If I wrote this post in an indiscernible European accent, would you call me Arianna FUFfington? If you answered "No," then I'm proud of you for sticking to your guns and not being swayed by my melodic prose. It's another Follow Up Friday, ladies and gents, and I've got a whole bunch of disjointed shiznit to write about today. So in the immortal words of Tone Loc, "Let's do it."
I know this sounds crazy, but I'm still thinking about some of the word stuff I wrote about more than a week ago. And I'm not alone; I have my faithful and trusty readership out there thinking and overthinking as well. Rockabye wrote me and asked what the opposite of "infer" is. My initial response was "Fer." I then thought about it more and wanted to find an antonym that really captured the essence of "stating explicitly." So I wrote back, saying that the opposite is "exfer." Here is an example: I asked Stan if he was still angry with me. "I want to fucking kill you," he said, exferring that things hadn't blown over as I had hoped. Ya dig?
My most-favoritest brother called me about a word as well: prehistoric. That's a fantastic pull, Kev. It doesn't make any sense, and it's never popped up on my radar before. Dinosaurs existed a long ass time ago, granted, but they were still in history, right? We're not saying that they're premodernhistoric animals, after all. Since it doesn't make any sense, I can't come up with a reliable antonym for it either. Something posthistoric would have to occur on an entirely different plane of existence, I think, but I'm going to stop there before I start confusing myself.
Another word thing: Loyal reader Sue (who happily became a grandma again yesterday) wrote in to tell me about a large printed sign she and her husband Steve saw in the window of a tutoring service. It loudly and proudly proclaimed that they specialize in "Grammer." I so badly want to believe that they did that on purpose to be funny, but I can't quite convince myself that that's the case. I'll try to be more convincing to myself next time.
Speaking of signs, Dusty sent me a picture message of a store called "Candles & Things/Flowers." Oh come on! You can't choose to be as general as possible with "things" and then change your mind without changing the whole sign. Why not change it to "Flowers & Candles & Things" instead? Eeeeediots.
Some of you might recall from an earlier post that I send my family greeting cards for the wrong occasions. My Grandpa's Fathers' Day card congratulated him on his Bat Mitzvah, for example. Well my mom found a card in a drawer this week with a Christmas tree on the front and a greeting that said, "Happy Holidays from your staff!" "Ok," she thought before opening it, "is this going to be for my birthday or our anniversary?" She looked inside, and it was a Happy Holidays card to my dad from his staff at the office. That thought never crossed her mind. I think I should count that as a victory somehow.
Here's a random thought but a thought nonetheless: It's amazing how complete a conversation you can have with someone on opposing escalators. While at the conference in San Diego a little while ago, I had eight lines of conversation with an acquaintance. They were very brief lines, but still. I once had a sixer on a bike path with someone at UCSB before we passed each other. "Hey!" "What's up?" "Not much; you?" "Same." "See you tomorrow." "Sounds good, man." And I didn't even major in Communication!Ok, we talked a lot about funny names yesterday, but there are people out there on the internets that have made a science out of this thing. My fellow Blogspotters at nameoftheyear.blogspot.com have kicked major ass on this topic. They even had a NCAA-type bracket of names in March. You can see the results at the link below, but I want to ruin the surprise by telling you that Vanilla Dong won. That might not even be my favorite though. Here's the link:
By the way, my lovely wife vetoed the name October "Toby" Klein in the comment section. While that sucks, it's not as bad as the government vetoing the name you want to give your child. Check this shit out: http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/asiapcf/06/21/name.child.ap/index.html
Speaking of names, I can't type mine. Well, not fast at least. I type "Petre" so often that I made my email program automatically correct that to Peter. I swear it happens at least 40% of the time, and that's much more often than anyone should mis-type his or her name. Unless it's Vanilla Dong.
8 comments:
I loved your FUFfington lead-in! But I disagree about "exfer". I don't think it would mean "state explicitly" but rather that it was understood explicitly. I know that in order to be understood so clearly, something would need to be stated as such, but since "infer" is about the listener, not the speaker, I think exfer should be too.
It is fun to discuss the meaning of fake words. :)
Hmmm, I see your point about "exfer." Maybe this would be a better example: "When he told me that he wanted to kill me, I exferred that he was still quite upset." I think I was confusing it with "imply" with my previous definition. Thanks for catching that, honey.
I always thought that the word prehistoric had no real meaning.
I also am confused by B.C. and A.D. as a way to date things. Then if that were the case, and one meant before Christ was born and the other meant after his death, what happened to the missing 33 years?
Pop
Hey Pop,
I never really thought about it like that. So if I had been born a little after JC and died at age 30, I may not have existed to historians. Very interesting. Wait a second, it's "Anno Domini" or "year of the Lord" and not "After Death." There aren't any missing years after all. I should stop typing now.
"Someday, someone's gonna have to explain to me the virtue of a proportional response" - Andrew Shepherd, 1995.
That's wonderful, Kevin. I asked Amber last night if I should add that line right after I wrote "proportional response," and she said, "No, Kevin will say it in a comment." I love it when that happens!
Wow, I guess I am getting to be predictable in my old age. Honestly, I thought Mom would have beat me to it.
Okay I'm going to dork out and explain that "prehistoric" refers to any time before recorded history. I agree that they could have found a better name for it, but what are you gonna do?
And FYJI: it's "Before Common Era" and "Common Era" these days, y'all. Us Jesus-lovers decided to throw the rest of you a bone just this once.
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