Break time

As a person who can't endure long car rides without the need for frequent rest stops, I think it's funny that Paula Radcliffe stopped to relieve herself in the London Marathon - and still ended up setting a world record. (The article uses "spend a penny" as a euphemism for using the toilet - now that's a phrase I haven't heard in ages.)

Comments

Eric "Babe" Morse said…
Never heard "spend a penny" either. How about "talk to a man about a horse" ?
Euphemisms are fun... I talked about them recently. Check it out, if you have the inclination. Maybe add your own!
http://subjunctivitis.blogspot.com/2005/02/me-for-you-and-euphemism.html
18 April 2005 at 21:05
Daryl said…
No euphemisms to add, but I did end up intrigued by your post on the defunct subjunctive!
21 April 2005 at 01:54
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Verbal agreement

From a Grauniad Guardian article on James Dyson , inventor of the dual-cyclone vacuum cleaner: He still has one major ambition. To become a verb, in the same way that Hoover - or, as he puts it, "the alternative" - has done. I suggest to him that people are already using his product but still saying they are "hoovering". He smiles. "I don't think they'll be doing that for long," he says. That struck me as unusual - it's very rare for a firm's leader to say that he wants his product to become a verb. Lots of other companies like TiVo and Google have tried desperately to avoid their name becoming a verb, for fear of the name becoming so generic that the trademark gets diluted. But then, the Languagehat archives seem to show (see comment near the bottom) that Dyson's big on turning his name into a verb. *** Sadly, due to its distinct lack of vowels, the chances of "sng" becoming a verb seem close to zero, regardless of whate
Read more

Dog blogs, plus the I look like my dog "contest"

Image
I've just discovered Puptastic , another dog blog, and learnt the following disturbing facts: 1. The dog most likely to eat you when you're dead is the Dachshund. Beware the hot dog! 2. Some people look a lot like their dogs . A lot. But only if they own pedigrees . Actually, I've heard about this study for a long time - it made its rounds on the Net a while back. It's a selection thing. Anyway, the post had a link to pictures of what they claimed was a "I Look Like My Dog" contest (urban legend alert - I think it's more likely to be just a series of regular Cesar ads), including this one: Update: some quick Googling shows that the idea that this is a dog-resemblance contest is almost certainly not true. Presumably the "winners of the 'I Look Like My Dog' contest line was meant to be facetious, but people have taken it seriously. In reality, these were ads done by ALMAP/BBDO Sao Paulo that won some Gold awards at the 2000 Cannes Lions ( thi
Read more