powner
n.— «On the canine crowded street of the East Village, my wife and I play a little game we like to call “powner”–our semantical mash up of the words “pet and owner” Who ever sights a human walking their canine doppleganger gets to loudly proclaim, “powner!” The powner qualification then has to then be mutually confirmed. And as far as we’ve observed, the dynamic of “pownerism” only seems to exist between dogs and humans, though I’m sure we’ll see somebody walking their nutria some day, and get to call out “powner.” No scores are kept nor does either of us get to extract some reward from the other. Like all good games, the playing of it is its own reward, and oh yes, getting to muse on the baffling phenomenon of “pownerism” itself. So if you are ever walking your dog in the East Village, and you hear the word “powner” being called out, consider yourself “pownered.”» —“Dogs and Owners: A Family Resemblance” by Paulino Aboitiz New York Times Aug. 12, 2009. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Many of us struggled with the Old English poem “Beowulf” in high school. But what if you could actually hear “Beowulf” in the English of today? There’s a new translation by Maria Dahvana Headley that uses contemporary...
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