Stole a Pig and Away He Run -- The Colonel Carries On #97

by Stephan Proudfoot, with additional reporting by David Hornby-Wenning, Claudia Wheatleaf, Clarke St. Branch, and Cholmondeley Featherstonehaugh

Epigraph: “Here’s tae us; wha’s like us? Gey few, and they’re a’ deid!” (“Here’s to us; who’s our like? Damn few, and they’re all dead!”) --Scottish toast

Amazing bass, how sweet thou art.

Pecans, chardonnay, merlot, Tate’s chocolate chip cookies, and Welch’s grape juice. If you’re the sort who needs direction, go get those five things. You’ll feel a sense of accomplishment. If you’re self-directed, ignore this paragraph.

Life hack: modify Christmas carols for everyday use: “It’s beginning to look a lot like cocktails.”

Poisoned episcopal hair care tools: death combs for the archbishop.

“Bishop” comes from the Greek “episkopos.” The “e” gets dropped, the “p” becomes a “b,” the “sk” becomes an “sh,” the final “os” gets dropped, and Bob’s your uncle. Etymologically, “episkopos” means “overseer” and has a cousin in “periscope” (“around-seer”).

“Tosspot words” are words like “tosspot” (drunk -- “he tosses pots [of liquor down his throat]” that reverse the usual way English forms words for doers of things. We say “breakfast,” not “fast breaker,” “pinchpenny,” less often “penny pincher,” and so on.

A few more: scarecrow, lickspittle, spendthrift, killjoy, wardrobe, pickpocket, scofflaw, cutthroat, spoilsport, and tattletale.

The “usual” way of word formation would make them: crow scarer, spittle licker, thrift spender (“thrift” has a sense of “savings”), joy killer, robe warder (“ward” as a verb means “keep safe”), pocket picker, law scoffer, throat cutter, sport spoiler, and tale tattler.

To imagine that a "wardrobe" is the opposite of a "peacedrobe" is to misunderstand the word's etymology.

It can be fun to make fake tosspots, like “crywolf.”

Or to reinterpret existing words as tosspots: "crybaby" as "one who cries 'Baby!'"

Undocumented Alien VII: Revenge of the Return of the Prequel

The transitive verb “ert” means “incite, urge on.” It’s British dialectical. Inflected forms include erts, erting. erted. “Did you just ert?”

Searches related to "ert," according to Google, are: ert glassdoor; ert boston; ert careers; ert pittsburgh; ert philadelphia; ert definition; ert medical abbreviation; ert police.

“Lemme ask you: what would it take for you to be driving out of here owning this amazing car today?”

Compare and contrast The Monkey’s Paw and a monkey’s fist ("monkey's fist" is a technical term).

Contrast the following:

(1) Philip;

(2) Phyllis; and

(3) Phylum.

If you didn’t immediately cry out, “The first is masculine, the second feminine, and the third neuter!”, you’d better be still under warranty.

Ex nihilo omnia. (“From nothing, everything.”) Deep.

Parsley, Sage, Rosemary & Osborn, Attorneys at Law.

“Thank God for buoyant self-esteem. It thwarts the truth and keeps one from drowning in self-disgust.” --Roy Marshrigger

“A satirist is a man who discovers unpleasant things about himself and then says them about other people.” --Peter McArthur

A satirist, a Satanist, and a sadist walk into a bar. Avoid that bar.

“Tosspot” isn’t the only word for a tosspot. There’s also “suckbottle” and “suckspigot.” The opposite is a “drinkwater.”

More booze-free tosspot words: scapegrace, sawbones, skinflint.

One of several non-derogatory tosspots: dreadnought.

As time goes on and on, the past grows larger and larger, even as we forget it more and more. --Sir Harry O. Triggerman

Some think not apologizing is a vice of the rich and powerful. But I’ve met never-apologizers who haven’t two nickels to rub together.

Barbara Stanwyck, because you deserve it.

Hypograph: “The 'pig' mentioned in [‘Tom, Tom, the piper’s son’] is almost certainly not a live animal but rather a kind of pastry, often made with an apple filling, smaller than a pie.”