CRAIG CONLEY (Prof. Oddfellow) is recognized by Encarta as “America’s most creative and diligent scholar of letters, words and punctuation.” He has been called a “language fanatic” by Page Six gossip columnist Cindy Adams, and a “cult hero” by Publisher’s Weekly. An eccentric scholar, Conley’s ideas are often decades ahead of their time. He invented the concept of the “virtual pet” in 1980, fifteen years before the debut of the popular “Tamagotchi” in Japan. His virtual pet, actually a rare flower, still thrives and has reached an incomprehensible size. Conley’s website is OneLetterWords.com.

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A Turkish Delight of musings on languages, deflations of metaphysics, vauntings of arcana, and great visual humor.
Did You Hear the One I Just Made Up?

August 9, 2010 (permalink)

The idiom "an elephant in the room" postdates Houdini's death.
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July 29, 2010 (permalink)

de rigueur mortis: when etiquette requires a stiff upper lip.
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June 4, 2010 (permalink)

In the tradition of the ageless phrase, "If I had a nickel for every time I ...":

If I had a user name and password for every time I tried to log onto a website ...

---

Gordon Meyer writes:

ha! Indeed.
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May 20, 2010 (permalink)

If, as Robert Louis Stevenson said, "wine is bottled poetry," then Mint Juleps are georgics, vodka is blank verse, and a set of drinks is a roundelay.

---

Jonathan Caws-Elwitt posits:

And Irish whiskey is a limerick?

Prof. Oddfellow answers:

Yes!  And did you know that after a few shots it doubles as an anapestic?

June quips:

I thought tequila would be a lime-rick.
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May 16, 2010 (permalink)

An Italian friend asked about the Franklin penny's motto, "Mind your business."

Q: Does the motto mean "Mind your [own] business" (as in "Mind your beeswax") or "Mind your business [affairs]"?

A. Both: it's a "doubloon entendre."


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May 9, 2010 (permalink)

I looked for a punch line when I found a Lorem Ipsum generator with all sorts of language links at the top.  (See screenshot.)  Here's my own punch line in honor of Robert Heinlein:

I translated Lorem Ipsum into Martian, but it was all grok to me.


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February 24, 2010 (permalink)

The erotica author didn't write under an alter-ego but rather an alter-id.
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January 30, 2010 (permalink)

"Head gear prevents most soft tissue injuries to the face but is not as protective to the brain as many believe."
—Steven J. Karageanes


Illustration c. 1882
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January 16, 2010 (permalink)

Comedy is "at risk."  And that would be funny if it weren't so:

  1. serious
  2. unwittingly ironic
  3. provoking
  4. stupid
  5. pathetic
  6. prevalent
  7. frustrating
  8. tragic
  9. dangerously misinformed
  10. terrifying
  11. sad
  12. pitiful
  13. ludicrous
  14. destructive
  15. impressive
  16. gross
  17. scary
  18. true
  19. disastrous
  20. disgusting
  21. painful
  22. probable
  23. terrible
  24. patently ridiculous
  25. sincere
  26. perverse
  27. unfunny
  28. horrible
  29. stressful
  30. outrageous
  31. ill-bred
  32. sickening
  33. insulting
  34. crazy
  35. typical
  36. deadly
  37. insidious
  38. grotesque
  39. significant
  40. absurd
  41. real
  42. despicable
  43. wicked
  44. bitter
  45. wide of the mark
  46. common
  47. moralizing
  48. filled with pathos
  49. vile
  50. cruel
  51. appalling
  52. hideous
  53. painfully revealing
  54. very nearly unbearable
  55. important
  56. predictable
  57. expensive
  58. heartbreaking
  59. damn personal
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December 21, 2009 (permalink)



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December 17, 2009 (permalink)

Here's one for linguists:

What's an allophone in French? 

An allo-allophone.
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December 7, 2009 (permalink)



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November 11, 2009 (permalink)

The emotional magician wore his heart on his sleeve.  No one suspected he had a heart up his sleeve, too.
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October 28, 2009 (permalink)

Ironically, the best way to dance your way out of a support group is the two-step.
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October 23, 2009 (permalink)


The original lowbrow: Alexander Wedderburn, 1st Earl of Rosslyn (Lord Loughborough).
Though prima facie the opposite of highbrow, lowbrow is actually a corruption of Lord Loughborough (Alexander Wedderburn, 1st Earl of Rosslyn), notorious for being so dull that he caused dullness in others.

---


And I thought the word "lowbrow" derived from the name of a beer!
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October 15, 2009 (permalink)

We popularly say that ASAP is an acronym meaning "as soon as possible."  But ASAP comes to us from the Greek storyteller ÆSAP, whose brief fables can be read on the quick.
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October 13, 2009 (permalink)

The professor abandoned teaching by degrees.
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October 4, 2009 (permalink)

The eleventh hour leaves me at sixes and sevens (unless I'm dressed to the nines).
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October 2, 2009 (permalink)

Atheists who celebrate only bar and bat mitzvahs: Jews in a formal life.
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September 25, 2009 (permalink)

Q: What do you call the horizontal strokes in the passage below?


 
A: Slapdashes!

(Snippet from Frances Hodgson Burnett's A Little Princess, 1987, p. 75)
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