Ian in Clyde, North Carolina, is puzzled when a colleague uses the term blue million, meaning “a large amount.” Along with words like zillion and gazillion, this expression functions as an indefinite hyperbolic numeral. Sometimes the...
A kindergartener misunderstands the name of an event at his school, insisting to his mother that he attended a pepper alley, not a pep rally. Let’s hope that’s the case, because pepper alley is actually 19th-century boxing slang for...
foof n.— «Lang made baseball writers feel special and committed himself to disclosing “frauds.” No Baseball Writers Association of America cards went to radio or television reporters. Bill Madden, Lang’s colleague at the Daily...
simplexity n.— «C was designed for programmers who hate to type (and so is the whole UN*X system). So some of the names may be strange, if what you mean is their simplexity. For example, && stands for .AND. and a+=b is a=a+b, etc...
MP3Jing n.— «SHARE-assemblage of portable computers. data exchange , performances , MP3Jing sunday afternoons 5-9.» —“[NET.JAM] audio & video STREAM sundays” by eyescratch Usenet: cz.comp.lang.perl June 15...
fundagelical n.— «Plus the attitude of many of the regulars in this group is very “fundagelical”—anyone who doesn’t accept that perl is the one true language is a heretic, and you should never use anything other than perl...