Neologism (?) Winners

Someone just sent me an article about winners in the Washington Post’s annual neologism contest, where readers supplied alternate meanings to commonly used words.

These are funny, but I need to tell you the list was published 17 years ago, in 2005. So they might already be familiar. A few may offend some of you, but that is not my intent in running the list.

1. Coffee (n.), the person upon whom one coughs
2. Flabbergasted (adj.), appalled over how much weight you have gained
3. Abdicate (v.), to give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach
4. Esplanade (v.), to attempt an explanation while drunk
5. Willy-nilly (adj.), impotent
6. Negligent (adj.), describes a condition in which you absentmindedly answer the door in your nightgown
7. Lymph (v.), to walk with a lisp
8. Gargoyle (n.), olive-flavored mouthwash
9. Flatulence (n.) emergency vehicle that picks you up after you are run over by a steamroller
10. Balderdash (n.), a rapidly receding hairline
11. Testicle (n.), a humorous question on an exam
12. Rectitude (n.), the formal, dignified bearing adopted by proctologists
13. Pokemon (n), a Rastafarian proctologist
14. Oyster (n.), a person who sprinkles his conversation with Yiddis
15. Frisbeetarianism (n.), the belief that, when you die, your soul flies up onto the roof and gets stuck there
16. Circumvent (n.), an opening in the front boxer shorts worn by Jewish men

(BTW, a “neologism” is a new word or new usage of a word.)

Clever Puns Crack Me Up

Here’s a small collection, culled from a long list posted on Facebook.

• The fattest knight at King Arthur's round table was Sir Cumference. He acquired his size from too much pi.
• I thought I saw an eye doctor on an Alaskan island, but it turned out to be an optical Aleutian.
• A rubber band pistol was confiscated from algebra class, because it was a weapon of math disruption.
• No matter how much you push the envelope, it'll still be stationery.
• Two silk worms had a race. They ended up in a tie.
• Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
• The midget fortune-teller who escaped from prison was a small medium at large.
• A backward poet writes inverse.
• In a democracy it's your vote that counts. In feudalism it's your count that votes.

Helpful Adjective Order

I don’t remember where I saw this, probably on Facebook, but it was interesting—something about a young J.R.R. Tolkien being taught a valuable grammatical lesson by his mother, Mabel Tolkien.

To wit: Adjectives in English modifying a noun absolutely must abide by a certain order: 

1. Opinion
2. Size
3. Age
4. Shape
5. Color
6. Origin
7. Material
8. Purpose
9. NOUN

Example: “Cute little old rectangular green French silver whittling knife.” Mess with the word order and you sound ridiculous.

All of us English speakers use that list, but usually can’t write it out off the top of our heads.

Back to young Tolkien. When he was 7, he wrote “green great dragon.” But because size comes before color, he was incorrect. According to mother Mabel, it should have been “great green dragon.”

You know who JRR Tolkien was, don’t you? He wrote the iconic fantasy geeks, “The Hobbit,” and “Lord of the Rings,” on which the Blockbuster movies were based.

Mother knows best. Yes she does. Now go back to what you were doing before I rudely interrupted.

Acquired Accents

It’s a matter of life, we all take on the local accent of the area where we grew up or lived in for a substantial period of time.

Where we went to college, for example. Or where we relocated for our longtime employment.

Well, let me tell you, I recently unintentionally acquired some language inflection (accent) changes from—get this—television series on Amazon Prime Video and Netflix.

During my recent Facebook break, I watched 78 episodes (6 seasons), of “Justified,” set in Harlan County, Kentucky. After the first season, I noticed a Southern inflection in my speech. As might be expected, it intensified as the series progressed.

Even in mah wrahting, I stahted using “y’all,” “yondah,” “precious” and “bless” moah than ah used tah . And when ah rehd thangs, ah mentahly sounded lack a true Suthnah.

Any thoughts of growing out of it were dashed when I started binge-watching “The Closer” (7 seasons, 109 episodes), whose principal character moved from Atlanta to become Deputy Chief of LAPD’s Priority Murder Squad.

And she has one helluva Southern accent.

I had the same experience when I binged on a few British detective drama series (e.g., “Midsomer Murders,” 20 seasons, 122 episodes; “Broadchurch,” 3 seasons, 24 episodes).

Result? A bit of an English ahccent. I stahted dropping my “r’s,” saying “Jawj” when I meant “George.” It made me wahnt t’open a can-a beah. I started wokking the flaw.

I guess the English and Southern accents have become permanent parts of my language now. And maybe it’s not such a bad thing.

Thankfully, I don’t speak pidgin English with a Hawaii accent anymore. Got rid-a DAT buggah when I relocated to Los Angeles in the mid-‘60s. 

Pronunciation Counts

I like Alton Brown, and his show "Good Eats," but like most Anglo-Americans, he murders a lot of Japanese words, mispronouncing: 

• Dashi (flavored broth) as DOH-shi. It's DAH-shi.
• Konbu (kelp) as KAHN-boo. It's KOHN-bu.
• Oishi (tasty) as o-WEE-shi. It's OY-shi.

To the practiced ear of someone like me, who's grown up with a familiarity of Japanese terms, it just sounds silly. Correct pronunciation of foreign words is important; American, Canadian, English or Australian accents must be left on the table.

Forget the pearl-shaped tones. Be harsh. I heard a comedian once say that when you speak Japanese, you have to sound constipated. Funny, and pretty close to the truth.

Putting the ac-CENT on the wrong sil-LA-ble makes the speaker sound goofy. Hispanics usually have no trouble with Japanese words and names because their language generally follows the same rules as Asian languages.

And, to further confuse the Caucasian tongue, in Japanese the letter "A" is always pronounced "ah." "E" is pronounced "eh," "l" is pronounced "Ee," and "U" is pronounced "oo." Only "O" is pronounced the same—"oh."

When I moved to Los Angeles in the mid-'50s to attend Woodbury College, my professors (and practically every Caucasian I met, by the way) called me "Maya-MOTTO." So wrong. I always had to correct them: "It's 'MIA' as in 'Mia Farrow,' and 'moto' as in 'Mr. Moto.' MIA-moto.

"Think of the Japanese samurai, Miyamoto Musashi."

"Mah-SU-shi?"

... (Silence)

All of this reminds me of the time I dropped into a knife shop in a New Orleans shopping mall and overheard the store clerk talking to a well-dressed young man about Japanese swords. He obviously was trying to impress a naive buyer and make a sale.

He kept pronouncing katana as ka-TAH-na. Over and over again, ad nauseum. 

I couldn't stand it anymore, interrupted and corrected him in front of the potential customer: "Excuse me, but it's not pronounced 'ka-TAH-na' ... it's pronounced "KAHT-a-NAH."

His forehead squinched and his shoulders sagged. The customer laughed, thanked me and walked out chuckling.

I felt a little bad about ruining his sale, but a yonsei (fourth generation, pronounced YON-sei) Japanese-American has got to do what he's got to do.

P.S., And it's "kara-OH-keh," not "Kerry-oky." That one's just plain STOO-pit.

Signage Fail

While shopping at Times Market McCully on King Street the other day, I noticed this sign -->

Two things wrong with it:

(1) They mention “Banana Apple.” WRONG! It’s "Apple Banana." I’ve never heard of (much less seen) an apple shaped or tasting like a banana. Rather “eww-y” to me.

(2) The sign is over small pumpkins, NOT bananas, NOT apples, and certainly, NOT banana apples or even apple bananas.

It’s enough to drive a person … well, bananas.

Hilarious Actual Headlines

Since we recently talked about what’s in newspapers, here’s more hilarity gleaned from your local city newspapers.

I may have posted some of these before, but I’m too lazy to go back and check. They would warrant reposting anyway. Sorry, but I don’t have any source verification information.

Enjoy! And don’t laugh so hard you pee in your pants.

• Man Kills Self Before Shooting Wife and Daughter
• Something Went Wrong in Jet Crash, Expert Says
• Police Begin Campaign to Run Down Jaywalkers
• Panda Mating Fails; Veterinarian Takes Over
• Miners Refuse to Work After Death
• Juvenile Court to Try Shooting Defendant
• War Dims Hope for Peace
• If Strike Isn’t Settled Quickly, It May Last Awhile
• Cold Wave Linked to Temperatures
• Enfield Couple Slain; Police Suspect Homicide
• Red Tape Holds Up New Bridges
• Man Struck by Lightning: Faces Battery Charge
• New Study of Obesity Looks for Larger Test Group
• Astronaut Takes Blame for Gas In Spacecraft
• Kids Make Nutritious Snacks
• Local High School Dropouts Cut in Half
• Hospitals Are Sued by 7 Foot Doctors
• Typhoon Rips Through Cemetery; Hundreds Dead

Where to Cut?

 

This panel appeared in a CVS Long's Drug advertising supplement recently.

My question is: From which end of the condom are they going to take 30% off? The opening end, or the tip? And why do you need a card for them to do this?

Well, at least they offer a pregnancy test just in case they cut off the wrong end.

But wait. What's an "Early Result" pregnancy test that they mention? If you can find out you're pregnant six days before becoming pregnant, then I guess it presupposes they cut off the tip end?

I'm soooo confused!

The ‘Learning Something New’ Aphorism

“Frazz,” by Jeff Mallett, is one of my favorite newspaper comic strips to read during breakfast with my morning coffee.

I especially enjoy the insights of 8-year-old Caufield, a precocious and creative thinker.

 

Recently, Caufield was talking to the strip’s principal character, school custodian Edwin “Frazz” Frazier, who remarked that Caufield wasn’t usually averse to learning something new. (Caufield had just had another run-in with his teacher, the bespeckled Mrs. Olsen.)

Caulfield noted something about a phrase that always gets on my nerves: “You learn something new every day.” I have issues with those words.

First of all, nobody learns something new every day. If we did, you’d be able to tell me what you learned the day before yesterday, the day before that, the day before that, and so on ad infinitum.

 

You can’t. So you didn’t learn something every day. You may have heard something new every day, but you certainly didn’t learn it.

Secondly, Caufield is right. Everything you learn is new. Isn’t it? You’ve never learned anything that was “old” to you. “Learn something new” is redundant.

Right? Right! I hope you learn this from this and remember it.

 

A 27-Million Visitor Count Mistake

Here we go again. It's another egregious error on the part of The Honolulu Star-Advertiser. This time, the boner appeared yesterday in Anthony Curtis' "Las Vegas Advisor" column that runs every Sunday in the local rag.

When I saw the headline, it tickled my interest. "A record 15 million" is unusual in itself, since I know a helluva lot more tourists hit Sin City (aka Las Vegas) annually.

The true figure emerges early in the first paragraph. Curtis actually said "42 million." But somehow, the Star-Advertiser headline writer must have had "2015" in his/her mind and keyed in "15" instead of the correct "42."

(Click on the picture to enlarge it.)

The thing is, apparently, nobody proofed the page before it hit the presses.

When I was editor of a weekly newspaper in Los Angeles back in the late '60s-early '70s, I fired a couple of people for errors like this. We were a small paper, but we had high standards. The Star-Advertiser is a much larger daily paper than we were, but apparently, its standards leave much to be desired.

Shame, shame!

What's Wrong With This Ad?

 

While waiting for the wife to be called into the doctor's office one day, I busied myself by picking up the December 2014 issue of Bon Appetit magazine, figuring maybe I could find an easy recipe that I could make.

As soon as I turned the front cover, the above promotional ad by Bravo exploded in my face.

You do know what the pun in the ad is all about, don't you? "Who the fork will win?" Frankly, I've used that phrase myself, more than once. But ...

I was shocked to see it employed in a supposedly classy magazine like Bon Appetit, especially to promote a competition to find the best new restaurant. I'm also surprised that Bravo would let their advertising people come up with a horrible, vulgar ad like this, and even more surprised that it would pass Bravo's management scrutiny.

Nobody enjoys a pun more than I do, but ... not when it's to emulate a disgusting phrase in a magazine read by nice people like me.

When is a Kit the Same As a Dole?

... When you're talking about groups of pigeons and doves.

A group of pigeons is called a "kit." A group of doves is called a "dole." Betcha didn't know that. Neither did I, until I uncovered this picture I took a long time ago of pigeons and doves feeding in a local supermarket's parking lot.

 

I was going to describe the picture as a food convention of pigeons and doves, but recalled that groups of specific birds have specific names. For example, a "murder" of crows, a "murmuration" of starlings, a "bouquet" of pheasants, a "descent" of woodpeckers, a "tidings" of magpies ...

Gotta be specific, y'know.

Sign Language?

Hawaiian Rent-All at the corner of Beretania and McCully Streets is rather famous for its witty quotation sign that can hardly be missed as one drives toward downtown Honolulu.

The sign changes on a rather regular basis, and people turning left onto Beretania from McCully, or as I mentioned, those driving straight past it on the way to town, can't help but glance, read and chuckle.

When the original owners sold the business to a mainland proprietor, there was some concern that the punny signs would be discontinued. To the contrary, the quotes kept on keeping on, and even delved into controversial subjects that outraged the police, lawmakers and some of the public.

Did Hawaiian Rent-All capitulate? Not on your life! They've always stood by with their signs' language and don't change them for anything.

Except that ... they really should fix the wording that I spotted when I drove past this week:

 

Everybody knows that the possessive form of "our" is "ours," not our's." Right?

What’s in a Name?

When non-Americans name products that land on American store shelves, or when immigrants open a business establishment with a name that makes sense in their native language, the result is sometimes hilarious.

I’m sure the names are not intentionally funny, I’m sure it all makes sense in their language. Unfortunately, Americans tend to think anything that sounds like something they’d make fun of is funny, no matter if it insults the namer.

Asian products and words tend to tickle our funny button more than any other language. Take for example, this beverage:

Or this Vietnamese restaurant:

Y'know, they really should consult someone familiar with marketing in the Americas.

So What Sport is This?

I’m not a big fan of local sports, but for some reason I started reading the attached story that ran on the left side of Tuesday’s Honolulu Star-Advertiser Sports Section front page. Guess I thought it was about football because of the headline, and football somewhat interests me.

Well, I read all the way to the bottom of the 11-inch story and nowhere did reporter Cindy Luis mention what sport she was talking about. Actually, I figured it out in the second paragraph when the words “stuffs” and “kills” appeared.

It was about University of Hawaii Wahine volleyball. But not once in the story does the word “volleyball” appear.

In Journalism School, I was taught that the pertinent facts should be presented in the story lead … The first – and at minimum the second – paragraph, so as not to keep the reader guessing. The reader should not have to solve a puzzle. What if someone who’s not conversant in volleyball lingo reads the story? Major confusion, right?

Actually, any fervent sports fan could figure it out quite easily, but that’s not the point. The point is, there are certain basic journalism “rules” that should be followed, and I think clearing up what sport is being discussed is tops among the list.

Usually at least a clue appears in the headline, or in the smaller teaser head on top. Not this time. Nothing. Nada.

But everything has its good points. ‘Way down toward the bottom, there’s mention that the University of Southern California Trojan women’s team is firmly entrenched in first place with an unblemished 20-0 record.

Fight on!

Pho Noodle Soop

I just thought you'd get a kick out of this phonetic spelling from Fremont's Pho Saigon Pasteur Vietnamese Noodle Shop menu. No big deal ... LOL.

It's sooper dooper!

Yin-Yang vis-a-vis YING-Yang

At one of our family dinners at a Milpitas Chinese restaurant (The King Wah Restaurant), the waitresses taped a slip of paper with our order on the table. As I can't read Chinese, my son's mother-in-law asked for a printout in English.

That came in mighty handy when I wrote a posting of the restaurant for my restaurant blog.

It was while referring to the list during the writing that I saw it. They called the "Yin-Yang Fried Rice" "Ying-Yang Fried Rice."

Ahem. We all know that Yin-Yang refers to two opposing parts juxtaposed to form a whole ... like night and day, male and female, hot and cold, and so forth. You can see it at work in the Korean flag.

But most people arbitrarily say "Ying" instead of "yin," and in doing so, don't realize what they are really saying.

You see, although "Ying-yang" can be considered an alternate pronunciation of "yin-yang," it has a rather different meaning in English and American slang. "Ying-Yang" means either the human anus, or the male penis ... as in "up the Ying-yang." Look it up; there are even citations in English literature using the phrase in that context.

So, next time you are tempted to use the phrase in everyday conversation, please drop the "g" in "Ying."

Stop the Presses!

Extra! Extra! This just in ... The Honolulu Star-Advertiser reported yesterday that the Foo Fighters and their front man Dave Grohl can't finish their current tour.

Why? Well according to the newspaper, he braked his ankle. Yep, you read that right. "Grohl brakes his ankle," the story read. You can see the actual clipping to the left.

All I can say is ... here we go again. Whoever's in charge of headline writing, and whoever's in charge of news editing at the Honolulu Star-Advertiser is/are living up to his/her/their reputation of inaccuracy and unprofessionalism.

I can just hear it in the newsroom: "Whoa, Ankle! WHOA!"

Sen. Inouye's Teeny Library?

If you live in Hawaii, and if you subscribe to the local rag, The Star-Advertiser, you may have missed this. I almost did. See, I didn't actually read the story (I'm a headline reader, as you probably know by now).

But for some reason, egregious errors just pop out at me. Like this huge one in Tuesday's morning newspaper.

According to the article, U.S. Sen. Daniel K. Inouye's papers are to be stored in a $27.5 Inouye library. I think a word might be missing - like "million"? Gotta be. Otherwise, the newspaper is saying Sen. Inouye costs only $27.50. Either that, or his library is going to cost only $27.50.

That's a pretty small library.

If You Love Words 2

Here’s the second half of a lexophile’s compilation. A lexophile is someone who loves words. Are YOU a lexophile? 

• Police were summoned to a daycare center where a 3-year-old was resisting a rest.
• Did you hear about the fellow whose entire left side was cut off? He's all right now.
• A bicycle can't stand alone; it's just two tired.
• When a clock is hungry it goes back four seconds.
• The guy who fell onto an upholstery machine is now fully recovered.
• He had a photographic memory that was never developed.
• When she saw her first strands of grey hair she thought she'd dye.
• Acupuncture is a jab well done. That's the point of it.
• Those who get too big for their pants will be totally exposed in the end.

Groaning is permitted.