Wordsmith William Safire could have enough columns for the rest of the year if he focused just on food "sniglets," or food words that don't appear in the dictionary, but should. For example, at Tommy's barbecue, did you commit burgacide (bürg-ə-sīd)? (A hamburger's desperate act to leap to its death through grill holes.) Or, after that vending machine trip, are your fingers covered in cheedle (chee' dul)? (Residue on fingertips after consuming Cheetos.) Bert Christensen's Truth & Humour Collection is chock full of made-up words that you really should try using in a sentence today. [via Epi-Log]...
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Paul Boutin at the Valleywag blog is a man after my own heart. He's geeking out over the new words being added to Merriam-Webster's 2008 edition, due out September 1 (but online now), and got a sneak peek at "the 25 most populist of the new entries as a teaser." Among them: edamame noun (1951) : immature green soybeans usu. in the pod pescatarian noun (1993) : a vegetarian whose diet includes fish phytonutrient n (1994) : a bioactive plant-derived compound (as resveratrol) associated with positive health effects prosecco noun (1881) : a dry Italian sparkling wine soju noun (1978) : Korean vodka distilled from rice Related Food Words for Thought: 'Locavore' as 2007's Word of the Year...
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So you all think locavore is a terrible word? How 'bout this terribly awesome word: lolcavore. It's a portmanteau of lolcat and locavore, of course. A reader of the blog Language Log came up with it and Photoshopped this lolcat-style image to go along with it: "I could not help misreading locavore/localvore as being prefixed by lol-, and then could not help but apply appropriate text to a photo... resulting in the pic." All you locavore haters, heads-up: The woman in the photo is Jessica Prentice, the coiner of the term you loathe. [via Talley Sue] Related Locavore: 2007 Word of the Year Locavore vs. localvore: the coiner speaks [Language Log]...
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As I sandwiched the words restaureality show into an entry title earlier today, I Googled the phrase to see if anyone else had used it before. Two results came back. Dammit! I've been scooped on coining a (questionably) useful word, I thought. Until I saw that one of the results pointed to a blog post I wrote last year. (The other pointed to the item I was linking to in that earlier post.) So, yeah, basically what I'm saying is I coined a word and a phrase. I think it's in the world's best interest that I be open-source with this, so feel free to use it at will....
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