In this episode, Martha and Grant honor winners of the Ig Nobel Prizes, those wacky awards for weird academic research, and they help a caller decipher a puzzling word from a personals ad: what does paratereseomaniac mean?
A electronic teenager repellent? An alarm clock that runs away from you to make you'll wake up? Yep, it's theIg Nobel Prizes, those awards for academic research that first makes you laugh and then makes you think. Martha and Grant honor this year's winners for linguistics and literature.
A caller shares colorful expressions from her Texas-born mother, including turkey tail and I'm gonna snatch you bald-headed. She also wonders why her mother says bread and butter every time they're walking together and an object in their path makes them step to either side of it.
A pair of business partners disagree whether to use one word, website, or or two words, Web site.
Greg Pliska presents a groaner of a quiz about world capitals. Let's just put it this way: the number of puns in this quiz will be Dublin exponentially.
A former resident of Buffalo, New York, puzzles over a strange word in a 12-year-old personals ad. What exactly is a “paratereseomaniac with extensive knowledge of osculation”?
A former Navy man has a pet peeve about using the word utilize instead of use.
Did Gary Owen invent the word insegrevious? And is there a category for words that can mean anything you want them to?
This week's “Slang This!” contestant learns the difference between a trailer queen and soup spitter.
A wife seeks consolation because her husband always implores her to “drive safe” instead of “drive safely.” Martha says if he really loves her, he'll use an adverb. Grant says it's a message of love, so maybe the -ly doesn't matter so much.
You may have learned that an estuary is where a river meets the sea, but a reference librarian asks whether she should eschew estuary as a word for the confluence of freshwater bodies. Martha and Grant tide her over with some more information.
A former resident of Buffalo, New York, puzzles over a strange word in a 12-year-old personals ad. What exactly is a “paratereseomaniac with extensive knowledge of osculation”
Simply typing paratereseomania in google.com gives numerous pages with clear and detailed definitions.....perhaps your listener should have done that!
What was the web site address that replaced stumper? This was given to the reference librarian.
Thanks
Bonnie
Bonnie said:
What was the web site address that replaced stumper? This was given to the reference librarian.
The email list that replaced STUMPERS-L is Project Wombat. As it says on the site, "Project Wombat is an e-mail discussion list for difficult reference questions."
Bernard Minster said:
Simply typing paratereseomania in google.com gives numerous pages with clear and detailed definitions…..perhaps your listener should have done that!
Yep, Bernard, that's true. But A) Not everyone uses the Internet (though I'd rather give up my phone and my postal mail than give up my Internet). B) The word is ambiguous even if you do look it up. Did the man who placed the personals ad mean he was interested in new things or did he mean he was interested in voyeurism? C) It's an interesting word to talk about, so why not do so? 🙂