Stockpile of words and phrases
which are
sure to come in useful some day

pointy faces


Word oddities and trivia

Phillongitudinoverbalism
Vietnamese is a very succinct language: all words are one syllable. The longest word I can find in the Tù Diên dictionary is nghiêng - a whole 7 letters. Safety warning: if you are elderly or infirm, do not attempt to pronounce nghiêng - it could cause irreparable torsion of the tongue. Instead, say "tilt," which is what it means. Could this be the shortest longest word in any language?

If you prefer long mellifluous words, turn to Return of the Triboldies, where you can read the names of the Bold 880.

Bamblustercation, bumfoozlement, comflogistication, conflabberation, confusbustication, discomgollifustication, discumfuddlement, dumbfoozlement, flabbergastation, spiflication, confusiasm

What's all this, now? What's going on here? Where am I? What day is it?

Hoxy-poxy

OK, so that's not the right word. I made it up, I admit. But what IS the right word? I hoped it might have been homoteleuticism, but that turned out to be something else. What I need is a term for terms like this:

harum-scarum, hodge-podge, hookah-pookah, hunky-dory, humpty-dumpty, hubble-bubble, hummy-stummy, jiggery-pokery, helter-skelter, humble-bumble, hiccius-doccius, hugger-mugger, Moppsikon Floppsikon, Hogan Mogan, humber-dumber, hoozy-poozy, namby-pamby, Hottentotten, hurdy-gurdy, huzza-buzza, kicksie-wicksie, hocus-pocus, hunky-dory, hurly-burly, hubbly-jubbly, horsy-corsy, Hobson-Jobson, dilly-dally, tittle-tattle, willy-nilly, hoity-toity, huddle-puddle, charivari, topsy-turvy, hookah-pookah, knick-knack, flimsy-flamsy...

Actually, I made up some of those. Only a few, though. Pick them if you can: you'll need a very heavy dictionary.

Private alphabets and Unicode

Ever since my school days, I've been making up new languages and alphabets. Dromescript (as in Dromeworld) and Batronian (as in Lear on Limbo) are both lifted from my alphabetic doodling. Unicode is a new system for accomodating unusual scripts, replacing the old ASCII code previously used on computers, which can only handle 256 different characters.

Unicode has been created to handle all the world's alphabets and writing systems. So if you make up a new alphabet, you can submit it to the International Unicode Group. If enough people use it (even if they're only your friends) you can have it officially recognized.

Questions to keep you awake at night

What do polkas have to do with polka dots?
I've asked lots of people this question, and get a different theory every time. My favourite one is that dancing polkas makes people dizzy, so they start seeing dots in front of their eyes. Any improvement on that?

Who, or what, was Diddly Squat?
Sounds like a person. Bo Diddley's great-great-uncle, perhaps?

What happens in a cakewalk?
Do you walk on cake? (Are you a candle?) Or do the cakes get up on their little fat legs and walk? If the former, why don't you sink in? If the latter, why don't they roll instead?

What was the original Old Dart?
A pub? And what sort of dart was it? Not a sharp-pointed one?

To weed out sheep from goats, insert these questions on application forms, exams, etc.

"What is nothing, and why do we have so much of it?" - from the College of Perpendicular Logic - see above.

Concerning weeding out the sheep from the goats - which are the weeds: sheep or goats? And if we are weeding, why sheep and goats? Why not, say, thistles and roses?

And speaking of keeping you awake at night, what about "tossing and turning?" Turning, yes - but what is actually tossed? Pillows in the air? Or did you drink far too much beer?

When does a leader become a ringleader?

When does a man become a henchman? (And what's a hench, anyway?)

What sort of spit does a lickspittle lick?

Why do the English have only four sexes, not five? There are Sussex, Essex, Wessex, and Middlesex. What happened to Norsex? And what about Sidebottomsex?

1. Will the answer to this question be Yes or No?
2. Why, or why not?

If there are more trees in the world than leaves on any one tree, does it follow that there must be at least two trees with the same number of leaves?

I puzzled over this, and eventually decided the answer was Yes. Years later, I realized I was wrong: if there were two trees in the world, one tree could have one leaf and the other could have none.

Quidditudes

English is rich in words for, well, you know, when you can't think of, ah... There was no collective noun for these words, so I made one up: quidditudes. This latinate form may seem impressive, but if you don't know what it means, perhaps "whatsies" would convey more of the sense. Strangely, other languages don't seem to have such words.

Quidditudes are thicker on the ground in Melbourne than anywhere I've ever been: not because people can't think of the words, but because they seem to have an atavistic fear of pinning something down by naming it. As a memorial to the year I lived in Melbourne (1979-80) and tried to understand the Melbournites, I wrote Midnight Deli. In the first few chapters, Danny and Simone talk a lot of whatsies.

Notice that all the quittitudes are nouns. The English language could do with some whatsical verbs and adjectives. Here's an ultimatum: if you (the collective readers of this page) don't I'll be forced to make some up. In fact, I'll quidditudinally doover them. You have been warned!

New words

If you read my novels, you'll strike the odd word that you haven't seen before. Here are some of the words I've used - or might use in future.

Whatlessness = the state of being without a what - perhaps when a question beginning "what" has already been answered. Synonym: quidditudinouslessness.

Cabbage = taxi fare. "How much was the cabbage when you caught that cab to Kangarilla last night?"

Kangarilla = a cross between a kangaroo and a gorilla? (Which would you rather stumble into on a dark, stormy night - a kangarilla or a bugbear?) Also an outer suburb of Adelaide.

Hungus = to nag for food - a Rotoruvian word...
Scene: Whakarewarewa school at lunchtime.
First pupil: "Giss ya biscuit, eho."
2nd pupil: "Stop hungussing!"

Goaquil joma = a giant South American sheep, extremely woolly. (Dreamed 23/11/97)

Clonage = identical type of person. "I knew Anne-Marie would get the job at Sirocco, because the other waitresses there are the same clonage as her."

Coloured people

In my novel Cloud the Cloudists rename themselves as colours. When I needed 20 or 30 names for characters, I soon found the English language has very few single words for colours. Most colour words are metaphors: the colour is named after the thing of that colour - e.g. orange. So I turned to some other languages and compiled this list of colours which would make plausible names for people. If you can't decide what to call your baby, consider these...

Heraldic colours: Gules (yellow), Sable (black), Argent (blue)
Latin or Italian and already used as names: Nero (black), Bruno (brown), Rosa (pink), Ross, Rufus
Spanish: Moreno (brown), Pardo (grey), Amarillo (yellow)
Tamil: Karupu (black)
Bengali: Badami (brown) - good name for a villain?
Hindi: Jaamuni (purple)
Persian: Zard (yellow), Surati (pink), Kermez (red) Latin: Fuscus (brown), Glaucus (grey-blue), Aureus (golden), Albus (white), Puniceus (pink)
Greek: Melanie (black), Xanthos (yellow)
Clear -> Clea (Bram: "What sort of colour is that?" - Indigo: "A retired scientologist")
Japanese: Chairo (brown), Midori (green), Pinku (did they copy our word, or vice versa?), Akai (red)
English (sort of): Plummy
Vietnamese: Tim (purple)
Portuguese: Roxo (purple), Vermelho (red)
Malay: Urgu (purple)
Samoan: Uliuli (black)
Thai: Chompu (pink)

illions

We have a million, a billion, a trillion - but why stop there? Using supercomputers in negative-entropy laboratories, mathematicians have discovered the zillion, the squillion, and the gazillion. The other day I found quadtetragazillion. Could that be gazillion with 16 more zeroes?

Dave Barry wrote in the Miami Herald in March 2004 that the US budget deficit was 300 skillion drillion dollars. Evevn without knowing the precise number of zeroes, that must be a lot, because it was reported as far away as Australia.

The world needs more illions. Here are a few.

Metaphors with meaning

We often use words phrases without stopping to think where they came from, or even whether they have specific meanings.

Scumbag
The Australian federal parliament used to be the rudest on the planet - MPs called each other all sorts of abusive names. When TV cameras were introduced, it didn't look good. They decided to clean up their act, and started compiling a list of terms that MPs weren't allowed to call each other. Paul Keating, Prime Minister during the early 1990s, was one of the rudest of all. He specialized in calling other MPs "scumbags" - a term that wasn't on the blacklist. Maybe that was because nobody realized that a scumbag is a used condom.

Blackguard. I read about these in (I think) Boswell's London Diary for 1762. Could it be as racist as it sounds?

Bugbear. What manner of bear is this? If crossbred with a cockroach, it could be a fearsome creature indeed.

Butterfly. How does butter help it fly? Wyld's dictionary offers no attribution, but Lewis Carroll knew of bread-and-butterflies.

40 winks = zero winks, but one long blink.

High falutin' ~ what's a falute, anyway? Something that a lisping soldier does?

Sabre-rattling ~ but sabres are solid, and can't rattle.

Catcall = a type of whistle, used in the late 18th century in England to express dissatisfaction with a dramatic or musical performance.

Claptrap = a clapping machine (OED, 1866). The opposite of a catcall?

Roughshod = a horseshoe that's roughened on the bottom. (Is this supposed to make it more uncomfortable for the person being walked over by the horse?)

Tangleberry
I know these are American, but what are they? I wanted a picture of a tangled bush, and searched the Web for botanical notes. Nothing. Do tangleberries really exist? If not, what are they? (Possible clue: in some old fashioned parts of Australia, a cackleberry is an egg.)

Insults and arguments

From scumbag to the Shakespearean Insult Kit. Beslubbering onion-eyed moldwarp, thou!

Specially compiled for the Irish parliament, there's a Gaelic curse generator, which works pretty much like the Shakespearean one - except that you can't understand the curses unless you speak Gaelic. This could be useful, at times. [April 2006: the site seems to be on holiday.]

Or if you feel like an argument with Socrates, you can pit your skills against his at the infuriating Socrates Argument Clinic - and find out why they made Socrates drink hemlock.

Vwl shrtg

D knw tht sm prts f rp rgntl nd vwls? President Clinton dedicated the US military machine to solving this problem. Read the State Department's press release on vowels to Bosnia. "Said Sjlbvdnzv resident Grg Hmphrs, 67: 'With just a few key letters, I could be George Humphries. This is my dream.''"

Contranyms

The English language makes it possible to have two near-identical expressions with completely opposite meanings, e.g.

Posites

Potentially useful words that everybody has underlooked.

I was going to add more, but I'll stop there, because I found the story How I Met My Wife, by Jack Winter - published in the New Yorker for 25 July 1994. "I was very chalant, despite my efforts to appear gruntled and consolate." Who could top that?

While you're there, you might as well check out the rest of this Oxymoron humour archive.

Australian slang

If you're reading the Floaters novels, and you don't live in Australia, you may wonder about some of the things the characters say. Specially in Midnight Deli. But don't worry! Dunway.com has produced a detailed glossary of Australian slang, which explains most of this strange variety of English. Another, almost as good is this Australian slang dictionary.

Wordy websites

There are lots of web sites about wordplay. Two of the best are