Two comments:
1. John Chaneski's quiz really should have tipped the hat to Victor Borge, and his "Inflationary Language" routine: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YY6kElOYcd8
(Someone has even come up with the "Victor Borge Website Inflater": http://www.kor.dk/borge/inflate.php)
2. Grant suggested that calling a nerdy person a "poindexter" might be a reference to Vice Admiral John Poindexter. Isn't it more likely to refer to the character Poindexter ( http://www.felixthecat.com/friends-poindexter.htm) from the Felix the Cat cartoons (ca. 1960)?
Cheers!
It's also possible to deflate language. Years ago my mother picked up a set of tableware in which the forks had one tine fewer than the ones you normally get at restaurants. We took to calling them threeks.
Since this seems the closest thing so far to an official thread for this week's show, I had a couple of points about the "Romper Room" Magic Mirror poem. Martha recited the first line in a slightly different order from what I remember; is there a definitive answer to whether it's "Romper, stomper, bomper boo" or "Romper, bomper, stomper boo"? Or did the various Misses do it different ways in different cities, or at different times?
Further on the Magic Mirror verse: there's something about that meter that practically forces me to mix it with lines from Blake's "The Tyger", the "Star light, star bright" wishing poem, and "Late Lament", the recitation that follows the Moody Blues' "Nights in White Satin".
Threeks. Love it. Here's another language deflation example, but in a qualitative rather than quantitative sense. My wife once mentioned that she needed to stop at Great Clips and get a permanent. The muse came over me. I replied, "You mean you're gonna get another temporary, right?" She immediately got my point, smiled, but persists in calling them permanents.
The Felix the Cat connection is possible, but it's a big gap between that show and 1981, which is the first recorded print use of "poindexter" 'nerd' I know of.
Grant Barrett said
The Felix the Cat connection is possible, but it's a big gap between that show and 1981, which is the first recorded print use of "poindexter" 'nerd' I know of.
I disagree with the connection to John Poindexter. Â Mainly, I don't think his personality was known well enough to the public to brand him as a nerd in this way. Â I believe it is the Felix character in spite of Grant's comment above because even though the TV show ended in 1961 there were syndicated reruns for years. I watched it with my kids for several years in the 80s. Â I can not quickly find evidence, but I am sure it was in wide circulation in 1981 and the years immediately prior.