A Wisconsin wonders if anyone outside her family uses the word funsel, possibly spelled funcil, to denote “a single strand of leftover cobweb hanging from the ceiling.” That one may be all their own, but another word she asks about, gnurr, meaning “fuzzy lint in the corner of a pocket” is indeed used by others. Gnurr appears in the whimsical book Ounce, Dice, Trice (Bookshop|Amazon) by Scottish poet Alastair Reid. The 1958 volume says that gnurr is a smaller variety of oosse, “the airy furry stuff that ultimately gathers under beds,” also known as trilbies, kittens, or dust-bunnies. This is part of a complete episode.
The so-called “lifestyle influencer accent” you hear in videos on TikTok and YouTube, where someone speaks with rising tones at the end of sentences and phrases, suggesting that they’re about to say something important, is a form of what linguists...
Meg in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, gets why the state highway department encourages drivers to use their blinkers when changing lanes, but placing a digital sign at the Sagamore Bridge that reads Use Ya Blinkah is, well, a lexical bridge too far. Meg’s...
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