I once had a roommate who was owned by a floor-mop yappy little dog who thought he could kill giants, and let us know about it too frequently in his obnoxious sort of way. I called him Fanfarron. His human didn't speak Spanish. Fortunately for me.

This word is also the refrain in at least one (Irish?) folk song remembered from my younger years:
"Daffy-down-dilly-down-dilly-down-down". Makes a great refrain, yes?

Perhaps he's done a Cheshire cat disappearance on us, with only his grinning at our efforts showing hanging in the air somewhere. Look over your shoulder...?

Snake in the grass Catty Chicken Bull-headed Pig Toad Worm Bird-brain Eat like a bird Loony Goosey Cow-eyed Stag party Get one's goat etc. ad infinitum ad nauseum. Nope, they don't all have to become verbs, obviously. And a comprehensive list would be long, tedious and show only that we are (and hav...

If it derives from the animal's tendency to mass panic, then similar herding animals' like behavior should qualify that species also, yes? So. Cowed (using it as a generic term for bovine) means intimidated or subdued, more than perplexed or stymied, but there is a borderline connection. Sheeped? Ho...

How did we come to use this word to mean confused, perplexed or stymied?

In regards to hair being frazzled in the UK, it also can be in the US, to the point of being frizzy. And electric wires/electronic circuits can be fried by a short or overload. Such a versatile family are these words.

And Perry, your Spanish curse es muy impressivo!

My dad could cut loose with some choice swear words if the situation was provocative enough. But my mother used her favorite brother's all-around swear word when she was frazzled enough to need one: rafferiliackapackaroomer! (phonetic spelling, with the accent on the first syllable and the rest foll...

In my childhood, I remember this word used as "My nerves are frazzled" by someone who'd been subjected to a harrowing experience like spending all day with a roomful of cranky 2-year-olds.

The reference to the hymn's mondegreen made me smile. As a child, I once had a cross-eyed stuffed bear toy named Gladly - for that very reason. Thanks for the fond reminder, Doc.

Puns are, simultaneously, both the highest and lowest form of humor, in my opinion. I love a really bad good pun. Or is that a really good bad pun? As for the word "sin", the strongest negative assessment my mother used to make as to the beauty (or lack thereof) of any thing or person was ...

Yeah, Marty was great. Now that I consider it, there are similarities between Feldman's performance and Brink's nature.

We have a 90-pound three-year-old German Shepherd dog who has earned the sobriquet Bodacious Brinker the Bumptious GSD, but it's all well-meaning in its descriptiveness. He's smart and very good-natured and treats every person he meets as his New Best Friend. He's just so enthusiastic about it all -...

Many Native Americans once swaddled their papooses. It is still custom in a number of Native tribes to place infants in traditional wood cradle boards. There are some differences in design between tribes, but they basically serve the same function: after wrapping blankets around, to secure the chil...

Perhaps Netflix, if you have access to it, has "Afternoons"? Quite interesting how a common Yiddish word like bubbe has skyrocketed, as you say, in the general culture. I wonder if the increasing popularity of Jewish talents (comedians, singers, actors) since the late 1960s is relevant? Wh...