1. Hug a panda (check)
2. Go to grad school for Linguistics (in process)
3. Hug Stephen Fry
4. Go on Jeopardy
5. Hug Grover
6. Win NPR Sunday Puzzle
7. Become Green Lantern
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May 6, 2011Words & Origins
When I have thought about and used this word, as in ‘painstakingly obvious’ or ‘she described the incident in painstaking detail,’ I break up the big morphemes as ‘pain and stakingly.’ Then, yesterday, I pressed random word on wordnik.com often enough that I got to the page on the word painstaker. The definition is “One who takes pains.” OF COURSE, said my brain, it is someone who takes pains to make sure every detail is in place. Pains taker, not pain staker.
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April 29, 20111. antique
2. assailant
3. daiquiri
4. whortleberry (I spelled it wrong)
The End.
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April 12, 2011ME! I’m the one who won! I rock! Go me! It was pretty cool, A 3-time winner, myself, Robert, and a supersmart pregnant lady all going for the $50 bucks but inexpicably ME WON. YAYYYYYY I GOT TO HOLD THE BIG CHECK!
1. kiln
2. gherkin
3. sepulchre/ sepulcher (apparently I naturally prefer the British spelling)
4. monocoque
5. acrocyanosis (I spelled it wrong but so did everyone else)
6. interregnum
7. diaphanous
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April 6, 2011There was a charity spelling bee tonight at Comedy Sportz for SOSSA. It was FUN. I wish I could have been in for longer, they had cool inventive rounds after I got out… 🙁
1. advantage
2. accommodate
3. brisage (I spelled it wrong)
Brisage has to do with explosives. It is a very technical word not used outside of the firearm and explosives nerd world. F it.
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March 25, 2011Today is being declared as OK Day by the author of a new book about the word OK. The word OK was first published on March 23, 1839. It is a fanciful acronym for the intentionally misspelled ‘oll korrect.’ Really. You can learn about OK Day suggested activities at the Facebook page.
1. Oh Well, Okay – Elliot Smith
2. Is This Sound Okay? – Coconut Records
3. Is It Okay if I Call You Mine? – Sondre Lerche
4. Pony (It’s OK) – Erin McCarley
5. It’s Ok – Dead Moon
6. Luna Lovegood is OK – Harry and the Potters
7. Oklahoma – Oklahoma!
8. Everything’s Okay – Hank Williams
9. It’s OK – Cee-Lo Green
10. Ok/No Way – Mission of Burma
11. (OK Go)
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March 23, 2011I have written or presented about this topic at least 3 times in school, and it still amuses the hell out of me. I have distilled it down to 5 words, but I just found a paper that lists the whole 10, and I think it’s worth recording these down while the information still bubbles and frolicks around for me when I talk about it.
1. Fabular
-Spanish is one of the Romance languages which means it comes from Latin. Other Romance languages include French, Italian, Romanian, Catalan, and Portuguese, unfortunately.
-Fabular means ‘to tell a tale,’ which has morphed over the years to become the verb hablar, to speak. There are many words which begin with ‘f’ in Latin that changed to ‘h’ in modern Spanish. Exceptions are words with a diphthong after the ‘f’ like fuente (fountain), fuerza (force), and fuego (fire). [and then suddenly…]
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March 21, 2011Hey!
Every Wednesday morning starting around 9:30am, @Wordnik gives out clues for a secret word on wordnik.com that has a pronounciation by “hap_e_wordnik” (see screen shot below). They give out 3 or 4 clues, each of which describes a different definition that the uncommon or obsolete word has. As soon as someone gets the right word, the game ends. If no one gets it by the end of the clues, they give a *BONUS CLUE* which usually has quotations around letters, meaning the word is an anagram of those letters.
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March 16, 20111. surreal
2. boomslang
3. pibroch
I had a lot of banter with excellent host Adam about my name. They give you a free beer, which I didn’t take. Host: “But Bri is an anagram of Beer!” Me: “Not the way I spell it, it’s just B-R-I.” Host: “Bri is an anagram of… IRB!” Someone else “Rib.”
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March 2, 20111. Haiti
2. repertoire
3. edelweiss
4. endophthalmitis
5. xebec
Robert, Leila, Andy and I sat eating pizza before the bee, and Andy, Leila and I tied for 3rd, knowlingly leaving the stage at the same time when the other two spellers got their words right. Ah well, it was a good exit.
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March 1, 2011