linguist looked at canny and uncanny, gender bias in job ads, and predistribution, “an alternative to the policy of ‘redistribution’ … meant to tackle the problem of inequality earlier in the process.”

Grammarphobia gave us a short history of the word wow. Sesquiotica explained around, about, and approximately; the origins of pissant and git; and peplum, “that skirt-like bit that some tops have attached to them at the waist.” Meanwhile, Lauren Conrad listed the ten most mispronounced words in fashion.

In the land of Shakespeare, we got excited about Joss Whedon’s Much Ado About Nothing and fell in love with these beautiful cut-paper illustrations of Romeo and Juliet. We were taken with these Scandinavian fairy tale illustrations and these science fiction visual interpretations. We squeed over the graphic novel version of A Wrinkle in Time.

We were intrigued by the idea of a Chinese translation of James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake and were wowed by these bookstores repurposed from unused structures. We learned about the “hipsterfication” of Australian pubs, organic syntax, some diner lingo, and how to drink like Hemingway. We found out where letters come from. We chuckled over Charles Dickens’s library of fake books (Bowowdom sounds like a bestseller) and laughed out loud at this Fred Armisen-as-Penny Marshall book trailer.

That’s it for this week!

by

Atomic Bombs, Time Machines, and Lurve: Words from H. G. Wells

British writer H. G. Wells was born today in 1866. Dubbed “The Father of Science Fiction,” Wells was also “a prolific writer in many other genres.” But we know and love him best as the creator behind The Invisible Man, War of the Worlds, and The Time Machine. Time travel with us as we look back on 10 words and phrases Wells coined or popularized.

atomic bomb

“His companion, a less imaginative type, sat with his legs spread wide over the long, coffin-shaped box which contained in its compartments the three atomic bombs, the new bombs that would continue to explode indefinitely and which no one so far had ever seen in action.”

The World Set Free, 1914

An atomic bomb is “a nuclear weapon in which enormous energy is released by nuclear fission.” According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the phrase atomic bomb was first recorded in the above 1914 work of Wells.

Later terms include the shortened atom bomb – about 1921, according to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) – and even shorter A-bomb (about 1945). Real-life atom bombs were developed in the 1930s.

fourth dimension

“Really this is what is meant by the Fourth Dimension, though some people who talk about the Fourth Dimension do not know they mean it. It is only another way of looking at Time. There is no difference between time and any of the three dimensions of space except that our consciousness moves along it.”

The Time Machine, 1895

The fourth dimension refers to “time regarded as a coordinate dimension and required by relativity theory, along with three spatial dimensions, to specify completely the location of any event.”

While the term had been in use since about 1875, says the OED, it was in Charles Howard Hinton’s 1880 article, “What Is the Fourth Dimension?” that the idea of time as the fourth dimension was first implied, and in Wells’s The Time Machine that an explicit connection was made between time and the fourth dimension.

heat-ray

“In the road lay a group of three charred bodies close together, struck dead by the Heat-Ray; and here and there were things that people had dropped–a clock, a slipper, a silver spoon, and the like poor valuables.”

War of the Worlds, 1898

Wells’s heat-ray weapon, says the Online Etymology Dictionary, was a precursor to the ray gun, a staple in science fiction which originated around 1923. X-rays, “relatively high-energy photon[s] having a wavelength in the approximate range from 0.01 to 10 nanometers,” were discovered in 1895.

invisible man

“I have walked through Moscow’s snowy streets and felt that I must be an invisible man as the pedestrians passed me by with apparently unseeing eyes.”

W.W. Chaplin, “Russians Friendly, But Just Try to Get Any Military Secrets!” St. Petersburg Times, December 21, 1942

H.G. Wells’s novella, The Invisible Man, was published in 1897, and the term, invisible man, is now used literally and figuratively to mean someone who cannot be seen or is willingly unseen. Ralph Ellison’s novel, Invisible Man, was published in 1952. From an article by Eugene Kane in The Milwaukee Journal, September 7, 1986:

After that experience, I tried to find other writings by Ellison, but was frustrated by the lack of his books at libraries or bookstores. In a way, he himself became an invisible man.

lurve

“I am pleading the cause of a woman, a woman I lurve, sorr—a noble woman—misunderstood.”

The War in the Air, 1908

While lurve, an alteration of love, may seem like a modern term, it has long been a British colloquialism, says the OED, first recorded as a verb in Wells’s writings in 1908, and as a noun in 1937.

Lurve may be based on the rhoticity – the pronunciation of “the letter r … after vowels,” says Dialect Blog – of some British accents.

Rasputin

“My professional gifts give me a kind of Rasputin hold on one or two exalted families.”

Star-Begotten, 1937

Rasputin, Russian for debauchee, is the “acquired name” of Grigory Yefimovich Novykh, says the Online Etymology Dictionary, “mystic and faith healer who held sway over court of Nicholas II of Russia.” Wells’s seems to be the earliest recorded example of Rasputin used figuratively for anyone “felt to have an insidious and corrupting influence.”

scientific romance

“In many respects it began in 1894, in two rooms at No 12 Mornington Road (now Terrace), Camden Town, where Wells, having ditched his first wife, lived in adultery with Jane, his second, and secured his first contract writing ‘scientific romance’ for the Pall Mall Budget.”

Gerald Isaaman, “Books: Review – HG Wells: Another Kind of Life,” Camden New Journal, May 27, 2010

Scientific romance refers to both science of a speculative nature and what is now know as science fiction. Wells didn’t coin the term scientific romance, but his writings, along with those of Jules Verne, were some of the earliest examples.

Romance in this context means “an invention; fiction; falsehood,” or “a tale or novel dealing not so much with real or familiar life as with extraordinary and often extravagant adventures.”

sox

“He abbreviated every word he could; he would have considered himself the laughing-stock of Wood Street if he had chanced to spell socks in any way but ‘sox.’”

Kipps, 1906

Sox is an alteration of socks. The baseball team formerly known as the White Stockings were dubbed the White Sox in 1901, according to Slate.

time machine

“Godfrey’s time machine – also known as The Baseball Card Shop in Hoover – has proved resilient, transporting fans back and forth through the game’s history, even as many of his competitors have closed their doors during the past decade.”

Tom Bassing, “The Time Machine: Sports Memorabilia Shopkeeper Transports His Customers,” Birmingham Business Journal, July 27, 2003

A time machine is “a fictional or hypothetical device by means of which one may travel into the future and the past,” and first appeared in Wells’s 1898 novel of the same name. The term may be used literally or figuratively, as above.

time travelling

“I am afraid I cannot convey the peculiar sensations of time travelling. They are excessively unpleasant. There is a feeling exactly like that one has upon a switchback—of a helpless headlong motion!”

The Time Machine, 1895

Time traveling is “hypothetical or fictional travel at will to the past or the future, typically by means of a machine. . .or a wormhole.” The term first appeared in Wells’s 1895 novel, The Time Machine. For more time traveling words, see this list.

by

WotD Perfect Tweet Challenge – Week of September 10, 2012

Every week, we pose a challenge: using any word of the day from the week, create a perfect tweet, otherwise known as a twoosh. Here are our favorites from last week.

Remember that once a month we’re giving away Wordnik T-shirts to two randomly chosen players, to be announced the last Monday of the month, and as always, to get the word of the day, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, or subscribe via email.

by

Word Soup Wednesday: Creatrix, EKIA, hop the twig, and more

Welcome to Word Soup Wednesday! While the television show The Soup brings you “the strange, obscure and totally unbelievable moments in pop culture, celebrity news and reality TV,” Word Soup brings you those strange, obscure, unbelievable (and sometimes NSFW) words from talk shows, sitcoms, dramas, and just about anything else on TV.

Creatrix

Bender: “What the hell’s a free will slot?”
Monk: “All robots have such a slot, placed there by the Creatrix herself.”

“Free Will Hunting,” Futurama, August 8, 2012

A creatrix is a female creator, where –trix is the feminine form of –tor. See also dominatrix, aviatrix, rixatrix, and more. Futurama’s Creatrix is also known as Mom, “the owner and CEO of MomCorp,” an Apple-like company.

EKIA

Sloan: “What does EKIA mean?”
Don: “Enemy killed in action.”

“5/1,” The Newsroom, August 5, 2012

The EKIA here refers to Osama Bin Laden. The full message that President Obama received was, “Geronimo EKIA,” where Geronimo was the code name for Bin Laden. Some controversy arose around this code name as Geronimo is “the nickname of a Native American leader considered by many to have been a hero and a freedom fighter.”

get

Maggie: “It’s what’s called a get. It’s promotable.”

“The Blackout Part II: Mock Debate,” The Newsroom, August 19, 2012

A get is, presumably, a hot news story, although some question “whether a real newsroom would consider [an interview with a high school classmate of Casey Anthony] a get worth fighting for.”

greater fool

Sloan: “The greater fool is actually an economic term. It’s a patsy. For the rest of to profit, we need a greater fool, someone who will buy long and sell short. Most people spend their lives trying not to be the greater fool. We pass him a hot potato, we dive for his seat when the music stops. The greater fool is someone with the perfect blend of self-delusion and ego to think that he can succeed where others have failed. This whole country was made by greater fools.”

“The Greater Fool,” The Newsroom, August 26, 2012

The greater fool theory, also known as survivor investing, “is the belief held by one who makes a questionable investment, with the assumption that they will be able to sell it later to ‘a greater fool.’”

hop the twig

Eva: “He’s put food in my belly and a roof over my head ever since we hopped the twig.”

“Slaughterhouse,” Hell on Wheels, August 26, 2012

While hop the twig more commonly means to pass away or die, it also once meant ‘to run away from one’s creditors, as a bird eludes a fowler, ‘hopping from spray to spray,’” which is the meaning in this context.

imagination inflation

Pierce: “It’s imagination inflation. The agents interrogating Brady told him he had stabbed the judge with the knife so that’s the false memory that he forms. But he didn’t do it.”

“Nemesis,” Perception, August 27, 2012

Imagination inflation refers to the phenomenon of believing a non-existent event has occurred as a result of having imagined it.

knocking shop

Madam: “How the hell are you two skinny chaps gonna protect my knocking shop?”

“Viva La Mexico,” Hell on Wheels, August 12, 2012

A knocking shop is a brothel. Knock was once slang for “to copulate with.” See knocked up.

mauvais dents

Kelly: “From what our ancestors wrote, it’s a vicious killing machine. One of them can wipe out an entire village. But you better be careful. Mauvais dents is like a cat. He’ll watch, he’ll wait.”

“Bad Teeth,” Grimm, August 13, 2012

Mauvais dents translates from the French as “bad teeth” of “bad fangs.”

meatbag

Bender: “Goodbye, sweet meatbags! Sweetbags.”

“Free Will Hunting,” Futurama, August 8, 2012

Meatbag is a derogatory term used by robots for humans. It was first used by Bender in Futurama’s first episode, “Space Pilot 3000“, which premiered on March 28, 1999. We couldn’t find an earlier usage, but if anyone finds one, please let us know.

RINO

Will: “I’m what the leaders of the Tea Party would call a RINO, Republican in Name Only, and that’s ironic because that’s exactly what I think about the leaders of the Tea Party.”

“The Greater Fool,” The Newsroom, August 26, 2012

RINO, pronounced like the animal, rhino, “is a pejorative term that refers to a member of the Republican Party of the United States whose political views or actions are considered insufficiently conservative or otherwise conforming to liberal positions.” While the term Republican in name only has been in use since the 1920s, the acronym arose in the 1990s.

rotgut

Elam: “That there the good stuff, not that rotgut y’all drank.”

“The Railroad Job,” Hell on Wheels, September 9, 2012

Rotgut is “bad or adulterated liquor, injurious to the stomach and bowels; in the United States, specifically, whisky adulterated with deleterious substances to cheapen it while increasing its apparent strength.” The term originated in the 17th century, and is especially significant in this scene as Elam’s drinking partner has a bleeding injury in his “gut.”

sardini

Zoidberg: “I’m having fun. . .and a sardini.”

“Viva Mars Vegas,” Futurama, August 22, 2012

Sardini is a blend of sardine and martini. Other martini blends include vodkatini, appletini, saketini, and our favorite, the bacontini.

sawbones

Doctor: “He needs a more qualified surgeon ma’am, not some battlefield sawbones like me.”

“The Railroad Job,” Hell on Wheels, September 9, 2012

Sawbones is slang for a surgeon, and originated around 1837.

That’s it for this week! Remember, if you see any Word Soup-worthy words, let us know on Twitter with the hashtag #wordsoup. Your word and Twitter handle might appear right here!

by

O. Henry: The Gift of Words

O. Henry

Today marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of American writer O. Henry. Known for his twist endings, the North Carolina native also coined and popularized many words. We’ve gathered ten of our favorites here, with quotations from the O. Henry stories the words first appeared in.

banana republic

“In the constitution of this small, maritime banana republic was a forgotten section that provided for the maintenance of a navy.”

Cabbages and Kings, 1904

The term banana republic – now perhaps more popularly known as a clothing store – refers to “a small country that is economically dependent on a single export commodity, such as bananas, and is typically governed by a dictator or the armed forces.” The term was coined by O. Henry as “a pejorative political descriptor” in Cabbages and Kings, stories “derived from his 1896–97 residence in Honduras, where he was hiding from U.S. law for bank embezzlement.”

cut the mustard

“So I looked around and found a proposition that exactly cut the mustard.”

“Heart of the West,” 1907

To cut the mustard means “to suffice; to be good or effective enough.” The phrase, according to World Wide Words, is likely “a development of the long-established use of mustard as a superlative, as in phrases such as keen as mustard.” Furthermore, in 19th century America, “mustard was used figuratively to mean something that added zest to a situation, and the proper mustard was something that was the genuine article.”

El

“Behold Ikey as he ambles up the street beneath the roaring ‘El’ between the rows of reeking sweat-shops.”

“The Social Triangle,” The Trimmed Lamp, 1906

El is short for an elevated railway or train. “The Social Triangle” takes place in New York City, and refers to an elevated railway run by the Manhattan Railway.

get-rich-quick

“A get-rich-quick – excuse me – gang giving back the boodle!”

“A Tempered Wind,” 1904

Get-rich-quick schemes claim “to provide large profits quickly, with no realistic chance of success, in order to lure gullible investment victims.” In the above quote, the speaker, a newspaper man, is referring to unbelievable stories such as “a sea serpent wriggling up Broadway,” or a get-rich-quick gang giving back boodle, or money.

marcelled

“‘They wash the gold out of the mountain streams,’ says the brown man, ‘and fill quills with it; and then they empty ’em into red jars till they are full; and then they pack it in buckskin sacks of one arroba each—an arroba is twenty-five pounds—and store it in a stone house, with an engraving of a idol with marcelled hair, playing a flute, over the door.’”

“Supply and Demand,” Options, 1909

Marcelled means having the appearance of a marcel hairstyle, “characterized by deep regular waves made by a heated curling iron,” named for French hairdresser, Marcel Grateau.

megaphonist

“‘What’s eatin’ you?’ demanded the megaphonist, abandoning his professional discourse for pure English.”

“Sisters of the Golden Circle,” The Four Million, 1906

A megaphonist is “someone who uses a megaphone,” which is “a large speaking-trumpet of a conical form.”

motoring

“And there are passably good roads through the woods where we go motoring.”

“Rus in Urbe,” Options, 1909

Motoring is “the art of driving or riding in an automobile or motor-car; the sport of driving motor-cars.” By the early 20th century, mass production of automobiles had begun, thus aiding in the popularity of driving for pleasure. Motoring is also the lyric of a certain song.

short order

“There amid the steam of vegetables and the vapours of acres of ‘ham and,’ the crash of crockery, the clatter of steel, the screaming of ‘short orders,’ the cries of the hungering and all the horrid tumult of feeding man, surrounded by swarms of the buzzing winged beasts bequeathed us by Pharaoh, Milly steered her magnificent way like some great liner cleaving among the canoes of howling savages.”

“An Adjustment of Nature,” The Four Million, 1906

A short order is “an order of food that can be prepared and served quickly,” and was first attested as a noun in the above O. Henry story. The phrase in short order means “without delay” and originated around 1834.

side-kicker

“Billy was my side-kicker in New York.”

Cabbages and Kings, 1904

Side-kicker, a partner, was popularized by O. Henry around 1903, says World Wide Words, although the word is older than that, and comes from an even older term, side-partner. Side-kicker became sidekick in 1906.

spiflicated

“Bill is all to the psychopathic about her; and me? – well, you saw me plating the roadbed of the Great Maroon Way with silver to-night. That was on account of Laura. I was spiflicated, Your Highness, and I wot not of what I wouldst.”

“The Story of the Young Man and the Harness Maker’s Riddle,” 1906

Spiflicated, “drunk,” comes from spiflicate, “confound, overcome completely,” says the Online Etymology Dictionary. Spiflicate is a 1749 cant word.

[Photo: CC BY 2.0 by Fried Dough]

by

WotD Perfect Tweet Challenge – Week of September 3, 2012

Every week, we pose a challenge: using any word of the day from the week, create a perfect tweet, otherwise known as a twoosh. Here are our favorites from last week.

Remember that once a month we’re giving away Wordnik T-shirts to two randomly chosen players, to be announced the last Monday of the month, and as always, to get the word of the day, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, or subscribe via email.