On the Isle of Portland, in the English Channel, it’s considered bad luck to say the word rabbit.
So people use the term “underground mutton.”
Language
In a Word
genethliac
adj. relating to a birthday or to the casting of horoscopes
Oxymora
“Military intelligence,” said Groucho, “is a contradiction in terms.” Other examples:
- Almost exactly
- Detailed summary
- Dry lake
- Elevated subway
- Exact estimate
- Found missing
- Guest host
- Limited omniscience
- Liquid gas
- Local long distance
- Mandatory options
- Neoconservatism
- Only choice
- Open secret
- Original copy
- Virtual reality
- Wireless cable
Also: Dodge Ram.
In a Word
flimp
v. to rob (someone) while a partner hustles
That Explains It
Chicago means “land of smelly onions.”
That’s how the native Potawatomi described the swampy area next to Lake Michigan. French explorers picked up the name, and it stuck.
Palindromes
Real-life palindromes:
- MALAYALAM is a language of southern India.
- EKALAKA LAKE exists in southeastern Montana.
- DR. (Michael) AWKWARD is Longstreet Professor of English and Afro-American Literature at Emory University.
In a Word
callipygous
adj. having beautiful buttocks
Coincidence?
ELEVEN PLUS TWO is an anagram of TWELVE PLUS ONE.
Irish Bulls
Three “Irish bulls” cited in Henry B. Wheatley’s Literary Blunders (1893). “We know what the writer means, although he does not exactly say it”:
- From the report of an Irish Benevolent Society: “Notwithstanding the large amount paid for medicine and medical attendance, very few deaths occurred during the year.”
- A country editor’s correspondent wrote: “Will you please to insert this obituary notice? I make bold to ask it, because I know the deceased had a great many friends who would be glad to hear of his death.”
- Quoted in the Greville Memoirs: “He abjured the errors of the Romish Church, and embraced those of the Protestant.”
“From the errors of others,” wrote Publilius Syrus, “a wise man corrects his own.”
“A Siege of Cranes”
Ornithological nouns of assemblage:
- a murmuration of starlings
- a desert of lapwing
- a parliament of owls
- a gulp of cormorants
- a pitying of doves
- a murder of crows
- an exaltation of larks
- a charm of finches
- a stand of flamingoes
- a watch of nightingales
- a rafter of turkeys
- a committee of vultures
- a descent of woodpeckers
- an unkindness of ravens
- a convocation of eagles
Who comes up with these? They’re wonderfully poetic. Also: a sleuth of bears, a shrewdness of apes, a flutter of butterflies, an intrusion of cockroaches, a bask of crocodiles, a skulk of foxes, a smack of jellyfish, a leap of leopards, a crash of rhinoceroses, a scurry of squirrels, a streak of tigers, a shiver of sharks.