Spouting Nonsense: a fifth Spoutly for Donald J. Trump based on his May 19, 2025 claim to have come up with the 420 years old word equalizing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An article by Meredith Kile at People on May 21, 2025 titled Trump says he just invented a ‘new word,’ which is now the ‘best word.’ It’s been in use since the 1500s. She quoted:

 

“Basically, what we’re doing is equalizing. There’s a new word that I came up with, which is probably the best word,” he said.

“We’re gonna equalize, where we’re all gonna pay the same. We’re gonna pay what Europe’s gonna pay,” he continued.

When you look up the noun equalizing at the Oxford English Dictionary, you will find that it first was used back in 1605, which is 420 years ago. And the transitive verb equalize shows up in 1595, and also in 1590 spelled as equalise.

Back on October 1, 2023 I blogged about Spouting Nonsense: a fourth Spoutly for Donald J. Trump based on his recent interview for Meet the Press.

 

 

 

The Cambridge Dictionary recently added over 6,000 new words including delulu, skibidi, and tradwife

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An article by Katie Phoenix at Cambridge News on August 18, 2025 is titled Cambridge Dictionary adds skibidi, delulu and tradwife among over 6,000 new words.

 

Delulu is a Gen-Z synonym for delusional. However, as shown above it just as well could be a girl’s name derived from Delia and Lulu. Boomers like me will note that it resembles desilu. Desilu Productions, Inc. was run by Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball and made the I Love Lucy TV sitcom and both The Untouchables and Mission Impossible.

 

A traditional wife is a tradwife. 

 

But skibidi is basically meaningless. It was a song back in 2018, but in 2023 showed up as part of the title to Skibidi Toilet.

 

Broligarchy is:

 

“a blend of bro and oligarchy, means ‘a small group of men, especially men owning or involved in a technology business, who are extremely rich and powerful, and who have or want political influence’.”

 

The cartoon was adapted from one on page 41 of the 1923 Cartooning Made Easy book by Charles Lederer.  

 

 

There are haves and have nots; but there are just two halves, and no halve nots.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you do not proofread, you can get total nonsense. There is a post by Dr. John Livingston at the Gem State Patriot News blog on July 20, 2025 titled Heart and Soul with a second paragraph that begins:

 

“The progressive line has always been that there are halves and halve nots and the halves are always exploiting the halve nots.”

 

No, it has not ever been. Halves is the plural for half. We can get biblical by quoting from Matthew 13:12 in the King James version:

 

“For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath.”

 

The cartoon was partly colored in from this one at Wikimedia Commons.

 

 

Jargon Buster is a useful AI tool for speechwriters

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Recently I ran across a useful artificial intelligence (AI) tool for speechwriting from word.studio called the Jargon Buster. To use it, first you paste your text into a box. Then you select one of two options:

 

1] List jargon terms and suggest alternatives.

2] Rewrite the entire text and replace jargon with more accessible language.

 

The image of a corn husking machine came from the January 10, 1857 issue of Scientific American magazine at Wikimedia Commons. 

 

 

Kairos is a Greek word about timing that speechwriters should know

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I recently ran across an article by David Murray at Pro Rhetoric on May 25, 2023 titled “The Lehrman Landing” – and Other Jargon Speechwriters Should Use Constantly. One term is Kairos:

 

“Kairos: Often forgotten as an element as important as logos, pathos and ethos, Kairos refers to the timeliness of an argument, or more broadly to the ‘moment’ in which any communication occurs. The Gettysburg Address would not have gone over big at a supermarket opening in 1975.”

 

There is another article by Jennifer Calonia at Grammarly on February 1, 2024 titled What is Kairos: History, Definition, and Examples. And there is a web page by Gideon O. Burton at

Silva Rhetoricae on Kairos. Also John Zimmer at Manner of Speaking on July 27, 2022 has an article titled Kairos: The foundation of rhetoric that explains:

 

“The ancient Greeks had two words for ‘time’. The first was ‘chronos’ (χρόνος), which referred to chronological time. Words like ‘chronological’ and ‘chronology’ come from chronos. The second was ‘kairos’ (καιρός), which means the right moment or opportunity. It is this second meaning which is of supreme importance when it comes to public speaking.”

 

The clock was adapted from an image at OpenClipArt.

 

 

Calling the largest bedroom in a home the master bedroom now is offensive language

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Preferred phrases can change over time. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines a master bedroom as:

 

“a large or principal bedroom”

 

But an article by Sydney Franklin at The New York Times on August 5, 2020 is titled The Biggest Bedroom Is No Longer a ‘Master.’ Another article by Teneal Zuvela at Home beautiful on September 1, 2024 described The problematic history of the term ‘master bedroom.’

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Merriam-Webster said master was first used a century ago. How common it was is shown above via the Google Books Ngram Viewer.

 

Stephan Pastis’s Pearls Before Swine cartoon for May 27, 2025 has the following dialogue about adjectives:

 

Goat: Hey, do you want to see my new master bedroom?

 

Rat: ‘Primary’ bedroom. The word ‘master’ is offensive.

 

Goat: Primary bedroom.

 

Three students: ‘Main bedroom.’ The term ‘primary’ is offensive to primary school students.

 

Goat: I’m gonna just stop talking.

 

Rat: That probably offended someone.

 

The Simpsons fictional character Principal Seymour Skinner could object to principal bedroom.  

 

 

Allokataplixis is a recent word for that feeling when travel makes everything new

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In an article by Liam Henneghan at Aeon on September 18, 2017 titled We have a new word for that feeling when travel makes everything new he described the compound word allokataplixis, from Greek words for other and wonder. That article also was reposted at Big Think on February 23, 2021 and again at Pocket. I felt that way when I saw Crater Lake.

 

Another article by Avard Woolaver at The Image Journey on October 3, 2020 is titled Toronto Gone – allokataplixis – seeing the city for the first time. More recently there is yet another article by Joe Walewski at Field Notes – A Naturalist’s Life on March 29, 2024 titled Allokataplixis.

 

I blogged about going to Crater Lake on September 10, 2019 in a post titled Visiting Crater Lake. And on September 21, 2019 I blogged about The joy of travel surprises.

 

Zero dark thirty and 25 (or 6) to 4

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some phrases are rather cryptic. For example, Zero Dark Thirty is 2012 political action thriller film directed by Kathryn Bigelow about the manhunt for Osama bin Laden. A Wikipedia page explains that title is:

 

“American military slang for an unspecified time between midnight and sunrise.”

 

There is another Wikipedia page about the Chicago song, 25 or 6 to 4 that was released as a single in June 1970. It was written by Robert Lamm, who said his cryptic title was telling about trying to write a song in the wee hours of the morning. There is an article by Jay McDowell at American Songwriter on February 1, 2024 titled The Mundane Meaning Behind “25 or 6 to 4” by Chicago. It is not about LSD (sometimes known as LSD-25), or heroin, or cocaine.

 

This post was inspired by my listening to the album, The Best of Chicago: 40th Anniversary Edition.

 

“Brain Rot” is a phrase; Brainrot is a portmanteau word.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On December 2, 2024 there is an article from Oxford University Press titled ‘Brain rot’ named Oxford Word of the Year 2024. But those two words are a phrase. We could either hyphenate them to brain-rot, or make a single a portmanteau word – brainrot. Another article by Casper Grathwohl about the Oxford Word of the Year has a section titled Celebrating 20 years of Oxford Word of the Year. There were six other years where they had two words:

 

2007: carbon footprint

2008: credit crunch

2010: big society 

2011: squeezed middle

2019: climate emergency

2022: goblin mode

 

And there were two more with hyphenated words:

2006: carbon-neutral

2016: post-truth

 

A third article by Bill Chappell at NPR on December 2, 2024 is titled Writer Thoreau warned of brain rot in 1854. Now its’s the Oxford Word of 2024.

 

The terminal version of brain rot apparently is a ‘brain cloud.’ The Wikipedia page for the 1990 movie Joe Versus the Volcano describes it as follows (and see this YouTube video):

 

“Joyless, listless and chronically sick, Banks regularly visits doctors who can find nothing wrong with him. Finally, Dr. Ellison diagnoses an incurable disease called a ‘brain cloud’, which has no symptoms, but will kill him within five or six months.”

 

My cartoon was adapted from this one and that one at Openclipart.

 

 

A comic strip about flipping prefixes from ex- to in-

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On December 19, 2024 there is a Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal comic strip by Zack Weinersmith with the following dialogue:

 

“Discovery: Because the correct Latin-derived opposite of ex- is in-, there are thousands of words we can add to English immediately.

 

I see what you’re saying, and you’re inactly right.

 

Such exteresting points. The whole audience was exspired.

 

I read your novel. Incellent work! So much exvigorating action!

 

Of course before the Hebrews left Egypt they had to get to Egypt. Also known as the inodus.

 

My daughter doesn’t have any demons possessing her. We must summon the inorcist.”

 

Earlier this year I posted about switching prefixes. On January 10, 2024 I blogged about Should we have a con- and pro- pair of Words of the Day at a Toastmasters club meeting? And on February 25, 2024 I blogged about Should we have a pre- and post- pair of Words of the Day at a Toastmasters club meeting?

 

What is the history of books that defined our English vocabulary over the past 500 years?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have been enjoying skimming through a large book which I found on the new books shelves at my friendly local public library. It is a 2024 book by Bryan A. Garner and Jack Lynch with a long title -  Hardly Harmless Drudgery: A 500-Year Pictorial History of the Lexicographic Geniuses, Sciolists, Plagiarists & Obsessives Who Defined the English Language. The list price is $65.

 

Their Introduction opens by stating:

 

“Samuel Johnson – creator of not the first English dictionary, but perhaps of the first great one – wickedly mocked his own trade when he defined lexicographer as ‘a writer of dictionaries; a harmless drudge, that busies himself in tracing the original, and detailing the signification of words.’ But dictionaries are serious business, and the people who drudge away at them are anything but harmless. This book tells the stories of the most important English-language dictionaries and their makers.

 

Dictionaries are repositories of erudition, monuments to linguistic authority, and battlefields in cultural and political struggles. They have been announced with almost messianic fervor, decried as evidence of cultural collapse, and relied on in judicial decisions. They are works of almost superhuman endurance, produced by people who devote themselves to years or even decades of wearisome labor. As commodities in a fiercely competitive publishing business, they also can keep a company afloat for generations or sink it in a few years. Some also are beautiful objects, products of genuine innovations in typography and book design.”

 

Their chapters about Noah Webster and his critics were most interesting to me. Chapter 57 (page 177) is titled Noah Webster at His Most Compendious, and discusses his two-column 1806 Compendious Dictionary of the English Language. You can find a pdf of it at the Internet Archive. Chapter 62 (page 199) on Noah Webster’s Deeply Flawed Magnum Opus begins:

 

“Although Noah Webster produced his compact, one-volume Compendious Dictionary in 1806, this big two-volume work earned him the title Father of the American Dictionary. Released in November 1828, it was an important declaration of American identity, heralding the nation’s linguistic independence from Great Britain. It marked the biggest milestone in English lexicography between Johnson’s Dictionary (1755) and the OED [Oxford English Dictionary] (1928).

 

But even with a modest press run of 2,500 copies, retailing for $20 apiece, it failed to sell out over the next 13 years. The price was too high for most potential customers.

 

Webster’s achievement was remarkable in several respects. His wordlist, for instance, was much more comprehensive than that of earlier dictionaries. If we take the span of entries from la to laird, Webster provides 141 entries as compared to Johnson’s 84. Some 17% of his headwords – 12,000 of the total of 70,000 – hadn’t appeared in earlier dictionaries. He had mined the resources of American English to include such words as caucus, electioneer, parachute, revolutionize, safety-valve, skunk, tomahawk, and wampum. He developed his own system of recording pronunciations, which required him to have a new typeface cut to distinguish the ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ sounds of C and G.

 

Webster’s definitions, too, were generally superior to those of his predecessors. Like Johnson, he was a splitter, identifying multiple meanings of most words and breaking them out with numbered senses. His definitions were also abundantly clear. Consider the entry for mortgage. Johnson had defined it as ‘a dead pledge: a thing put into the hands of a creditor.’ For most readers, that’s wholly unenlightening. Webster provides an etymology,’Fr. mort, dead, and gage, pledge,’ and continues ‘Literally a dead pledge; the grant of an estate in fee as security for the payment of money, and on the condition that if the money shall be paid according to the contract, the grant shall be void, and the mortgage shall re-convey the estate to the mortgager’….”

 

Webster also included American spellings, as is discussed in another article in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary titled Noah Webster’s spelling wins and fails. His lack of consistency was attacked by Lyman Cobb, who is discussed in Chapter 64 (page 211) titled Lyman Cobb – Walker’s Promoter, Webster’s Tormentor. You can find Cobb’s entire 56-page pamphlet at Google Books.

 

There is a 54-minute podcast by Ron Lombard at WCNY PBS on June 12, 2024 titled Firebarn Chats, Episode 2 – The authors of “Hardly Harmless Drudgery”

 

The cartoon boy reading was adapted from here at Openclipart.

 

Don’t give either a knockout presentation or a killer presentation

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Why not? Because an unconscious or dead audience can’t take anything away. Please avoid overblown language.

 

I found an article at American Express on September 18, 2023 by Bruna Martinuzzi titled How to Structure a Knockout Presentation. There is another article at Black Enterprise on August 2, 2024 titled Give a Knockout Presentation That Leaves Your Audience Impressed. Back on September 24, 2011 I blogged about Should you give a knockout eulogy?

 

There also was yet another article at George Brown College on May 17, 2024 titled How to make a killer presentation. And there is a post at the Benjamin Ball Associates blog on January 5, 2024 titled How to give a killer presentation. Another post at the Garr Reynolds blog on August 20, 2024 is titled 13 Ways to Make a Killer Online Presentation. There is still another post at the Poll Everywhere Blog on October 1, 2024 titled 10 Tips for a killer presentation that won’t bore your audience.

 

An image of a knockout was modified from one at the Library of Congress. An image of a man pointing a revolver came from Wikimedia Commons.

 

A Savage Chickens cartoon about the fear of dancing chocolate pirates

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Savage Chickens cartoon for September 20, 2024 by Doug Savage (shown above) is simply titled The Fear, and describes an obscure one – thalassoharpaxochorokrokodeilophobia. If you look at Answers there is a web page titled What is the fear of pirates called? which explains:

 

“The word should be Thalassoharpaxophobia. Thalasso is sea or ocean, harpaxo is robber and phobia is fear. You'd have to be crazy not to be afraid of pirates if you were a mariner.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Back on August 30, 2013 I blogged about Uncommon fears and, as shown above concocted the word Hoplocynohydrophobia.When I just googled it, I found no one else has used that new word.

 

That weird label

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Insults are a common part of political campaigns. This summer there is an article by Meg Kinnard at apnews on July 31, 2024 titled Why Harris and Democrats keep calling Trump and Vance ‘weird’. A second article by Mary Walrath-Holdridge and Kinsley Crowley at USA Today on August 6, 2024 is titled Tim Walz and the legacy of “weird”: Democrats embrace VP pick’s one-word insult for MAGA. That plain English word is better than possible synonyms like creepy, peculiar, or strange. A third article by Rebecca Schneid at TIME on August 10, 2024 is titled Trump responds to Tim Walz calling him and J. D. Vance ‘Weird’: “We’re very solid people’. Solid as in blockheads?

 

My weird cartoon was adapted from a label and a blue hair guy from Openclipart. 

 

UPDATE: A one-minute Lincoln Project YouTube Video.

 

 

 

19 new words for fears from The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is an interesting little book from 2021 by John Koenig titled The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows with new words for describing emotions. On July 31, 2024 I blogged about it in a post titled Momophobia is the fear of speaking off the cuff (impromptu speaking) which included a half-dozen other fears with -phobia endings.

 

His book contains six main sections titled as follows:

 

1] Between Living and Dreaming (seeing the world as it is, and the world as it could be) – page 1

2] The Interior Wilderness (defining who you are from the inside out) – page 43

3] Montage of Attractions (finding shelter in the presence of others) – page 81

4] Faces in a Crowd (catching glimpses of humanity from a distance) – page 119

5] Boats Against the Current (holding on in the rush of the moment) – page 157

6] Roll the Bones (connecting the dots of a wide-open universe) – page 209

 

There are 19 other fears in the book (mostly nouns, listed in alphabetical order):

 

aimonomia - page 219

the fear that learning the name of something - a bird, a constellation, an attractive stranger - will somehow ruin it, inadvertently transforming a lucky discovery into a conceptual husk pinned in a glass case, leaving one less mystery fluttering around in the universe.

 

alazia - page 63

The fear that you’re no longer able to change.

 

anaphasia - page 138

the fear that your society is breaking apart into factions that have nothing left in common with each other - each defending their own set of values, referring to their own cult figures, speaking in their own untranslatable language.

 

caucic - page 236 (adj.)

afraid that the rest of your life is already laid out in front of you, that you’re being swept inexorably along a series of predictable milestones - from school to graduation to career to marriage to kids to retirement to death - which makes you wish you could pull off to the side of the road for a little while, to stretch your legs and spread out the map so you can double-check that you’re headed the right way.

 

elosy - page 215

the fear of major life changes, even ones you’ve been anticipating for years; the dread of leaving behind the bright and ordinary world you know, stepping out into that liminal space before the next stage of life begins, like the dark and rattling void between adjoining metro cars.

 

evertheless - page 241

the fear that this is ultimately as good as your life is ever going to get - that the ebb and flow of your fortunes is actually just now hitting its high-water mark, and soon enough you’ll sense the tide of life slowly begin to recede.

 

That emotion was discussed in the song Is That All There Is?

 

feresy - page 90

the fear that your partner is changing in ways you don’t understand, even though they might be changes for the better, because it forces you to wonder whether your relationship needs a few careful nudges to fall back into balance, or perhaps is still as stable as ever, but involves a person who no longer exists.

 

harmonoia - page 31

an itchy sense of dread when life feels just a hint too peaceful - when everyone seems to get along suspiciously well, with an eerie stillness that makes you want to brace for the inevitable collapse, or burn it down yourself.

 

indosentia - page 73

the fear that your emotions might feel profound but are crudely biological, less to do with meaning and philosophy than with hormones, endorphins, sleep cycles, and blood sugar - any of which might easily be tweaked to induce unfalsifiable feelings of joy, depression, bloodlust, or kinship, or even a spiritual transcendence of your physical body.

 

kadot - page 218

fear of the prospect of not existing one day, feeling like a student about to graduate from the universe, on the cusp of a transition you don’t feel ready for.

 

karanoia – page 238

the terror of the blank page, which can feel both liberating and confining, in both the limitlessness of its potential and the looseness of its boundaries.

 

lyssamania – page 53

the irrational fear that someone you know is angry at you, that as soon as you wander into the room, you’ll be faced with a barrage of questions that gradually escalates into a frenzy of outrage, for reasons that you don’t understand.

 

maugry – page 57 (adj.)

afraid that you’ve been mentally deranged all your life and everybody around you knows, but none of them mention it to you directly because they feel it’s not their place.

 

nemotia - page 225

the fear that you’re utterly powerless to change the world around you, looking on helplessly at so many intractable problems out there - slums that sprawl from horizon to horizon, daily headlines of an unstoppable civil war, a slick of air pollution blanketing the skyline -which makes the act of trying to live your own life feel grotesque and self-indulgent, as if you’re rubbernecking through the world.

 

ochisia - page 91

the fear that the role you once occupied in someone’s life could be refilled without a second thought, which makes you wish that every breakup would include a severance package, a non-compete clause, and some sort of romantic placement program.

 

treachery of the common - page 32

the fear that everyone around the world is pretty much the same—that despite our local quirks, we were all mass-produced in the same factory, built outward from the same generic homunculus, preinstalled with the same tribal compulsions and character defects—which would leave you out of options if you ever want to reinvent yourself, or seek out a better society on the other side of the globe.

 

vaucasy – page 45

the fear that you’re little more than a product of your circumstances, that for all the thought you put into shaping your beliefs and behaviors and relationships, you’re essentially a dog being trained by whatever stimuli you happen to encounter—reflexively drawn to whoever gives you reliable hits of pleasure, skeptical of ideas that make you feel powerless.

 

vemodalen - page 7

the fear that originality is no longer possible.

 

zielschmerz - page 33

the dread of finally pursuing a lifelong dream, which requires you to put your true abilities out there to be tested on the open savannah, no longer protected inside the terrarium of hopes and delusions that you started up in kindergarten and kept sealed as long as you could.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another interesting word is ludiosis (page 125), defined as:

 

“the sense that you’re just making it up as you go along - knowing that if someone asked why you do most things, you couldn’t really come up with a convincing explanation.”

 

You might not think any more than before blowing a soap bubble, as shown above. A Tori Amos song, Gold Dust has lyrics saying:

 

“And we make it up as we go along, we make it up as we go along”  

 

Images of sorrow and bubble blowing both came from Wikimedia Commons.

 

Momophobia is the fear of speaking off the cuff (impromptu speaking)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is an interesting little book from 2021 by John Koenig titled The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. One of them is momophobia, which he defines as:

 

“the fear of speaking off the cuff or from the heart; the terror of saying the wrong thing and having to watch someone’s smile fade as they realize you’re not who they thought you were.

 

Ancient Greek μῶμος (momos), blemish, disgrace + -φοβία (-phobía), fear. Momus was the Ancient Greek god of mockery and harsh criticism. Pronounced 'moh-muh-foh-bee-uh.' ”

 

As shown above (via a Venn diagram), this twenty-first-century fear is a subset of a twentieth-century fear - glossophobia. There are six other fears in the book with a -phobia suffix (nouns listed in alphabetical order):

 

antiophobia - page 116

a fear you sometimes experience while leaving a loved one, wondering if this will turn out to be the last time you’ll ever see them, and whatever slapdash good-bye you toss their way might have to serve as your final farewell.

 

apomakrymenophobia - page 91

fear that your connections with people are ultimately shallow, that although your relationships feel congenial at the time, an audit of your life would produce an emotional safety deposit box of low-interest holdings and uninvested windfall profits, which will indicate you were never really at risk of joy, sacrifice or loss.

 

fygophobia - page 145

the fear that your connections with people will keep dwindling as you get older; that one by one, you’ll all go flying off the merry-go-round in wildly different directions, sailing through various classes and jobs and interests, ultimately landing in far-flung neighborhoods where you’ll hunker down with your families plus a handful of confidants you see a few times a year, perpetually reassuring each other, “We should keep in touch.”

 

koinophobia - page 49

The fear that you’ve lived an ordinary life.

 

nachlophobia - page 91

the fear that your deepest connections with people are ultimately pretty shallow, that although your relationships feel congenial in the moment, an audit of your life would reveal a smattering of low-interest holdings and uninvested windfall profits, which will indicate you were never really at risk of joy, sacrifice, or loss.

 

The description for this fear closely resembles the description for apomakrymenophobia.  

 

nodrophobia - page 241

the fear of irrevocable actions and irreversible processes—knowing that a colorful shirt will fade a little more with every wash, that your tooth enamel is wearing away molecule by molecule, never to grow back.

 

The word momophobia seems to first have appeared in a 2005 magazine article by Elaine Roth in the Quarterly Review of Film and Video (Volume 22, issue 2) titled Momophobia: Incapacitated Mothers and Their Adult Children in 1990s Films.

 

Making fine distinctions: Using the right word versus the almost-right word

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mark Twain once said:

 

“The difference between the almost-right word & the right word is really a large matter - it’s the difference between the lightning-bug & the lightning.”

 

At the Boise Public Library I got an excellent, little, two-hundred page, 2024 book by Eli Burnstein titled Dictionary of Fine Distinctions: Nuances, Niceties, and Subtle Shades of Meaning. It has a long subtitle, An Assorted Synonymy & Encyclopedia of Commonly Confused Objects, Ideas & Words, Distinguished with the Aid of illustrations [line drawings by Liana Finck]. I’m enjoying learning about those distinctions.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As shown above via my illustration, page 179 distinguishes between poisonous and venomous, which also is shown on the cover, as seen in an excerpt at McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. And page 16 distinguishes between ethics and morality.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some of the distinctions are best shown via Venn diagrams, like page 173 where canapes are a subset of hors d’oeuvres, and on page 32 comparing how other types of numbers fit inside real numbers.

 

Images of canapes, hors d’oeuvres, and a death cap mushroom came from Wikimedia Commons. The snake was adapted from an image at Openclipart. From Andrew Comstock’s 1846 book, A System of Elocution, I got the images for ethics (page 88 #32) and morality (page 90 #43).