Grant Barrett said
What do you call it when a cop is on the road so everyone slows down? A Tallahassee, Florida, listener suggests the term cop clot.
I've been calling a traffic jam a car clot for years now, which omits the aspect of explaining what caused it, but allows the more impressive equivalent vehicular embolism.
Would you call an artist who paints a painter, or does painter only apply to a technician, like one who paints houses?
I've heard the artist sort, whether talented or not, called a dauber.
Since I heard this episode, I have asked two artists I know, who are painters, what they think of this "problem." They both have heard some complaints about the term painter but they both agree that someone is being over sensitive. In any conversation, confusion with a house painter would be hard to imagine.
Many photographers consider the,selves portraitists, and so do many artists who work in pencil, ink, pastels, etc..although I described myself as "kidnapper" on my Form 1040 in the mid-1970s.
Describing a fine arts painter as a dauber is rather insulting. A dauber is a hobbyist, lacking in skills, training amd discipline,not caring to please anyone but his self (which is not a criticism; a paint dauber enjoys his hobby,and rarely hams others.)
My mother had a much-worn nook, probably published in the 1930s, called "the old dirt-dauber's garden book" or something similar to that. At "dirt dauber, org", they report thar The Spartanburg Men's Garden Club (SMGC) was founded in 1948 as the "Dirt Daubers" by a group of civic-minded men who enjoyed gardening and sharing this passion with each other and the community.
And mud daubers aren't to be messed with. They're downright nasty!
I am a vaper who enjoys vaping, although I do rather hate the tobacco-centric terminology that surrounds this new technology. Please join my crusade to bury the ugly "e-cigarette" label in the ashtray of abandoned English, in favor of a simpler and less polarizing word, like "steampipe".
For the record, the juice in my steampipe is not made from tobacco, it contains no nicotine, and I only consume about 50 drops of it per day. Compared to a cigarette or even a cup of coffee, a nicotine-free steampipe is like an ant next to an elephant.