Copper popper

This Torygraph reference to Blair’s determination “to hurl the full force of the law against anybody who dared to ‘glorify’ terrorism” had me imagining constables being trebucheted into Luton. Not, fortunately.

Werner von

My favourite enemy is hearing alarm bells going off in his head. Do his ears face inwards or what?! He also regularly has lunch with Willy J. Now, that I am prepared to believe.

The bodies of the

“the bodies of the” causes my mind to slip through several different types of space and emerge from a badgerhole in a pleasant spring breeze. (Via MM)

Clonycavan man and the miserable fate of Dublin hair stylists in general

Lisa Spangenberg posted a while back on the recently publicised find of two 2,300-year-old bog bodies at Clonycavan and Croghan near Dublin. The BBC says of Clonycavan man that he had been using a type of Iron Age hair gel; a vegetable plant oil mixed with a resin that had probably come from south-western France…

Charabanc

Michael Quinion says it’s a weird word, so I guess I read weird books. Some early models had the benches raked so that everyone could see forward without standing up; accidents must have been spectacular. Spaniards travelled in char-á-bancs, as well as char-á-banes and charabáns (see porlan), and Cuba may have had the odd chalabán.…

Bumgalow/lumbago

Maxime calls it an anaphoneme. Pig Latin is more complex, but voice confidentiality tool Babble appears to be anaphonemic: Babble is a desktop device that connects to the telephone and sends the user’s voice out in multiplied and “babbled” form through proprietary speakers arranged in the work area. It achieves confidentiality without distracting the user…

Several innovative figures of speech from Arturo Pérez-Reverte

Arturo Pérez-Reverte sez (via Órdago): As I type this I still don’t know whether the ultranationalists will succeed in making Catalan the only official and obligatory language in the new statute of autonomy. I should add that I neither know nor care, and that everyone should speak how he facking wants. But the problem is…