Posts Tagged: animals

  • During a wayzgoose, the head of the printing and publishing houses would organise a dinner or celebration for their employees and apprentices to feast, drink, and celebrate. Maybe even eat a goose.

    Is it time to celebrate the wayzgoose?

    What is the meaning of wayzgoose? When I worked in publishing in England almost two decades ago, one of the graphic design companies we used was called Wayzgoose Design. I had never come across this unusual word before and, of course, I looked it up. It proved to be an industry word with a delightful […]

  • Wile E Coyote in court suing Acme for their product danger --- in the style of Warner Brothers cartoon

    The acme of cartoons

    The origin of acme The word acme means the best or most perfect thing that can exist or be achieved. It is quite an old word, being first used in English in the 1560s for the highest point. It comes from Greek akmē meaning highest point, edge, peak of anything (in English it was written […]

  • IMAGE: Modified from The Winged Monkeys carrying Dorothy, The Tin Man, and The Cowardly Lion, as illustrated by W.W. Denslow in “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” (1900). Wikimedia Commons.

    Flying monkeys—pets for narcissists

    There is an area where academic analysis and the layman’s understanding of mental health issues converge. In this crossover place, there is a rich vocabulary that uses metaphors from popular culture. The words and phrases we use to describe them often have some underlining wit. This perhaps helps us to cope with what can be unpleasant […]

  • Rose-Coloured-Doggles Photo by U.S. Army Sgt. Jason Brace, 86th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, Task Force Wolverine Public Affairs

    Seeing the world through rose-coloured glasses

    Are rose-coloured glasses a good thing? There is some debate about whether seeing the world through rose-coloured glasses or rose-tinted-spectacles is a bad thing or a good thing. I suspect the divide would also follow those who think a glass is half empty as opposed to those who think it is half full. That is, the […]

  • Sobek, the crocodile god

    Tears for the crocodile

    I have just got back from a trip to the Sunshine Coast in Queensland with my family. While we were there we visited the Australia Zoo at Beerwah. It is, of course, famous as the “home of the Crocodile Hunter”, Steve Irwin. It is a great zoo and now a bit of a memorial for […]

  • IMAGE: kittens on purple coloured grass. Although it is linguistically supportable that a group of cats is a clowder (also a glaring) and a group of kittens is a kindle there is reason to be suspicious.

    A clowder of cats

    … and a kindle of kittens Am I really supposed to believe that the collective term for a group of cats is a clowder and for a bunch of kittens is a kindle? I accept on the other hand that a herd of cattle, a flock of sheep, and a pride of lions are real […]

  • Batrachomyomachia, the battle of mice and frogs or a storm in a teacup

    What does batrachomyomachia mean?

    There really is such a word as batrachomyomachia. It is an obscure word and I can’t imagine how I would drop it into a conversation. I certainly wouldn’t be able to claim I was writing plain English if I used it in a business document. Nonetheless, it is a real word with an interesting history, […]

  • Words ending in oo

    Worldly words ending in -oo

    I was thinking about hullabaloo as my word of the week. When I tried to guess its origin I found that I was completely wrong—it is a native to England and Scotland. I had thought that all English words ending in -oo must come from a similar place, but the opposite is the case. I […]