On Boy-Yow and Unanimous

So, my oldest son, being 12, is learning all sorts of interesting turns of phrases.  One he slaughtered tonight was when he attempted a sarcastic use of the term "boy-yow".

Me: "Boy-yow ... what's that mean?"

Him: "Er ... never mind."

Me (after contemplating what he said and how he said it): "You mean boo-yah?"

Him (red-faced): "Uh, yeah."

Love it.  Then, later when he was embarrassed that I was actually posting this to my blog, I reminded him that there's no names posted here, so it was extraordinarily unlikely that his friends from school would see it, he said, "Oh, so it's unanimous."

I just looked at him, then asked, "You mean anonymous?"

Too funny!  It's one of life's greatest joys to be able to embarrass your pre-teen ...

Geobraking

I was reading an article on some of the progress made when studying the samples from the Genesis spacecraft. One sentence made me snort (yes, actually snort):

On September 8, 2004, the spacecraft's sample-return capsule came to rest in the Utah desert after executing what might euphemistically be described as a geobraking maneuver when the parachute failed to deploy.

I'm well-acquainted with aerobraking, having helped with the aerobraking operations for both the Odyssey and MRO spacecraft, and as I was actually in Utah watching the Genesis return (see here) when it performed this so-called geobraking maneuver, this new word just made me laugh.

Gotta love it.

Perspicacious

Wow, I'm a nerd. I actually used the word "perspicacious" when writing up a performance evaluation for somebody at work. I'd be willing to bet that the supervisor who received my evaluation has NEVER seen that word before and will have to look it up ... *snicker*

Perspicacious : of acute mental vision or discernment : keen

On the Pronunciation of Jaguar

A silly thing to post, I know, but this blog is about my musings after all, and I think about all sorts of random things.

Here's a pet peeve of mine: on the radio the other day, there was a Jaguar ad spoken by a guy who had a weird accent. It was most definitely not a British accent, but something elsewise European. Anyway, so he kept repeating the name of the car he was advertising, as he should have, but every time he said it, I flinched. I recognize that I'm a pseudo-redneck unsophisticated American hack with no hope of being considered truly pretentious, but seriously, the word "jaguar" in the United States is pronounced ja-gwar. Look it up. Yet he kept pronouncing it ja-gyoo-ar.

Now, I recognize that in England, the latter pronunciation is correct, but the radio spot was not delivered in England! I can understand the desire to sound sophisticated, particularly for that brand of automobile, but even so, it was downright annoying.

Here's how sophisticated I am: when I think of the word "jaguar" I think of Mater from the Pixar movie Cars when he says, "You know, I once knew this girl Doreen. Good lookin' girl. Looked just like a ja-gwar, only she was a truck! You know, I used to crash into her, just so I could spoke to her."

It's just me, I totally know it.

Fricative

AWESOME new word I stumbled across. Seriously. Look it up. (Or you can be lazy and watch this.)

Tick-Tock

I was bringing my youngest son, who is 5, home from karate practice yesterday when I heard his little voice call from the back of the car, "Daddy, why are there tick-tocks in the front and the back?"

Uh, okay. First, I hadn't the faintest idea what a "tick-tock" was, and second, the front and the back of what?!

So, I replied most eloquently, "What?!"

He repeated his question, to which I replied even more eloquently, "Huh?!"

Then he said, "You know, on cars. Why do they have tick-tocks in the front and the back?"

At this point, realization dawned on me that he was asking about the turn signals, otherwise called "blinkers". (Understanding 5-Year-Old = Awesome Dad Moment.)

Thereafter ensued a discussion about how turn signals are put on the back of cars so that people who are behind them can see where the cars are going, and how turn signals are on the front so that people in front of or beside them know similarly. I'm not sure he got it, even though he said he did.

After I had this discussion with him, I was amused, but also fairly sad. Now that I'd informed him what they're really called, I'll probably never hear his cute little voice utter "tick-tock" in the same context again. The term "tick-tock" is sooo much more adorable than what they're really called, and so much more poetic. Such a pity.

Hmm, makes me wonder what other adorable sayings I've completely wrecked in my children's youth, all in the name of precision.

Spaghettify

My oldest son made up a new word today:

Spaghettification: The act of being made into spaghetti, usually while being sucked into a black hole. Other forms: v. spaghettify, adv. spaghettified, n. spaghettifier.

Awesome.

Frangible

Frangible?! Huh?! Once again, I was reading my National Geographic magazine and this was in a headline. I thought this was a made-up word, but one that I could decode -- a cross between fragile and tangible. But still a made-up word, right? Well, one look at the dictionary proves it is not made-up. Something that is frangible is readily or easily broken. Nice.

Impecunious

I read this in National Geographic today. Thought it was a good word:

Impecunious : having very little or no money usually habitually : penniless

Good stuff.

600 Pound Gorilla

We have an expression at work when we refer to the "600 Pound Gorilla". You can probably imagine the answer to the question: "What do you give a 600 pound gorilla? Anything it wants."

Generally, at work, there are at times missions or projects that are, for whatever reason, the most powerful, politically and economically. These projects tend to consume the resources of less-politically important projects, and I mean both money and people. Also, whenever a key technical trade-off needs to occur, they typically will win any tug-of-war.

Well, I was reading the news today, and I stumbled on this article:

Barbie beats back Bratz

When I read it, the thought that came to my mind was this expression. So, let it be known that Barbie has a new career now, and one that I'm sure will be on the shelves of your local toy store very soon: "600 Pound Gorilla Barbie."

Ghoti

*gasp* I stumbled across this article on bad spelling. You know, it is a pet peeve of mine that people can't spell these days -- even people with Ph.D.s! It's absolutely ridiculous. I accept misspellings from my six-year-old, but certainly not from a twenty-six-year-old. They should know better. Interestingly, the article stated:

Playwright George Bernard Shaw was fond of pointing out that the word "ghoti" could just as well be pronounced "fish" if you followed common pronunciation: 'gh' as in "tough," 'o' as in "women" and 'ti' as in "nation."

In a day when misspellings are rampant in advertising, text messaging, and pretty much all other written forms of communication (even children's books, which aggravates me more than anything!), this is really something to think about. (Isn't it?! Okay, maybe not ...)

Teratology

I ran across this word reading a book, and was so shocked by it that I just had to look it up. I had absolutely no idea what the root word was, or what it related to, and its context didn't provide any clues. The definition from Merriam-Webster reads:

Main Entry: ter·a·tol·o·gy
Pronunciation: \ˌter-ə-ˈtä-lə-jē\
Function: noun
Date: circa 1842

The study of malformations or serious deviations from the normal type in developing organisms

The way it was used was in relation to politics, and it was discussing the formation of a political movement. I thought it very clever! Anyway, had to share that. I found it while reading the book "Seeing", by José Saramago. So far, it's really dry, and I swear the guy doesn't believe in paragraph breaks -- I'll have to write a review later, if I can get through it.

Katsaridaphobia

Say what? I was reading an article about the best man vs. animal movies and strangely enough the movie Arachnophobia came up. Not really being a movie about a fight against an animal, it still scared the bejeebers out of me, and I had to watch the whole movie in fast forward the first time I watched it so I would know where the evil parts were. Nevertheless, I had a weird thought -- arachnophobia being the fear of spiders, what is the fear of cockroaches? Best guess from the internet: Katsaridaphobia. How exactly do you pronounce that?! That'd be a pretty creepy (no pun intended) movie, too, don't you think? But the title doesn't exactly roll off the tongue ...

Epistlistically

I heard this word used on the radio this morning, where they were debating it's meaning and spelling. I missed the source of the conversation, but apparently somebody called in and used it when describing a movie. They had dozens of callers trying to spell it correctly or to guess at it's meaning.

It seemed clear to me from the get-go that the use of the word to describe the movie implied that the film was attempting to communicate an important concept in a brief interlude, similar to the epistles of the Bible's New Testament. The apparently irreligious people on the radio didn't have a clue.

Coming in to work, I decided to look it up in Merriam-Webster Online, but it isn't listed there, so no, it's not a "real" word. But for not being a word, I kinda like it!

Ignoramic

Ignoramic. I have no idea what it means, but my mother-in-law in Utah just used it when talking to my wife on the phone. My wife teased her mother for a minute, then told me to write it down. Can you come up with a good definition for this new word?