The great I am. Hmm. In Australia (and it may not be unique to here) we had a senior businessman with an over-inflated ego. He was known as Fig Jam - an acronym for "Fxxk I'm great. Just ask me". I wonder if the concept was created here or is widely used elsewhere as well? I've actually heard that ...

Three words I always associate with one another are vituperation, vitriol, and invective. I've seen other forms of the first two but never any other form of invective, though, and I've very rarely heard it, only seen it in print.

Never heard or saw toodle-pip before. I've heard and seen, to paraphrase an old cartoon, "toodle-oo, pip-pip, cheerio, and all that rot" many times before.

I'm inclined to believe that the Portuguese name for the bird, peru, comes from some sound the bird makes other than gobbling... but I'm no expert.

My South Carolina-born dad used to love to say things like "time to mosey on out of here."

The first time I heard this word was in an office where I used to work. I was at least a generation younger than almost everyone else there, and one older gentleman described himself as a "supernumerary and general factotum." He really was a jack-of-all-trades. I guess he counted himself as a supern...

I was reading an article on Arabic-derived words in English and Spanish, and came across this definition of the Spanish word alcahuete (pronounced ahl-ca-weh-teh ): alcahuete : Accomplice, a person who helps another in a love affair, specially an illicit one; gossipy person. Alcahuete comes from His...

I was about to say I've never heard of "Burke" but I know "berk," and now I see from your note that apparently it's the same term just a different spelling.

Love the story explaining/demonstrating the word.

I would have guessed a Scandinavian origin for this.

Are you sure municipium wasn't just a city that took its residents' money through fees, taxes, and such?

If I burst into tears (as I do) at the first scene of sentimentality in a movie, does that make me thigmotropic? I am certainly moved by touching things.

I read a description once that a nihilist will look on passively while the world collapses around him, but move his food dish two inches and he'll cry bloody murder.

Never heard this one before, at least I don't think so.

A few years ago I had a coworker, a temp actually, who everyone called Percy. I assumed his name was Percival. Not exactly a caconym but quite unusual these days. Our manager "outed" him when she came around asking, "Has anyone seen Pericles?"