Author Archives

Nomz

Oh I love you, nomz. Love love love. And I’m a fucking DUDE. A big dude. You probably wouldn’t fuck with me unless you were a still bigger dude and then I feel sorry for you because it must be hard to find jackets. But I still love this word and I’m so happy the internet [...]

Hypocorism

I love this definition of hypocorism from Wikipedia (no reference given): hypocorisms frequently demonstrate (indirectly) a phonological linguistic universal (or tendency) for high-pitched sounds to be used for smaller creatures and objects (here as more “cute” or less imposing names) To the rest of us this means our tendency to take a word, or name, and [...]

Hipster

We’re doing this. If those pricks at WordsIHate can do irony I can surely pull off a hipster post. There’s no point in working to define this word. Everyone has a slightly different interpretation of what a hipster is and it’s been talked to death. But this is precisely why I love this word. I love to [...]

Dilettante

Stop calling everybody hipsters. Some of them are really just dilettantes, and need to be called out. Dilettante, a beautiful word lifted straight from the Italian dilettante, once meant someone who loved music and the arts, but in the 18th century it took on a negative vibe, meaning someone who dabbles in art or music [...]

Be Well

A few of my friends have asked me what they should say instead of “have a good one”, since now I’ve totally ruined it for them, along with everything else they say. And in spite of my suggestion we go back to saying “good evening” on parting, I wanted something with a little more heft, [...]

Matriculate

In its most general form, “matriculate” means “to be added to a list”. It’s one of the most passive, uninteresting actions ever reduced to verb form. By this definition, milk matriculates every time I go to the grocery. It’s silly. But of course, most of the time we use “matriculate” to mean we’ve enrolled in [...]

Shallow Epicontinental Seas

The phrase “shallow epicontinental seas” only comes up when talking about one specific subject: the Cretaceous period, and the many swimming dinosaurs that inhabited them, such as mosasaurs. Imagine a 50-foot-long crocodile with giant flippers that glides like a whale and eats anything. It would even eat your hairy nutsack after you’ve been wrestling. Even [...]

Ersatz

The ugly duckling that grew up to be a beautiful word. It’s hard to say, it’s ugly to look at, and anyone who uses it is instantly declared a pretentious cock. And such a useful word for pretentious, ivory tower cocks such as myself! It just floats off the tip of the tongue like a [...]

I Got Shit To Do

Few expressions are capable of meaning one thing as well as its opposite. Such is the case with “I got shit to do”. The difference in meaning can be conveyed through emphasis. Saying “I got shit to do” means I have many things to do Whereas “I got shit to do”, spoken with an upward [...]

Vag

Why didn’t I think of this? More importantly, why did nobody think of this sooner? Surely this abridged version of “vagina” has been around for years, but somehow I’ve only been hearing it in the last year or two. Where has it been all my life? “Vag” is a slightly derogatory term for the vagina, [...]