






I also have one of these…

…on my desk at work.



Helluo librorum.

The OED is online!



No subscription (or university alumnus login) required!

And @OxfordWords tweets the Word Of The Day!

Now this doesn’t mean I no longer love Kindle…


40 literary terms you should know (and 4 reasons why)

40 literary terms you should know

Why should you read and/or bookmark this list?





Go forth and learn!

Stochastic? SO Random.

Members of Generation Y [for Youngling, surely] are often accused of overusing the word “random”, especially in response to matters that are not at all random. For example:

First youngling: “I thought I lost my keys, then I realised they were in my pocket the whole time!”

Second youngling: “Ooo, random!”

I’ll admit I’m a serial offender, out of sheer laziness rather than deep-seated vapidity (I hope).

Anyway, would we suffer less scorn by using the word “stochastic” instead?

First youngling: “I couldn’t find my favourite red pen, then I realised it was in my hair the whole time!”

Second youngling: “Ooo, stochastic!”


… Or would we just be scorned as pretentious AND dim?


Of links and linkages

I have looked in the dictionary (both Macquarie* AND Oxford**) and I still don’t know why anyone would use the word linkage as a noun when plain old link will almost always suffice. Unless they are using it as a technical term in the field of genetics. Which they seldom ever are.


*Preferred in Australia.

**Preferred everywhere else in the known universe.

Lost in Translation: The USA/Canada > “Australian” edition

This year, the closest I’ve been to snow (my love) is two weeks lounging around with the air conditioning turned down cold, watching The Winterlympics*… and the wearing of snowflake-shaped earrings.

But this time last year, I had just returned from a North American winter: a month stomping/skiing around Salt Lake City (Utah, USA) and Banff (Alberta, Canada) wearing three layers of everything, watching icicles form on my hair, and laughing at the peculiar linguistic variations between Australian English, Canadian English, and American English.


( The image quality is terrible, but this sign was outside the house we lived in for two weeks just outside Salt Lake City. It reads “No Solicitors or Deliverie’s”. I shrieked at this abomination every day.).

The following is the blog entry that I drafted upon my return, but quickly found was no longer relevant. UNTIL NOW.


Eh? (Canada)

Innit? (UK)

N’est-ce pas? (French)

Huh? (Youth)

Whut? (Web)

For sure!

For sure! (Canada)

No worries! (Aus)

Of course! (Everywhere else)

Yup! (Youth)


Chocolate-coated peanuts. I can’t believe I never knew this. I mean, I’ve watched American TV my entire life, AND I love chocolate-coated peanuts. But here, a ‘goober’ is, well, snot.

{ image via The Chocolate Cult }




Grape-flavoured apple. “Looks like an apple, tastes like a grape”. SO WRONG, and yet so right.

Apparently invented because kids ought to eat apples, but prefer the taste of grapes. Or grape-flavoured candy in this case.

Which is ridiculous.

When I was a child, we didn’t get to make orange-flavoured bananas, just because we liked oranges better. Know what we did if we liked oranges? WE ATE ORANGES!

Anyway, the grāppling process involves some difficult-to-pin-down method of drenching the apples in grape flavouring at some point in the ‘production’ process.

And apparently, the “ā” means that it’s pronounced GRAPE-L, not “grapple” (as in to manhandle/tussle). Know what? That didn’t stop me from saying “grapple”. Nor was I sufficiently perturbed by the outright absurdity of the whole idea to just put down the Grāpple and walk away. I should have been, but I couldn’t resist. Why? Because I like apples (okay, just the way they are), and I also like grape-flavoured candy. {image via Coolest Gadgets }

Loonies & Twonies/Toonies


Canadian one dollar and two dollar coin (not children’s cartoon characters). No point talking about “one dollar coin” and “two dollar coin” in Canada: no-one will know what you’re talking about.

The one-dollar “loonie” is so called because it bears the image of a loonie bird. The two dollar coin is worth two loonies, and so, by logical extrapolation, is called a “twonie” (pronounced toonie).

But of course!

{image via Filibuster Cartoons }


Sprinkles. Hundreds-and-thousands. What makes a
chocolate freckle freckly.

The fact that they’re “nonpareils” in Canada is obviously a remnant of French colonial (candy) domination.

I still don’t understand what being unequalled has to do with it (and I think Wikipedia’s explanation that they were unrivalled as cake decorations is a pretty poor effort on the etymology front).

{ Image via Flickriver }



French fries covered with gravy and cheese curds.

Words can’t express how truly repulsive this looks/is, so I’ll hand over to Google Images.

{via the Calgary Poutine Crawl 2013 }


And I’ll also leave it to Wikipedia to explain that etymologically, Poutine has a closer relation to “pudding” (ie: a whole lot of everything) than it does to the French expletive (though given Canada’s semi-Francophilia, the latter would also make some sense). Traditional pub grub, ski-field fuel, late-night booze food, school’s-out snack, etc. Like kebabs in Australia, only… more disgusting.

Puck Bunnies

Like groupies, but for ice hockey players instead of rock band members. [On Monday morning, I nearly FELL OFF MY CHAIR with excitement during the gold medal ice hockey match. And by chair, I mean perfectly stable and impossible-to-fall-off sofa. THAT IS HOW EXCITED I WAS. In the absence of ice hockey within a tangible geographic radius, this makes me a vicarious puck bunny (minus all the negative innuendo).]
{ image via Linda Mac }

Rumble strips

What my sister and I grew up calling “fart lines”. The noisy, corrugated part of the road that stops sleepy drivers from veering into oncoming traffic/into a snow drift when the road markings are invisible and/or one has been driving forever and ever and ever.

{ image via Local 4 Traffic }


Beanie (Aus)

Knitted cap (UK)



A tuque is, for Aussies, a beanie. A brimless, knitted head covering. And yes, it shares a common etymological ancestor with the chef’s toque, though one might get a bit warm wearing a tuque in the kitchen.

Controversially pronounced “toock” [ike the “two” in “twonie” (see above). The pronunciation is only controversial because one can get 5 different opinions in 5 minutes, if you ask around].

{ in the above image of Jay and Silent Bob, Jay is wearing a tuque. Silent Bob is not. }

Turbinado Sugar

The word ‘turbinado’ is, in my mind, a portmanteau of turbine and tornado.

Cyclonic sugar? To me, this is the way sugar ‘normally’ comes. That is, in Australia, “raw sugar” is the norm, and you’d have to do actual research to find out much about the manufacturing process. But in the US and Canada, white sugar is “normal”, and so it’s deemed necessary to explain turbinado sugar in explicit detail, right there on the packet.

Turbinado sugar, also known as turbinated sugar, is made from sugar cane extract. It is produced by crushing freshly cut sugar cane; the juice obtained is evaporated by heat, then crystallized. The crystals are spun in a centrifuge, or turbine (thus the name), to remove excess moisture and molasses, resulting in the characteristic large, light brown crystals

Yes, if you check the footnotes in the above-quoted Wikipedia article, that description can be found on the packaging for Trader Joe’s Turbinado Sugar. Which is rather incongruous with the vast amount of packaged ‘food’ one can buy in North America without knowing exactly what’s going on inside the packaging.

And in true toonie… er, twonie spirit, that’s all, folks! At least until the next snowventure (which is so far in the hypothetical future I think I’d be better off just wearing my ski boots into the frozen foods aisle at the supermarket).

* My nominations for the greatest <alt=”most insane”> Olympic sports? Skeleton, Ski Cross, and Ice Hockey.

Wallflower Words: Koan (n.)


The Word: Koan (n.)

Huh? In Zen Buddhist theory and study, a koan is a paradox proposed for the purpose of confounding the mind into an unthinking stupor, whereupon the stupefied mind becomes so stupefied as to enter a whole new level of conscious, awakened thought.

As in?

{ via Yahoo Answers }

And? Well, at 3.28 on a Tuesday afternoon we could all do with more mental stimulation, lest we be trapped forever in The Long, Dark Tea-Time of The Soul.

We might also like to remember that there is a moral to every story.

We might ALSO like to remember that animated introspective thought might never produce a finite answer.

And I need a name for that process of suddenly realising the answer to 14-down in the cryptic crossword a full 5 hours after I began puzzling over the clue.

See also:

Wallflower Words: Liminal (adj.)
Wallflower Words: Saturnine (a./ n.)
Wallflower Words: Quantise (v.)
Wallflower Words: Vitriol (n.)

Wallflower Words: Saturnine (a./n.)


The Word: Saturnine (a./n.)

Huh? Influenced by Saturn. Contaminated with lead [the effect of lead poisoning may also known as Saturnia] and therefore leaden. Hence the quality of having a heavy, slow, dull, sullen and depressed demeanour.

As in? January Astrology.  Saturn takes 29.5 YEARS to orbit the sun, as opposed to our 365 DAYS. Saturn is the ruling planet of Capricorn (implying that we January babies are goatishly stubborn).

“Astrologically, Saturn is associated with the principles of limitation, restrictions, boundaries, practicality and reality, crystallizing and structures… Saturn is also considered to represent the part of a person concerned with long-term planning… According to the first-century poet Manilius, Saturn is sad, morose, and cold and is the greater malefic… Saturn symbolized processes and things which were dry and extremely cold, and, therefore, inimical to life. It governed the melancholic humor… Saturn being the planet of mortality, and hence, why the Grim Reaper carries a scythe).”


Also: In bodily (sort of) form, Saturnine is The Guardian of the Road of Lost Souls in the Marvel Universe (which exists within THIS universe of course, but which anyone who has had more than a cursory glance can tell you, occupies a practically endless interlinking Wikipedia Universe of its own). Very morose; very Grim Reaper; very apt.

And? Planetary adjectives are all the rage. Happy people are commonly described as jovial, and mad ones as lunatic. The changeable are mercurial; and anything alien is either martian or at the very least, unearthly. So I say that ‘saturnine’, dark and sluggish beast that it is, deserves a better linguistic workout.

See also: Wallflower Words: Liminal (adj.)

—  Lunar Loveliness
The Language of Deep Space