Arnold Zwicky's Blog
Arnold Zwicky's Blog
Arnold Zwicky
A blog mostly about language from Arnold Zwicky, Adjunt Professor of Linguistics, Stanford University.
Latest Posts
(fellatial fun — and disrespectful of religion as well — so not for kids or the sexually modest) Yesterday on the Facebook group soc-motss (for same-sex-inclined folk and their friends), Ellen Evans forwarded a 6/24 FB posting from...
From Toni Borowsky (in Australia) on Facebook on 6/24: Jesus PYJAMAS! Ffs I am seeing ads for Jesus pyjamas. (AuE / BrE spelling PYJAMAS, AmE PAJAMAS) In response: — AZ > TB: Links! Pix! We need stuff to see, Toni! But I add that,...
From Elizabeth Daingerfield Zwicky (my daughter) on 6/20, completely out of the blue: Re: Assessment Thursday 10:30: The assessment visit is at the Avant [“a WellQuest Living Community”, offering independent living for seniors in Palo...
(about the holiday, and masculinity, and enough man-on-man sex to make this posting out of bounds for kids and the sexually modest) First take: the long pan. From my 6/16/19 posting “On this day in 2019”: (US) Fathers Day. For some of...
In the New Yorker‘s 6/15/26 issue, a “Talk of the Town” piece “The Boards: Like Willy Wonka” by Zach Helfand on the theatre director Michael Arden experiencing indoor skydiving at a facility in Queens (in preparation for his latest show,...
… from the New Yorker issue of that day: a Liana Finck cartoon on the never-done work of women; and an Ellis Rosen cartoon featuring a fully-accredited monster. The Finck. A young mother, frazzled by the care of a newborn, faces the...
(a note on taboo avoidance and euphemism, but with enough explication of the raw reference of various expressions to make this posting unsuitable for kids and the sexually modest) A poster wrote: I am a male corn actor. — adding that he...
Just 3 days ago (6/15), it was the mantric pleasures of my ball: Key lime cheese ball, Key lime cheese ball, Key lime cheese ball. And then today (6/18), the Pinhead citizens of Dingburg have taken to chanting for their remarkable...
(Significant amounts of sexual crudity, so not for the eyes and ears of kids or the sexually modest) Niall Maher’s New Yorker daily cartoon for 6/15/26: (#1) To make any sense of this wonderful cartoon, you need to have detailed...
(There will be some man-on-man sex, in street language, so not for kids or the sexually modest) From my 6/13 posting “Two laughs-out-loud and a shiver of self-recognition”, about this Sarah Akinterinwa Psychiatrist strip: The therapist...
(fairly quickly detours into phenomenally raunchy free verse and then swivels again — but in there’s some stuff that’s way out of bounds for kids and the sexually modest) I was roused from my pastoral torpor this morning by a Facebook ad...
Cartoons that especially moved me in the latest — 6/1/26 — issue of the New Yorker: two by artists who are old acquaintances on this blog (Drew Dernavich and Frank Cotham), trafficking here in their brands of absurdity (their gags made...
A busy two days, with an avalanche of fresh things to post about, but all of it overshadowed by the hot news that I have found a place to live in. For complex reasons, it’s not technically an assisted living facility, but an independent...
The 6/1 Zippy strip celebrates a vibrant life on the side of the road, in drive-in joints offering comfort food and in flashy highway motels, in the lost days of mid-20th-century America (think HoJo’s clam strips): (#1) Stunned by...
(plenty of raunchy sex talk, not for kids or the sexually modest) (#1) That’s gooner ‘someone who masturbates a lot, enthusiastically’ — one of a family of senses for this noun — and it’s a fair cop (on the song, see the footnote at the...