Guest Grammar Geek (her words)

For All You Mullygrubbers!

mullygrub (verb)
mullygrubs (moody noun)
mullygrubber (person to avoid)

The word mullygrubs came up on NPR recently and befuddled many people — both reporters and listeners. This is one of the best one-word descriptions alive (barely); it is attached to those moody, lackadaisical, gloomy, annoying people who just collywobble around, bringing negative energy to everyone.

If that isn’t enough to keep you away (or to keep you from becoming one), know that collywobble is a verb meaning to “belly-ache” (derived from “collic” and “stomach ache”). Got it?

Where the term mullygrub comes from is equally interesting (to us word geeks). An Aussie reports that a mullygrub is a cricket noun, referring to a bowled ball that “just rolls along the ground, keeping the batsman from scoring more than one run”, and therefore turning the defeated bowler into a collywobbler who resorts to any method to win with no consideration of long-term results. (Sounds as if it should be part of U.S. political grammar.)

Wait! There’s more! The word mully is a variant of muley, which refers to cattle with no horns. And how do hornless cattle behave without a means of defense? They get the mullygrubs, which turns them into very blah animals — thus mullygrubbers — blue, sad, down in the dumps.

Don’t be a mullygrubber! Forget the collywobbles and get out there and throw a party, ride a roller coaster, ask an attractive person out to dine, run naked through the stre... no, better skip that last one!

This is a post by a guest artist who apparently writes just like me.
She is Joanne Nakaya. Get a load of her writing blog! What fun!

OK, is it okay to O.K. an okay sentence including o.k.?

Next Sunday, March 23, 2014, has been named “OK Day”, celebrating the 175th anniversary of the appearance of this innovative word/sound/phrase. On March 23, 1839 okay appeared for the first time in a U.S. newspaper — The Boston Morning Post. It was a gimmick, folks — part of an abbreviation craze in this new country of ours. But, oh how it stuck!

How many ways can you write it? OK?
How often do you use the term okay?
Do you realize that this innocuous little term — “okay” — not only has uses in several parts of speech, but it also has a history? Who knew?

Answer to Question #1: You can write this term in all caps, a combination of cap and lower case, as a four-letter word or a two-word abbreviation (with or without periods). All are OKAY, OK, O.K., okay, ok, o.k.

Answer to Question #2: You have probably used the term more than 175 times today if you are working or socializing among other people, and possibly 25 to 30 times if you’re working alone at your computer and phone.

Answer to Question #3: Oh yes! You can use “okay” as a noun (You have my okay), a verb (Please okay this agreement today), an adjective (You’re an okay kind of person), and adverb (Is your computer running okay?), and an expletive/interjection (Okay!).

As for history, don’t believe those who try to tell you it originated with President Martin VanBuren, who is reputed to have referred to his connections with Old Kinderhook! Didn’t happen! Or with President Wilson, who reputedly repeated a term he had heard. Okay may  have come from the Greek ola kala, meaning “all good” or the Choctaw word, “okeh”, a sound-alike. After okay became used publicly in 1839, it is believed to have been immortalized in an unnamed slang dictionary in 1864. Probably not true.

And no! There's no way it stands for Oklahoma, as fine a state as OK may be.

Travel Farther; Think Further

The farther you travel from home, the more you further your education.
You  climb further in reputation the farther you go away from home ground.

Why does further/farther confuse so many people when the key to remember is the simple word “far”? When posed with the questions, think of distance covered.

When referring to physical distance, use farther, pertaining to something you can enumerate in inches, feet, miles, kilometers, or knots.

When referring to a nonphysical or metaphorical advancement, use further, such as talking about increasing (reputation, education, career, benefits).

So, to further your education, and possibly your career, you can stay put and study diligently while building your reputation. To travel farther than another, you’ll need a vehicle to cross the miles or light years or leagues across the sea.

Got it? No further discussion.

Verb Degrees

Choose a verb, any verb, preferably  a benign one and its extreme opposite (stroll --> race; tap --> pound; sip --> gulp). Insert other verbs that will take the benign verb, by small increments, to the extreme at the other end.

Here's my challenge: Move from “whisper” --> “screech”.

 My attempt: whisper, murmur, hum, speak, converse, enunciate, emphasize, shout, yell, scream, shriek, cry, screech…

Can you insert some other verbs in between?

For All You Mullygrubbers!

mullygrub (verb)
mullygrubs (moody noun)
mullygrubber (person to avoid)

The word mullygrubs came up on NPR recently and befuddled many people — both reporters and listeners. This is one of the best one-word descriptions alive (barely); it is attached to those moody, lackadaisical, gloomy, annoying people who just collywobble around, bringing negative energy to everyone.

If that isn’t enough to keep you away (or to keep you from becoming one), know that collywobble is a verb meaning to “belly-ache” (derived from “collic” and “stomach ache”). Got it?

Where the term mullygrub comes from is equally interesting (to us word geeks). An Aussie reports that a mullygrub is a cricket noun, referring to a bowled ball that “just rolls along the ground, keeping the batsman from scoring more than one run”, and therefore turning the defeated bowler into a collywobbler who resorts to any method to win with no consideration of long-term results. (Sounds as if it should be part of U.S. political grammar.)

Wait! There’s more! The word mully is a variant of muley, which refers to cattle with no horns. And how do hornless cattle behave without a means of defense? They get the mullygrubs, which turns them into very blah animals — thus mullygrubbers — blue, sad, down in the dumps.

Don’t be a mullygrubber! Forget the collywobbles and get out there and throw a party, ride a roller coaster, ask an attractive person out to dine, run naked through the stre... no, better skip that last one!

How Many Things Can You Break?

You can break a rule, a glass, an egg, a heart, a leg, your neck, a promise, a record, the bank at Monte Carlo, a $20 bill, the ice…

You can break in, out, up, down, into, even, wind, curfew, step, silence…

You can break up a fight, into the light, in new shoes, in a new assistant, out of jail, out of the blues, down in the rain, up in pain, into a bank, into song, into a sweat…

You can take a break, make a break, fake a break, shake a break (or is that shake and break?)…

Breaker! Breaker! Break!