From The New Building Better English 9, Teacher's Edition, 1955.

We can't find a dictionary anywhere that hasn't left out at least three colorful meanings of the little-known, quaint old nautical term spitcher.

It's commonly acknowledged that this Maltese derivation from the early 1900s means to be finished or done for, sunk (as in a downed submarine), demolished, permanently lost, damaged beyond repair, gone forever.

But who else will tell you that spitcher is also a piece of tile used in hopscotch?  (Gleanings Revisited: Nostalgic Thoughts Of a Bedfordshire Farmer's Boy by E. W. O'Dell, 1995).

Or that a spitcher is a canal boat's quant pole?  ("I was born on a canal boat, and often tumbled in and had to be fished out by father with the spitcher" [Fire Island: Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track by George Manville Fenn, 1894]).

Or that a spitcher is an assassination?  (Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Journey to the End of the Night, 1949).

The Big U says, quoting Tegan Quin:

"You are you because you are you and you were meant to be you so be you proudly."

The Big U is from Wid's Daily, 1919.

We would change only the second word.  "Use EVERY opportunity to talk about the many interesting things about cats."  From Shapes by Mary Tom Riley, 1991.

There's really no other way to say it: "butterflyflutterby and flutterbybutterfly."  From Christmas Every Day by William Dean Howells, 1892.

The moon is here [correctly] called "sleep's mystic amulet."  From Dorothy Frances Blomfield's Gurney's "Moon-Spell," 1913.

Dark Shadows took pains to avoid naming "that little comic strip character that walks around with a dark cloud over his head" (ep. 43).  But he's accidentally identified in episodes, 704, 304, and 275.

Here's how what we call "genius" is a magic spell, like a magician's living fire that burns in the deepest darkness.  From "Genius" by Mary St. Aubyn, 1842.

A Higglede-piddiddy and a sensitive Baraboo.  From The Moon Prince by Richard Kendall Munkittrick, 1893.

The single word "mustard" used almost as a euphemism for "blasted," from Dark Shadows episode 26.  "How 'bout some mayonnaise, too?" in episode 72.

Creating song lyrics by expanding single words into entire phrases via decoding the meanings of each letter?  We're delighted that the artist Velvet Tangerine was inspired by our two videos concerning alphabetic codes, one about the "Mantong" key, the other about the Christopher Smart key.  Here's his resulting song.

As the show was filmed in one take and on a grueling schedule, actors frequently flubbed their lines on Dark Shadows.  Here's one finishing his speech with, "etc., etc," in episode 24.  The actor who replaced him as the sherrif says in episode 59, "Well, I'm just trying to fill in the blank spaces, ma'am."

So great when a character speaks her punctuation.  Actually, the full line she speaks is, "Period.  Exclamation point!"  The period/exclamation point combo is sort of like an interrobang, just less inquisitive.  From Dark Shadows episode 14.

We personally can't quite make out the 14 wonder words that earn money when repeated.  From Together, 1960.

We do appreciate a book that gets to the real questions, and of course the real questions require the "mystical quadruple interrogatory: how? what?? whence??? whither????"  From Rending the Vail by William Aber, 1899.

Lethal, lurking, luscious, leering, lured.  From The Film Daily, 1947.

There's no apostrophe on either the half title or title page of Niobia Bryant's Let's Do It Again.  This can happen with certain fonts and with careless proofreading.  Let [lowercase] s do it again!

You know him as Alfred E. Neuman, but here he's identified as Rexstrew Kirxbuddle.  From Indiana University's 1942 yearbook.

A rare spelling of "wig," usually found only in dramatic arts organizations like The Wigue and Masque.  From Lebanon Valley's 1950 yearbook.

From The Gateway, 1981.