Cockamamie
Something ridiculous, incredible or implausible.
Cockamamie is intrinsically funny, but it’s truly incredible that word historians believe it’s a close relative of decal, a design prepared on special paper for transfer to another surface. (It is instead sometimes said to be Yiddish, but this turns out not to be the case.)
The original of both cockamamie and decal is the French décalcomanie, which was created in the early 1860s to refer to the craze for decorating objects with transfers (it combines décalquer, to transport a tracing, with manie, a mania or craze). The craze, and the word, soon transferred to Britain — it’s recorded in the magazine The Queen on 27 February 1864: “There are few employments for leisure hours which for the past eighteen months have proved either so fashionable or fascinating as decalcomanie”. It reached the United States around 1869 and — to judge from the number of newspaper references in that year — became as wildly popular as it had earlier in France and Britain. The word was quickly Anglicised as decalcomania and in the 1950s it became abbreviated to decal.
The link between decalcomania and cockamamie isn’t proved, but the evidence suggests strongly that children in New York City in the 1930s (or perhaps a decade earlier) converted the one into the other. There was a fashion for self-decoration at that period, using coloured transfers given away with candy and chewing gum. Shelly Winters wrote of cockamamie in The New York Times in 1956 that “This word, translated from the Brooklynese, is the authorized pronunciation of decalcomania. Anyone there who calls a cockamamie a decalcomania is stared at.”
Quite how the word changed sense to mean something incredible is least clear of all. An early sense was of something inferior or second-rate, which presumably referred to the poor quality of the cheap transfers. It might have been influenced by words such as cock-and-bull or poppycock. Anyone who adopted the craze for sticking transfers on oneself may have been regarded by adults or more serious-minded youngsters as silly — certainly the first sense was of a person who was ridiculous or crazy; the current sense came along a few years later.
I like to post videos,crazy news items and jokes..if I make you laugh,I am rewarded in knowing that I made your day better...
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
the Word for Wednesday
TWITTERPATED
Besotted
This lovely term appeared, slightly differently, in the article Sex in Space in Wired magazine on 18 May 2007: “How do you handle love, sex, romance, heart-break, jealousy, hurt, unrequited longing, crushes, loneliness and twitterpation when you’re 18 months away from Earth and perhaps unsure whether you’ll make it back?”
It refers to the feelings you get when you think about your current object of desire. A contributor to the Urban Dictionary defined it as “An enjoyable disorder characterized by feelings of excitement, anticipation, high hopes, recent memories of interludes, giddiness, and physical overstimulation which occur simultaneously when experiencing a new love.”
One stimulus for its current popularity is that it appears in the film Bambi II, following on its invention in the original Bambi of 1942, in which Friend Owl says, “Nearly everybody gets twitterpated in the springtime.” When the film first came out, the Oakland Tribune remarked that “‘Twitterpated’ is perhaps the best adjective coined by Hollywood since the pixilated sisters were invented for ‘Mr. Deeds Goes to Town.’”
It also shows signs of becoming accepted, at least in the short term, as a mildly derogatory term for those obsessive communicators who use the online medium Twitter to tell their friends every small thing they’re doing with their day.
Besotted
This lovely term appeared, slightly differently, in the article Sex in Space in Wired magazine on 18 May 2007: “How do you handle love, sex, romance, heart-break, jealousy, hurt, unrequited longing, crushes, loneliness and twitterpation when you’re 18 months away from Earth and perhaps unsure whether you’ll make it back?”
It refers to the feelings you get when you think about your current object of desire. A contributor to the Urban Dictionary defined it as “An enjoyable disorder characterized by feelings of excitement, anticipation, high hopes, recent memories of interludes, giddiness, and physical overstimulation which occur simultaneously when experiencing a new love.”
One stimulus for its current popularity is that it appears in the film Bambi II, following on its invention in the original Bambi of 1942, in which Friend Owl says, “Nearly everybody gets twitterpated in the springtime.” When the film first came out, the Oakland Tribune remarked that “‘Twitterpated’ is perhaps the best adjective coined by Hollywood since the pixilated sisters were invented for ‘Mr. Deeds Goes to Town.’”
It also shows signs of becoming accepted, at least in the short term, as a mildly derogatory term for those obsessive communicators who use the online medium Twitter to tell their friends every small thing they’re doing with their day.
WTF?!! I CAN'T GET INTO MY YOUTUBE NOW!! GEEZ
I CREATED A NEW ID AND HAVE BEEN DIGGING THRU ALL VIDEOS FROM MY ACCOUNT..GOTTA SHARE A FEW GOOD ONES WITH YOU
this dog is whacked!!
this dog is whacked!!
the Joke for Wednesday
An old man and his son had a one-horse farm where they barely made a living. Then, one day, the son hit the lottery and won $50,000.
The young man rushed into town, collected his money, then hurried back home. He ran across the field, told his father the news, and handed the older man a $50 bill.
The father looked at the money for a moment and then said, "Son, you know I've always been careful with what little money we had. I didn't spend it on whiskey or women. In fact, I couldn't even afford the license to legally marry your Ma."
"Pa!" the young man stammered, "do you know what that makes me?"
"Yep," said the old man fingering the $50, "... and a cheap one, too.
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
the Word for Tuesday
SEMORDNILAP
A word, phrase or sentence that makes sense when reversed, but is not the same as the original.
A string of letters that reads the same backwards as forwards is a palindrome (“Madam, I’m Adam”; “A man, a plan, a canal: Panama!”; “Was it a car or a cat I saw?”). A semordnilap is closely related, but the reversed text must be different. For example, if you reverse “diaper” you get “repaid”, and if you invert “desserts” the word “stressed” appears. A more complicated example is “deliver no evil”, but you can probably invent better ones for yourself. As semordnilap is palindromeswritten backwards, it’s a self-referential word, one that encapsulates within itself the thing it represents. You could hardly say that it’s common, but many earnest palindromists have accidentally discovered it, and it has some small circulation among word wizards
A word, phrase or sentence that makes sense when reversed, but is not the same as the original.
A string of letters that reads the same backwards as forwards is a palindrome (“Madam, I’m Adam”; “A man, a plan, a canal: Panama!”; “Was it a car or a cat I saw?”). A semordnilap is closely related, but the reversed text must be different. For example, if you reverse “diaper” you get “repaid”, and if you invert “desserts” the word “stressed” appears. A more complicated example is “deliver no evil”, but you can probably invent better ones for yourself. As semordnilap is palindromeswritten backwards, it’s a self-referential word, one that encapsulates within itself the thing it represents. You could hardly say that it’s common, but many earnest palindromists have accidentally discovered it, and it has some small circulation among word wizards
Naked and Drunk Driving..Death Resulting
Jessica Langford (right)
Australia
A PROBATIONARY driver's estimated alcohol reading and speed - and the fact that she was driving naked at the time - were used as evidence yesterday to commit the teenager for trial on culpable driving.
Jessica Maree Langford, 19, pleaded not guilty to the charge and to dangerous driving causing the death of her boyfriend at Hastings on November 29 last year.
Melbourne Magistrates Court heard that Langford's speed was calculated at 104 km/h in a 90 km/h zone and her blood alcohol concentration at .09 about two hours after the crash.
She and Daniel Andrew Glover, 19, had been ''skinny dipping'' at Shoreham around midnight and remained naked after using their clothes to dry off. Langford later told police they had been drinking at the beach and that swimming in the nude had been fun, but denied any sexual activity happened while driving.
In a record of interview, she said that usually when she drank she would get dropped off and someone else would drive home. ''But this time I was very stupid.''
Police from the major collision unit found that Langford's car rotated clockwise after she oversteered in Coolart Road before it collided with a wooden power pole.
Langford, who was not wearing a seatbelt, was found injured on the ground while Mr Glover remained secured by his seatbelt.
Defence barrister Dermott Dann argued at the contested committal hearing that a properly instructed jury at trial could not return a guilty verdict on culpable driving solely on Langford's alcohol reading.
He said there was no evidence of bad driving before the crash or that Langford was drunk and the issue of her state of undress was irrelevant.
It was wrong to ''lump'' the factors of alcohol, speed and undress together as amounting to gross negligence, he said.
In reply, prosecutor Stephen Payne submitted that the question of gross negligence was a matter for a jury and that the alcohol reading alone - given that Langford was on a zero limit - was sufficient evidence. Mr Payne said the evidence of speed and her ''state of undress'' were indisputable.
Magistrate Susan Wakeling found there was sufficient evidence for a jury to convict Langford, of Balnarring, and she was released on bail. She is to appear later at the County Court.
the Joke for Tuesday
CONFESSION A woman takes a lover home during the day, while her husband is at work. Unbeknownst to her, her 9 year old son was hiding in the closet. Her husband comes home unexpectedly, so she puts the lover in the closet with the little boy. The little boy says, "Dark in here." The man says, "Yes it is." Boy- "I have a baseball." Man- "That's nice." Boy- "Want to buy it?" Man- "No, thanks." Boy- "My dad's outside." Man- "OK, how much?" Boy- "$250." In the next few weeks, it happens again that the boy and the mom's lover are in the closet together. Boy- "Dark in here." Man- "Yes, it is." Boy- "I have a baseball glove." The lover, remembering the last time, asks the boy, "How much?" Boy- "$750." Man- "Fine." A few days later, the father says to the boy, "Grab your glove. Let's go outside and toss the baseball back and forth." The boy says, "I can't. I sold them." The father asks, "How much did you sell them for?" The son says "$1,000." The father says, "That's terrible to overcharge your friends like that. That is way more than those two things cost. I'm going to take you to church and make you confess." They go to church and the father makes the little boy sit in the confession booth and he closes the door. The boy says, "Dark in here." The priest says, "Don't start that sh*t again."
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