i love anna dello russo.

bc she's awesome.

vocabulary is cool: vomitorium

vom·i·to·ri·um

  [vom-i-tawr-ee-uhm, -tohr-] 

–noun, plural -to·ri·a [-tawr-ee-uh, -tohr-]

an opening through which something is ejected ordischarged.

in a theater or stadium, esp. ancient, apassageway leading to and from the seating.

Origin: 
1595–1605;  < L vomitōrius,  equiv. to vomi-,  var. s. of vomere to vomit + -tōrius -tory¹

from Latin vomitorius, alluding to the path's discharging of the spectators.

vocabulary is cool: pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis

pneu⋅mo⋅no⋅ul⋅tra⋅mi⋅cro⋅scop⋅ic⋅sil⋅i⋅co⋅ vol⋅ca⋅no⋅co⋅ni⋅o⋅sis

 [noo-muh-noh-uhl-truh-mahy-kruh-skop-ik-sil-i-koh-vol-key-noh-koh-nee-oh-sis, nyoo-]


–noun

an obscure term ostensibly referring to a lung disease caused by silica dust, sometimes cites as one of the longest words in the English language. 

Origin: 

< NL; an obscure term ostensibly referring to a lung disease caused by silica dust, sometimes cites as one of the longest words in the English language. see pneumono-, ultramicroscopic , silica, volcano,(pneumono)coniosis 

hakuna matata!

disney's "the lion king" captured a beautiful swahili phrase in a terribly catchy song.

hakuna matata.

it means no worries for the rest of your days.

so chill out man! 

swing in some liana vines with your jungle friends.

relax!

i think we forget this too often, so i am reminding you.

read this article if the song doesn't cut it for you, as far as explaining hakuna matata. :)


also, take 4 minutes to watch the clip. you-will-smile.
also, i know everysingleword. just sayin.

vocabulary is cool: embonpoint

embonpoint

\ahn-bohn-PWAN\ , noun;

1.

Plumpness of person; stoutness.

Quotes:

With his embonpoint, Mr Soames appears to be wearing a quadruple-breasted suit.

-- Simon Hoggart, "Roll up, roll up, to explore the Soames Zone", The Guardian, February 1, 2000

His embonpoint expands by the day and his eyes are buried in the fat of his cheeks.

-- quoted in Goethe: The Poet and the Age: Revolution and Renunciation by Nicholas Boyle

Origin:

Embonpoint is from French, literally "in good condition" (en, "in" + bon, "good" + point, "situation, condition").

is proper grammar dying?

they're actually taking hyphens out of words, officially, because ppl don't know how to properly use them! don't you think we should be upping our grammatical standards instead of lowering them? or is this just something that only i find unsettling... (i realize i have a problem with capitalization, but that is only bc i am lazy. otherwise, i am a spelling and grammar fiend!)

Thousands of hyphens perish as English marches on

By Simon Rabinovitch

LONDON (Reuters) - About 16,000 words have succumbed to pressures of the Internet age and lost their hyphens in a new edition of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary.

Bumble-bee is now bumblebee, ice-cream is ice cream and pot-belly is pot belly.

And if you've got a problem, don't be such a crybaby (formerly cry-baby).

The hyphen has been squeezed as informal ways of communicating, honed in text messages and emails, spread on Web sites and seep into newspapers and books.

"People are not confident about using hyphens anymore, they're not really sure what they are for," said Angus Stevenson, editor of the Shorter OED, the sixth edition of which was published this week.

Another factor in the hyphen's demise is designers' distaste for its ungainly horizontal bulk between words.

"Printed writing is very much design-led these days in adverts and Web sites, and people feel that hyphens mess up the look of a nice bit of typography," he said. "The hyphen is seen as messy looking and old-fashioned."

The team that compiled the Shorter OED, a two-volume tome despite its name, only committed the grammatical amputations after exhaustive research.

"The whole process of changing the spelling of words in the dictionary is all based on our analysis of evidence of language, it's not just what we think looks better," Stevenson said.

Researchers examined a corpus of more than 2 billion words, consisting of full sentences that appeared in newspapers, books, Web sites and blogs from 2000 onwards.

For the most part, the dictionary dropped hyphens from compound nouns, which were unified in a single word (e.g. pigeonhole) or split into two (e.g. test tube).

But hyphens have not lost their place altogether. The Shorter OED editor commended their first-rate service rendered to English in the form of compound adjectives, much like the one in the middle of this sentence.

"There are places where a hyphen is necessary," Stevenson said. "Because you can certainly start to get real ambiguity."

Twenty-odd people came to the party, he said. Or was it twenty odd people?

Some of the 16,000 hyphenation changes in the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, sixth edition: 

Formerly hyphenated words split in two:

fig leaf

hobby horse

ice cream

pin money

pot belly

test tube

water bed

Formerly hyphenated words unified in one:

bumblebee

chickpea

crybaby

leapfrog

logjam

lowlife

pigeonhole

touchline

waterborne

vocabulary is cool: furbelow

furbelow \FUR-buh-low\ noun


1. a pleated or gathered flounce on a woman's garment; a ruffle.
2. something showy or superfluous; a bit of showy ornamentation.

Quotes:

In a season of ruffles, frills and furbelows, simple cuts in neutral shades stand out.

-- "Designers Head for Neutral Territory", St. Louis Post-Dispatch, February 27, 1997

Patience is required to get past some of the director's more baroque cinematic touches, decorating the story's dark center with visual furbelows . . . and aural gimmicks.

-- Lisa Schwarzbaum, "Movies: The Evil That Men Do", Entertainment Weekly, October 23, 1998

It is a story that, for all its hyper-animatedness, all its flips and furbelows of style, is confusing and wearisome.

-- Christine Stansell, "Details, Details", New Republic, December 10, 2001

Origin:

Furbelow is perhaps an alteration of Italian faldella.