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.
Thanks to everyone for playing! As always, to get the word of the day, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, or subscribe via email.
Happy World Puppetry Day!
Who doesn’t love puppets? Okay, some are super creepy, but at least we know our 10 favorite puppet words won’t come suddenly come alive and attack us. At least we hope not. Enjoy!
mammet
“The unhappy Charles II. of Spain, a kind of ‘mammet’ (as the English called the Richard II. who appeared up in Islay, having escaped from Pomfret Castle), had for his first wife a daughter of Henrietta, the favorite sister of our Charles II.”
Julian Hawthorne, The Lock and Key Library, 1915
A mammet is a false god, idol, or “person who is the tool or puppet of another; a man of straw,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). The word comes from the Old French mahommet, “idol,” which comes from the medieval Christian belief that the prophet Muhammad was worshipped as a god.
marionette
“Don’t expect a flight sim here: The control is very arcadelike, and at slow speeds can feel more like you’re controlling a marionette than a group of planes.”
Chris Kohler, “Super Paper Mario Leads Onslaught of New Wii Games,” Wired, April 27, 2007
The word marionette is French and means literally “little little Mary,” says the Online Etymology Dictionary. Marionette is a diminutive of the Old French mariole, “figurine, idol, picture of the Virgin Mary.”
In addition to being a puppet on strings, marionette also refers to the buffie or buffle-headed duck, as well as “a small complicated arrangement at the end of the batten in a ribbon-loom,” which, according to the Century Dictionary, “is curiously lifelike in its motions,” hence the name.
Muppet
“With the exception of curmudgeons (RIP Andy Rooney) such as Oscar, Statler, and Waldorf, the Muppets are brimming with optimism from their pieholes to their puppetholes.”
Mark Peters, “Fake Squid, Psychiatric Patients, And Other Muppet Meanings,” The Huffington Post, November 23, 2011
The Muppets were created by Jim Henson in 1955, and the term, Muppet, was apparently an arbitrary coinage by Henson, says the OED, and not a blend of marionette and puppet, although puppet is an obvious influence as well as perhaps moppet.
Throughout the 1980s, Muppet gained other meanings, including a fishing lure made to resemble “a young squid”; British prison slang for “a prisoner with psychiatric problems”; and “an incompetent or ineffectual person; an idiot.”
neurospast
“The Czar, a miserable neurospast at best, has neither the courage nor the brains to cope with the situation.”
The Comrade: An Illustrated Socialist Monthly, September 1903
Neurospast, a puppet on strings, is Greek in origin, coming from neuron, “nerve,” and spastikos, “afflicted with spasms.”
pootly-nautch
“If it is true, and I believe it is, that every great institution must have a big man behind it, what do you expect of Patton’s Princeton Pootlynautch?”
Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman, Mother Earth, March 1907
Pootly-nautch, a puppet show, comes from a Hindi term meaning “wooden-puppet-dance.” For more English words derived from Indian languages, check out our post, Hobson-Jobson Soup.
poppet
“Six days ago, when I brought her my first earnings in full—twenty-three roubles forty copecks altogether—she called me her poppet: ‘poppet,’ said she, ‘my little poppet.’”
Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment, 1917
Poppet, an obsolete term for puppet, is also a term of endearment, a doll, an effigy used in witchcraft, and in shipbuilding, a piece of wood used for various purposes.
There are a number of possibly origins of the word, says the OED, including the Middle French poupee, the Anglo-Norman poppe, and the Middle Dutch poppe, all of which mean “doll” and ultimately come from the Latin pupa, “girl, doll.” (The pupa is so-called because of its resemblance to a swaddled infant or doll.)
Punchinello
“Sophia was charmed with the contemplation of so heroic an action, and began to compliment herself with much premature flattery, when Cupid, who lay hid in her muff, suddenly crept out, and like Punchinello in a puppet-show, kicked all out before him.”
Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones: A Foundling
Punchinello is “the short fat buffoon or clown in an Italian puppet show” originating in the 17th century. The word ultimately comes from the Italian pollecena, “turkey pullet (from the resemblance between its beak and Punchinello’s nose).”
Punch, “the quarrelsome hook-nosed husband of Judy in the comic puppet show Punch and Judy,” is a shortening of Punchinello. This is where we get the term pleased as Punch, which refers to “his unfailing triumph over enemies.”
quisling
“Using the 2011 English riots as justification, the conservative junta introduced a brutal and oppressive regime where the BBC has become a quisling tool of the state by commandeering every CCTV camera in the UK.”
Kevin McKenna, “When Glasgow’s Undead Rise Up,” The Guardian, August 20, 2011
A quisling is “a traitor who serves as the puppet of the enemy occupying his or her country,” and is named for Vidkun Quisling, the head of Norway’s government during the Nazi occupation in the 1940s.
sock puppet
“One of the joys of the Internet age is the great new lingo it is producing. To ‘flame wars’ and ‘phishing’ we can now add ‘sock puppet.’”
“Sock Puppet Bites Man,” The New York Times, September 13, 2006
A sock puppet is a false identity used by someone on the Internet “to talk about themselves in the guise of a neutral observer,” often in the form of extravagant praise. Some notable examples.
Wayang (musée d'art oriental, Venise)
wayang
“Wahid may be the ultimate master of the wayang, Javanese shadow puppetry in which nothing is as it appears.”
Ron Moreau, “Duel of the Shadow Puppets,” Newsweek, October 24, 1999
Wayang refers to “the shadow-play of [Indonesia and Malaysia], played with colored marionettes cut out of flat pieces of leather.” Wayang is the Javanese word for “shadow.”
[Photo: Untitled, No known copyright restrictions, by Smithsonian Institute]
[Photo: “Wayang (musée d’art oriental, Venise),” CC BY 2.0 by dalbera]
Every week we watch tons of TV for weird and interesting words so you don’t have to. Here are our latest selections.
Delicious Cheese
affineur
Andrew Zimmern: “He’s also an affineur, a master in the art of aging cheese, a process that’s integral to the creation of world-class fromage.”
“Wisconsin,” Bizarre Foods America, March 11, 2013
Affineur, one responsible for aging cheese, is French in origin. Related is affine, “to refine (metal).”
bumper
Casteau: “Why the shit are you maggots not prepping!”
Archer: “Wait, are you doing a bumper?”
“Live and Let Dine,” Archer, February 28, 2013
A bumper is, in broadcasting, a pause between a television show and a commercial, often including voiceover and a dramatic clip from an upcoming segment. A bumper may also be a recurring theme music or an eyecatch, a recurring scene or illustration, often used in anime programs.
Changnesia
Dr. Kedan: “Changnesia is a fascinating and extremely rare disease on the forefront in psychological landscape.”
“Advanced Documentary Filmmaking,” Community, March 14, 2013
Changnesia is, according to Community, “the complete loss of memory caused by sudden trauma that was, itself, also forgotten.” It’s also known as “Kevin’s Disease” and comes from the Greek amnēsiā, “forgetfulness,” and the Chinese surname, Chang.
conclave
Samantha Bee: “Conclave is Latin for ‘with key.’ It describes the closed door meeting [to elect the new pope].”
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, March 7, 2013
In addition to “the meeting held to elect a new pope,” conclave refers to a secret meeting in general, “the private rooms in which the cardinals meet to elect a new pope,” a private apartment, and “the body of cardinals.”
defenestrate
Mindy: “Sam was helping out around my apartment, and he was defenestrated.”
Danny: “You threw a soldier out a window?”
“The One That Got Away,” The Mindy Project, February 26, 2013
Defenestrate means to eject out of a window and is a back-formation of defenestration, which partly comes from the Latin fenestra, “window.”
electrocutioner
Louise: “I’m going to tell everyone the truth about Edison, the electrocutioner!”
“Topsy,” Bob’s Burgers, March 10, 2013
The word electrocutioner, “an executioner who uses electricity to kill the condemned person,” has been around at least since the late 19th century. (The earliest citation we found was from 1890.)
The Electrocutioner is also DC Comics character whose “costume possesses circuitry that allows him at will to either stun or kill his victims with a bolt of electricity.”
Gorn
Stephen Colbert [regarding President Obama’s mixing up Jedi mind trick and Vulcan mind meld]: “Do you even know what planet Yavin 4 is? That’s a trick question. It’s not a planet, it’s a moon. You are such a Gorn.”
The Colbert Report, March 4, 2013
A Gorn is a humanoid reptile from the Star Trek universe.
hooligan fish
Anthony Gastelum: “These are hooligans. These come from the Stikine River.”
Andrew Zimmern: “Hooligans are smelt, very rich in oil, preserved by smoking them.”
“Alaska,” Bizarre Foods America, March 11, 2013
The hooligan fish is also known as the eulachon or candlefish, a type of smelt rich in fat and oil. Eulachon-oil was “made to serve as a natural candle by inserting in it the pith of a rush or a strip of bark as a wick,” hence the name, candlefish.
Eulachon comes from Chinook jargon, “a pidgin trade language of the [U.S.] Pacific Northwest.” Hooligan is an alteration of eulachon. Other alterations include oolichan, oulachon, and uthlecan.
MacGuffin
Dean Martin: “Assisting in Kevin’s recovery has put a financial strain on the school. That’s why we are appealing to the MacGuffin Neurological Institute for this $40,000 grant, so we can continue to fight this terrible disease and hopefully one day pay for this documentary.”
“Advanced Documentary Filmmaking,” Community, March 14, 2013
A MacGuffin is “a plot element or other device used to catch the audience’s attention and maintain suspense, but whose exact nature has fairly little influence over the storyline.” The MacGuffin in this episode of Community seems to be the making of the documentary or the need for the grant money.
The first recorded usage of the word may been by Alfred Hitchcock in 1939.
snowquester
Stephen Colbert: “The word snowquester is a combination of the word snow and the sequester. I think this is fantastic and ridiculous. Or fantasticulous.”
The Colbert Report, March 6, 2013
Colbert suggests naming all weather events “after what kind they are plus whatever people are talking about on television at the time,” such as blizzardashian, a blend of blizzard and Kardashian, and drone-cicle, a blend of drone, a pilotless aircraft, and icicle.
subsistence living
Andrew Zimmern: “People like Anthony Gastelum, Ruth Demmert, and Steve Rose put a lot of time intro training a new generation in the art of subsistence living.”
“Alaska,” Bizarre Foods America, March 11, 2013
Subsistence living depends upon subsistence farming, “in which the farmers focus on growing enough food to feed themselves and their families.” In rural Alaska, subsistence living is often protected over “commercial or recreational fishing and gaming.”
Van de Graaff generator
Teddy: “In high school my buddies and I built a Van de Graaff generator. You know, to get girls.”
“Topsy,” Bob’s Burgers, March 10, 2013
A Van de Graaf generator is an electrostatic generator invented in 1929 by American physicist Robert J. Van de Graaf. Touching a Van de Graaf generator makes one’s hair stand on end, due to the machine’s “static-producing qualities.”
wilding
Al Madrigal: “Now if you guys [Puerto Rico] become a state, you’re not gonna have that parade anymore. . .Montana doesn’t have a parade.”
Woman: “If we don’t have the parade, I guess we have less wilding opportunities. [laughs manically] Because you know my peeps can go a little crazy sometimes.”
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, March 6, 2013
Wilding is slang for “the act or practice of going about in a group threatening, robbing, or attacking others.”
The term was coined in the late 1980s, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, and made its first appearance in an April 22, 1989 article of The New York Times regarding the Central Park Jogger case: “Some of the 20 youths brought in for questioning had told investigators that the crime spree was the product of a pastime called ‘wilding’. ‘It’s not a term that we in the police had heard before,’ the chief said.”
[Photo: CC BY 2.0 by Chris Buecheler]
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.
Thanks to everyone for playing! As always, to get the word of the day, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, or subscribe via email.
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.
Earlier this week we celebrated what would have been Douglas Adams’s 61st birthday. Google had an interactive Doodle honoring the author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy while Neil Gaiman spoke to The Washington Post about Adams’s genius.
National Grammar Day is over but discussion about grammar never ends (in a good way of course). Stan Carey asked which was worse, a double comma or unclosed bracket, and got lots of answers. Ben Yagoda told us seven grammar rules we should really pay attention to, The New York Times rounded up some dangling grammar gaffes, and Open Culture shared David Foster Wallace’s write-up of five common usage mistakes.
Ben Zimmer discussed one young man’s journey to find the origin of scalawag and was also busy anointing the champions of the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament and the Symmys Awards, for the year’s best palindromes.
In more wordplay news, Simon Akam at Slate asserted that words like chillax and bridezilla signify the death of the American pun. However, the love of puns seems to be going strong at the O. Henry Pun-Off World Championships.
At Language Log, Mark Liberman explored nerditude. Johnson took a laughing look at the overzealous Quebec language police and explored metaphors in the digital age. At Lingua Franca, Ben Yagoda told us about the slang expression, a hell of a note; Lucy Ferriss weighed in on hypercorrection; and Geoffrey Pullum gave his opinion about quite. Anne Curzan discussed commas and the language of texting, which is apparently a linguistic miracle.
Stan Carey told us about the dramatic grammatic evolution of LOL and the origin of the word kempt. At Macmillan Dictionary Blog, Michael Rundell gave us the story behind dapper and the difference between who and whom.
Some people freaked out about the wrong definition of literally literally going in the dictionary. John McIntyre suggested that they chill out, and also considered the words omnibibulous and git.
In the week in words, Erin McKean noticed pogonophobia, “fear of facial fuzz”; sede vacante, Latin for “the seat being vacant” (regarding the Pope); tuts, video tutorials on YouTube; and polocrosse, “a mashup of lacrosse and polo.” Fritinancy weekly selections included wudu, “in Islam, the ritual washing of the face, hands, and other body parts in preparation for prayers”; and grist, “grain for grinding; ground grain.”
Word Spy spotted safe shake, “the touching of elbows used as a handshake replacement to avoid spreading germs”; instamentary, “a documentary produced in a very short time, particularly one about a recent news event”; openture, “the tendency to not seek a resolution or ending for an emotionally difficult experience”; and, just in time for Pi Day, pi-ku, “a haiku on the theme of the mathematical constant pi.”
The Dialect Blog dialogued on drawer-draw conflation and the hateful history of wog, “an offensive term in British English which refers to various immigrant groups.” Lynneguist dispelled the myth of –ogue-less Americans. Fully (sic) took a look at Canberra bashing, “the act of criticising the Australian federal government and its bureaucracy,” a term that “will be included in the next edition of the Australian National Dictionary.”
In other dictionary news, Grantland offered some tidbits from The Devil’s Dictionary of Sportswriting, and the first edition of the Dictionary of Canadianisms is now online, from which Akira Orent gleaned 24 particularly interesting ones (we may have mal de raquette from our visit to Boston last week).
At the Visual Thesaurus, Georgia Scurletis stared, glanced, and glared at the words of Twilight. Largehearted Boy alerted us of brackets for “swooniest male” in Young Adult literature (Team Peeta – no, Gale! no, Peeta!), and Quora blogs gave us some Harry Potter etymology.
Mental Floss gave us 11 nicknames and the people who hated them, and The Atlantic explained why hot gym girl is a grosser nickname than hot gym guy. We learned how mountains in the U.S. are named, about the experiences of a lip reader, and why it’s important to invent new words (you don’t need to tell us twice!).
We love that these dead authors have lively social media profiles. We want these tiny books made by 17-year old Charlotte Bronte and these miniature libraries. We’d also like to visit these bookstores in barns.
We were disturbed and amused by these suggested renamings of horse meat, and we’re unreasonably excited now that line breaks are allowed in Twitter.
That’s it for this week!
[Photo: CC BY 2.0 by Jim Linwood]
Wordnik schwag
Last week Wordnik headed out to snowy Boston to attend the AWP annual book fair. With over 10,000 attendees and 600 booths, AWP’s is one of the biggest writers’ conferences in the country, and we met tons of interesting people.
We also held a contest: give us your favorite word and we’ll randomly draw three people to win a set of Pocket Posh dictionaries. Congratulations to Lawrence Eby whose choice was the underrated gulch; Nicholl Denice who chose the awesome onomatopoeia; and David Fishkind who went with the lovely gambol.
Now what about all those favorite words? We collected 186, from akrasia to zeugma, and while we can’t cover them all here, we’re excited to give you some highlights. (And because we’re Wordnik, we made a list of all 186 words.)
We received positive words such as happiness, love, and please; beautiful color words such as azure and vermillion; and words having to do with light and shadow like illuminate, luminous, chiaroscuro, and, well, shadow. Crepuscular, “pertaining to or resembling twilight,” was another favorite, as well as dailygone, a Scots word also meaning “twilight,” a new word for us.
A couple of words were meta, such as dictionary and, you guessed it, word, and many simply sounded great, like gobbledygook, kerfuffle, bamboozle, catawampus, ishkabibble, and kerplunk! (which the submitter insisted “had to include an exclamation point”).
Others had to do with specific definitions, such as cataract (“The waterfall, not the degenerated cornea”), and monstrance, which has nothing to do with monsters but is, in the Roman Catholic Church, “a receptacle in which the host is held” (although monstrance and monster are etymologically related).
We received a few anatomy words (alveoli, flange, patella, and phalanges, though we have a feeling that has less to do with finger bones and more with the pseudonym of a certain sitcom character), and a couple of fear words, namely triskaidekaphobia, the fear of the number 13, and hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia, the fear of very long words, which the submitter pronounced perfectly (“I practiced for hours”). Impressive!
A couple of people felt the pressure of choosing one favorite word and went with the reliable cat. Others were hungry for lunch and picked yogurt, tapioca, chocolate, clementine, persimmon, pomaceous, and the terrific hangry, to be angry from hunger. Still others chose the simple and emphatic no, including five-year old Jonah who wrote the word in all caps (“NO”).
One attendee’s favorite was habiliments, with which she won a spelling bee, while another attendee’s least favorite word was colonel, with which she lost a spelling bee (“I got too excited and spelled kernel instead”). Another attendee picked orange, because “nothing rhymes with it.”
Some words received multiple votes like defenestrate, to throw out the window; diaphanous, “transmitting light; permitting the passage of light; transparent; clear”; interrobang, a blended question mark and exclamation point; and, for some reason, elbow.
A few are definite word of the day contenders, like cacoethes, compulsion, mania; eldritch, strange or eerie; lour, “to be dark, gloomy, and threatening, as clouds”; and flitch, a wooden plank or slab, or a slab of bacon.
Several people’s favorite words were from other languages. In French we had malheureusement, “regrettably, unfortunately,” and pamplemousse, a grapefruit. In Spanish we got igualmente, “likewise”; sonrisa, “smile” but also “sunrise”; and jubilacion, “retirement” but also “jubilation.”
We received the German gemütlichkeit, “coziness more or less,” and in Finnish another vote for “orange,” oranssi. In Mandarin Chinese we got lao wai, literally “old foreigner” but also any foreigner, and from Jamaican English, ku yah, “But see here!” which we’ll begin using immediately.
Finally, we know we shouldn’t play favorites but we can’t help it: the neologisms. There was the Philadelphia slang widorwidout, “with or without (cheese, onions, etc)”; that old favorite, frenemy; and puh-leeze, of which we were assured is “now accepted by the OED” (and even if it weren’t, we would still love it).
There was hyperbolate (“If it’s not a word, it should be” – we agree!), and scrumtrulescent, which was coined by James Lipton (as played by Will Ferrell): “Match Game was absolutely scrumtrulescent.”
Again, check out all the favorite words of AWP 2013.
We hope to see you all next year!
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.
Thanks to everyone for playing! As always, to get the word of the day, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, or subscribe via email.