-
Nonplussed
If you’re “nonplussed”, you’re either stuck, in a thinking sort of way, or you’re confused or perplexed by something. But does that suggest that if you figure something out, you ought to consider yourself “plussed?” Nope. “Nonplussed” is a word that came from a phrase, and when you disassemble the phrase it loses all of Continue reading
-
November 4
Will Rogers, who was born November 4, 1879, didn’t let elections get to him. He did point out that “I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat.” “Do the best you can,” he also said, “and don’t take life too serious.” Rogers was an enormously popular star in the Continue reading
-
Internecine
“Internecine” is an unusual word, but not really all that obscure. It means “mutually destructive,” and it’s generally used in phrases like “internecine conflict” to describe something that affects to parties in conflict relatively equally. More recently it tends to be used specifically for contention between two groups who have something in common, such as Continue reading
-
Wanion
Over the centuries and millennia, people have believed a lot of things about the moon. Everything from what it’s made of (the “cheese” theory, while its credibility is currently low, might come roaring back at any moment) to the effects it has on what happens here on earth. For instance, back when people spoke Old Continue reading
-
Born today: Walker Evans
Walker Evans was an American photographer born October 3, 1903. His best known work is from the Great Depression of the 1930s, when he was part of the US government-funded project to send writers and photographers around the country to chronicle and document life in the nation. Evans wasn’t a street photographer; he used an Continue reading
-
October 3
About a thousand years ago, give or take a few centuries, on what’s now called Temwen Island in the Pacific, some people — nobody is quite sure who they were — started building a pretty extraordinary structure. It’s a city, but it’s not built on land. They built it in a lagoon. It’s about a Continue reading
-
Easy does it
Word of the day: easy It’s always been easy in English to invent new euphemisms for “easy.” The practice goes way back, and finding even obsolete phrases is as easy as shooting fish in a barrel. Shakespeare, in “Troilus and Cressida,” (1609), referred to “bedwork,” which meant something so easy it could be done while Continue reading
-
Phiz (not fizz)
From 1687: “With what a rueful Phis and maine.” From 1714: “Fizle’s Phiz always gives me the Chollick.” From 1827: “And deem themselves of admirable fiz.”From 1903: “…the drollest phiz in dogdom.” From 1997: “…replaced with the phiz of his supposedly brain-dead nemesis.” What we have here is a word (“phiz”) that was in pretty Continue reading
-
Born today: John Loud
More often than you’d think, an important and useful thing is invented more than once. There’s often an idea floating around, and any number of people work on it — and more than one succeeds. It’s less common, though, for a device to be invented twice, fifty years apart. John Loud was born in Weymouth, Continue reading
-
November 2
The second of November is a big day in computer security; it’s the anniversary of the first significant computer worm distributed over the Internet in 1988. It was the “Morris Worm,” created by Robert Morris, a graduate student at Cornell. His intentions weren’t malicious, and the worm wasn’t intended to cause any harm — in Continue reading
About Me
I’m Pete Harbeson, a writer located near Boston, Massachusetts. In addition to writing my own content, I’ve learned to translate for my loquacious and opinionated pup Chocolate Bossypaws. I shouldn’t be surprised, but she mostly speaks in doggerel. You can find her contributions tagged with Chocolatiana.
Check out my other blog, Techlimitics, where I’m grappling with the nature of simplicity.
Privacy policy
No trackers, no ads, no data collected or saved.
Contact
peterharbeson@me.com