Researchers have found that stress is a leading cause of plewds — you know, those drops of sweat popping off the foreheads of nervous cartoon characters. That’s one of several cartooning terms coined by Mort Walker, creator of the Beetle Bailey comic strip. Martha and Grant discuss this and other coinages from The Lexicon of Comicana. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Comic and Cartoon Lexicon Symbols”
You’re listening to A Way with Words. I’m Grant Barrett.
And I’m Martha Barnette.
If you love words and you love comic strips, then maybe at some point you’ve wondered, is there a word for that little reflection mark that cartoonists use to make something seem shiny?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It looks like sort of a tiny window and they’ll draw it on a balloon or an apple.
And it makes the surface look curved and reflective.
And as you know, Grant, that question came up recently on our Facebook page.
Right.
Remember that?
Yes.
Matthew D. Littlefield said that he had once heard the word for that, but he was going crazy trying to remember it.
And he wanted to know if we could help.
And we did.
Did we not?
Yes, we did.
You had the answer.
I had the answer, which is a lucaflect.
A lucaflect.
L-U-C-A-F-L-E-C-T.
And you don’t hear that word that often, but it’s used among cartoonists.
It was one of several joking words that were invented by Mort Walker.
He’s the guy who…
Beatle Bailey cartoonist, right?
Bailey, High, and Lois.
And in 1980, he came out with this book called The Lexicon of Comicana.
He invented a lot of words for those little things that you see in comic strips.
And some of those words have caught on, right, at least in the discussion of comics.
Yes.
One of my favorites is pludes.
Pludes.
Pludes.
I love that.
It looks like the word leudes.
Those are the flying sweat droplets that appear around a character’s head when they’re working hard or they’re stressed.
That’s great.
I love that.
And my other favorite is those little clouds of dust that hang in a spot after a character departs suddenly.
He called those briffits.
Of briffits.
Isn’t it perfect?
That’s great.
Well, we hope you’ll leave some briffits and run to your phone and call us about language.
We’d love to talk about grammar, slang, punctuation, usage, beetle-bailey, comics, word origins.
877-929-9673, words@waywordradio.org.
And just like the other fellow, you can find us on Facebook.
