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

 

 

 

 

June 2011 Issue

Semper Ubi Sub Ubi

readme:

Hey, it’s still June out here in the boonies. We get our seasons on dialup. But I’m not gonna miss this month when it’s gone.

Would it be unpatriotic to say that I hate summer? This is, after all, the United States of Beach Party and Backyard Barbecue, right? But I do, and I always have. I grew up on the shore of Long Island Sound (my parents had left me in the care of some seagulls), but I actively hated the whole sitting-on-the-beach thing. I liked sailing, and I really liked going down to Tod’s Point in the winter, but the beach? Meh. I do miss the ocean, though.

Anyway, it has rained almost constantly for the past month, and this place is beginning to look decidedly tropical. Trees that were on their last legs have blossomed into spectacular health. The grass grows inches every day. The thistles proliferate, as do the mosquitoes. You can’t turn around without encountering a snake, and last week I saw the biggest spider I’ve ever seen, right there on the front porch. Seriously, this thing was the size of a teacup, a genuine nightmare, and it wasn’t afraid of anybody. I more than made up for that deficit by nearly having a heart attack on the spot and nightmares for days afterward. When your house is as porous as ours is, the distinction between “outside” and “inside” is largely statistical, and there’s no reason that thing couldn’t find its way inside if it chose to.

I have decided that I would very much like to live in a high-rise apartment with central air and wall-to-wall carpeting, a shower that works, windows and doors that fit, no flooded basement, no bugs, no blackouts, no tornadoes, no coyotes, no farmers spraying their crops (and us) with chemicals banned in every other advanced country, no idiot neighbors “accidentally” shooting at our house, and water you can drink right from the tap. If I ever win the Lotto, I am back in NYC so fast…. But I wanna live in NYC circa 1980, not the Disneyfied Trustifarian strip mall Manhattan has become.

Speaking of tornadoes, we had a tornado alert the other day and the county warning sirens went off. Twenty minutes after the warning had been issued by the NWS, ten minutes after the storm had passed just south of us. This is all too typical around here.

What else? I finally got around to watching the final episode of the first (and last) season of The Event, which NBC canceled to make room for more cowflop reality shows. The Event producers apparently didn’t know they were about to be axed, because the show ended with a really fine cliffhanger, one good enough to make me very angry that it will never be continued and resolved. I didn’t mind when Carnivale and the ludicrous Invasion dribbled out a few years ago because they had already lost steam and any reason to continue, but I really liked The Event. The Event had actual ideas.

Oh well. I’ve been watching TNT’s Falling Skies, but the jury’s still out. Parts are interesting, but there are way too many cute kids to be healthy. The Executive Producer of Skies is, of course, Steven Spielberg, who also produced the recent Super 8, a fawning homage to the oeuvre of, wait for it, Steven Spielberg. I didn’t like Super 8 while I was watching it, and over the next few days I came to absolutely hate it. Apart from the fact that big hunks of it made no sense, it seemed like little more than a plodding, checklist concatenation of ET, The Goonies, and Close Encounters, three treacly American classics that I’d vote to deep-six for eternity. Dude shoulda stopped with Jaws.

Oh well, here comes July. I’d be amazed if we weren’t overrun by zebras and wildebeest by August at this rate. A family of raccoons has taken up residence in the upstairs of the pole barn we use for a garage, and they’ve produced two babies, which are, dare I say it, even cuter than kittens. I sneak Momma Raccoon dry dog food every so often. (And yes, I know not to get very close to them.)

Thanks, as usual, to all the wonderful folks who subscribed or contributed last month. You light up my life, by which I mean, of course, that you pay the electric bill. And buy food for the baby raccoons. And for the cats and dogs. And for us.

Hey, I just noticed that we’re nearing 1,000 Facebook “likes” on our TWD Facebook page! And not a single one of you is related to me! And I actually know only three or four of you personally! I’m not sure what that says about my friends and family, but hey, It’s Awesome!

Now, if I could just get every one of you lovely folks to send me ten bucks….

Lastly, please send in your questions!

And now, on with the show….

2 comments to June 2011 Issue

  • Richard Zak MD

    Mr. Morris

    As an ophthalmologist, I enjoyed reading your column on “optics” this week. I also enjoyed reading your recent bit on our cultural aversion to correct spelling. So I feel obliged to mention the missing “h” in your rendition of “ophthalmology”. You’re certainly not alone, though. Googling the uncorrected version will reveal nearly 6 million hits – many from fellow ophthalmologists. To get around the entire issue, we often just refer to ourselves as “eye guys”.

  • judy allen-rodgers

    Where, why and how did we get the word: “nightmare”?

Leave a Reply to Richard Zak MD Cancel 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