A friend recently sent me along a quirky little poem that took some time to understand:
A fabulous verb is "to pronk"
The antelopes jump when you honk.
Its synonym, "stot"
Was made up by some Scot.
I think that he must have been dronk.
And its arrival was close behind Word of the Day's minority definition of tattoo:
Tattoo is an alteration of earlier taptoo, from Dutch taptoe, "a tap(house)-shut," from tap, "faucet" + toe, "shut" -- meaning, essentially, that the tavern is about to shut.
Now, here I found a treasure for etymologically-disposed searchers searching for strikes in the literary loam:
OED Appeals List
Could it really be that "poo" only became feces in 1981? And "wife-beater (T-shirt)" only 1993?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
OK, I found the poem on languagehat.com!
Post a Comment