Search us!

Search The Word Detective and our family of websites:

This is the easiest way to find a column on a particular word or phrase.

To search for a specific phrase, put it between quotation marks.

 

 

 

 

 

Comments are OPEN.

We deeply appreciate the erudition and energy of our commenters. Your comments frequently make an invaluable contribution to the story of words and phrases in everyday usage over many years.

Please note that comments are moderated, and will sometimes take a few days to appear.

 

 

shameless pleading

 

 

 

 

July 2008 Issue

Oh, hi.  What time is it?  I must have fallen asleep.  Sorry about that.

So, did Hillary win yet?  Anybody ever figure out what kind of batteries Mitt takes?

Ralph Nader is running?  That’s a bad sign.  Wake me when it’s over.

As you may have noticed, I’ve been away for a while.  On a spiritual quest to determine the meaning of life, if you must know.  And now I’m back, and yes, I know the answer.

But first, Grasshopper, you must mow my lawn.  Using your own gasoline.  Good luck.  The perpetual rain here in Central Cowland has transformed our seven acres of Midwestern scrubland into Amazon North, complete with weird clinging vines, exotic avian species, and, my personal fave, clouds of biting insects. We also seem to have become the local animal sanctuary, and are now providing a habitat for hundreds of rabbits, platoons of raccoons, a major underground city of groundhogs, several skunks, two humongous turkey vultures, a large owl, a redtailed hawk (a very cool looking critter, by the way), an endless parade of squirrels and chipmunks, frogs, snakes both great and small, and (this is new) a small herd of deer, which Brownie the Dog enjoys chasing across the front yard several times a week.  We also have, not surprisingly, a pack of coyotes living in the field across the road, who come right up to the house late at night.  When the fire engines start up in town several miles away, they start to howl along with the sirens.

Anyway, here is the July issue of TWD, formerly known as the June issue, rumored to have been originally intended as the May issue.  I am compelled (by the rising cost of cat food, if nothing else) to point out that folks who subscribe to TWD-by-Email have been receiving these columns like clockwork throughout our recent web hiatus.

Oh, right.  The meaning of life. Be kind.  Beyond that, beats me.  But as Pogo said,  Don’t take life so serious.  It ain’t nohow permanent.

 And now, on with the show….

Leave a Reply

  

  

  

You can use these HTML tags

<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

Please support
The Word Detective


unclesamsmaller
by Subscribing.

 

Follow us on Twitter!

 

 

 

Makes a great gift! Click cover for more.

400+ pages of science questions answered and explained for kids -- and adults!

FROM ALTOIDS TO ZIMA, by Evan Morris