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Sparrow, a pundit poet from Phoenicia, New York, graciously contributed the following column.
Nouns are becoming verbs faster than ever before. I've been "journaling" on this phenomenon, and here's my report:
In the Old Days, every new invention did not immediately become a verb. No one said: "I must electric canopener this tuna," or "Well, it's time to dishwasher." But ever since the Fall of Communism, new consumer items have been verbified. We do say: "I'll fax you that receipt," "Can you e-mail me the final figures?" "Let's microwave the taco," and "Shh! I'm text-messaging!" (In fact, "text-messaging" is giving way to the more direct "texting.")
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Coworkers afflicted with BBS? "You've seen it in meetings. Someone who's addicted to incorrectly using business jargon. It's known as Buzzword Blending Syndrome, or BBS," explains a cheeky website from Babson College. Click here to help decipher those buzzword blends -- or let the website create new ones for you!
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"Nearly as old as the Olympics, bigger than the dinosaur, older than the Titanic, more complex than Pokemon and more of them than Beanie Babies are Aesop's Fables." Whew! How's that for a build-up? Aesop's Fables, the complete online collection, lists classic fables like "The Seagull and the Kite," "The Scorpion and the Frog" and on and on -- plus the accompanying morals of the story. Perfect for teachers, parents or anyone hankering for a timeless life lesson!
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Fancy yourself a fashionista? Check out this fashion word list compiled by Jennifer Smith, former New York fashion designer now copywriter/PR pro for Deuce Creative. You'll be surprised by some of Seventh Avenue's parts of speech. Read on to sharpen your divaspeak...
Look. (noun) "Complete outfit, ensemble from head to toe including accessories and shoes. The number of outfits you send down the runway is equivalent to the number of looks in a fashion show."
Fitting. (noun) "Review of garments on a live model. Fit, proportion, make and details assessed. Changes are made to garments and patterns based on notes from a fitting."
Tchotchke. (noun) (from Yiddish) "Extraneous detail or treatment on a garment, often used negatively. An excess of novelty is often referred to as tchochke. Example: 'The dress appeared fussy, covered in ruffled tchochke.'"
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Next time you're on the green, try not to airmail your shot into the drink, cabbage or kitty litter, okay? To get a handle on golf's rich vocabulary, we called PGA professional and author Mark Blakemore, who runs well-known golf schools in Northern California. Mark takes us down the linguistic fairway:
Airmail. "It means you either hit a shot that flew too far, or a drive that carried in the air farther than anybody else's ball."
Albatross. "A score of three under par on a hole, which doesn't happen very often. The word comes from the fact that an albatross is a rare bird. Naming hierarchy in scoring is like that. A hole in one on a par five, for example, is called a condor, which is an almost extinct bird, of course.
Cabbage. "Slang for long grass off the edges of a fairway. It describes very long rough, like those at the British Open or U.S. Open. The words spinach and lettuce are also used."
Drink. "Refers to a water hazard. 'In the drink' means into the water."
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Thank you for all your submissions to our recent "Six Degrees of the Visual Thesaurus" contest! If you recall, we challenged you to use the Visual Thesaurus to link the following pairs of words: fire and sale, news and print and smart and card. We picked a winner from the submissions randomly, and our award goes to... subscriber Dallas Browning of Salt Lake City, UT! Thank you, Dallas! Your limited edition Visual Thesaurus t-shirt is on its way. (Runner-ups, you've got t-shirts coming, too!)
We also thought you'd like to see the answers. Here they are:
fire and sale
fire
dispel
disperse
break up
break
give away
shop
buy
sell
sale
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