I was going to try to work all your "dont's" into a little bit of verse, but I Googled the definition of "clumpkin" and decided I'd better not. (If anyone else is curious about the definition - you really don't want to know.)
Ewwwww. I swear I had no idea it had acquired a foul sexual meaning. In the OED it's defined as an archaic term for the heel of a loaf of bread. One of my fellow Classics TAs remembered it, and a professor ended up looking it up for us.
I would be thrilled if you made a little poem out of my list... feel free to substitute your own pedantic, Germanic-sounding word. I was poking fun at the sort of poem that takes a laudable preference for Anglo-Saxon too far... and at that dead horse of a word, "shard." (Have you ever seen the Futility Review? The "Guidelines" are amusing.)
Shard has also become semi-common slang for a couple of different things as well... not nearly so gross as clumpkin though. Also, I believe the correct term for a group of slugs is a"cornucopia", so I assume that would apply to banana slugs as well. Reefer is funnier though.
Oh, there's lots of room for closely-related specificities to get different collective nouns.
For instance, we have crows -> murder ravens -> unkindness rooks -> parliament I wonder if there's a trend in there...
I'm also constitutionally opposed to ceding vocabulary to the advances of slangsters and uncouth folk; not that we should run around rejoicing in "a heap of faggots burning gaily..." but... you know?
I was going to try to work all your "dont's" into a little bit of verse, but I Googled the definition of "clumpkin" and decided I'd better not. (If anyone else is curious about the definition - you really don't want to know.)
ReplyDeleteEwwwww. I swear I had no idea it had acquired a foul sexual meaning. In the OED it's defined as an archaic term for the heel of a loaf of bread. One of my fellow Classics TAs remembered it, and a professor ended up looking it up for us.
ReplyDeleteI would be thrilled if you made a little poem out of my list... feel free to substitute your own pedantic, Germanic-sounding word. I was poking fun at the sort of poem that takes a laudable preference for Anglo-Saxon too far... and at that dead horse of a word, "shard." (Have you ever seen the Futility Review? The "Guidelines" are amusing.)
Well, then, I shall see what I can do for you - it may take a little while.
ReplyDeleteIs "a reefer of banana slugs" the real name? It seems somehow appropriate as the banana slug is the mascot of UCSC.
ReplyDeleteDunno, I just made it up. I *was* thinking of UCSC, though. Dirty hippies! ^_^
ReplyDeleteShard has also become semi-common slang for a couple of different things as well... not nearly so gross as clumpkin though.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I believe the correct term for a group of slugs is a"cornucopia", so I assume that would apply to banana slugs as well. Reefer is funnier though.
Oh, there's lots of room for closely-related specificities to get different collective nouns.
ReplyDeleteFor instance, we have
crows -> murder
ravens -> unkindness
rooks -> parliament
I wonder if there's a trend in there...
I'm also constitutionally opposed to ceding vocabulary to the advances of slangsters and uncouth folk; not that we should run around rejoicing in "a heap of faggots burning gaily..." but... you know?