Incidentally, the name of my local Jamaican takeaway is...
This is a post of two parts, and, like some kind of popular Swedish novel, it won’t make much sense until they collide.
Firstly, have you noticed that Collins has made it free to search its online dictionary? Brilliant news. So, if, like me, you have a mind to, you can now compare word definitions from Oxford and Collins side by side. Perfect. Collins definitely has the edge in terms of nice, clean, ad-free design, as well as some lovely features such as usage graphs.
Anyway, I was raving about this yesterday, when someone pointed out a potential flaw on the Collins site. In an unbelievably trusting move, they’ve linked it up to Flickr. Yes, that’s right. Whatever word you search for, on the results page you’ll also get public-sourced images tagged with that word. WHAT?
As I’m incredibly mature and above such things, I immediately tried “breast”. Wow, boobies! Next, with chickens clearly in mind, I tried “cock”. Obviously. Try it, go on – down on the right-hand side of the results page. It shows just two images from a pool of photos with the relevant tags, so I don’t promise you rudeness every time. But there’s a strong chance of it.
Okay, enough of the Vangers. Over to the second part: the goth girl (she’s not really a goth, but bear with me).
Also yesterday, I had a read of Claire Maxwell’s blog, specifically her post on Sophie Dahl’s book. She’s very good, is Claire, by the way, and what I’m about to say is in no way a criticism – have a read for yourself, and then marvel that she writes like that at the tender age of just 18.
Anyway, Claire had written in her blog post: “It’s a cookery book-come-autobiography.” And this should be cum, rather than come.
cum: preposition used between two nouns to designate an object of a combined nature
Now I thought to drop her a quick message (and in fact I did, and she replied that she’d had a feeling it should be cum but couldn’t bring herself to write it – “my grandad reads it!”). But before I wrote the message, I got to thinking: if she doesn’t believe me, where should she look it up? I don’t want to incite a young lady to type cum into Google, for goodness’ sake.
And so, the Vangers and the goth girl collide. Of course, the new Collins page was the perfect place. I could send a link to the definition, thus sidestepping any potential need for Googling. But I can confirm that those of clean mind and only reasonable levels of curiosity should not scroll down.
On the bright side, I have learnt about some delightful features you can give characters on Second Life (and, luckily for everyone else, that photo is no longer being displayed).
Call it a hunch, but I don’t think this particular feature is a keeper. The overall service, however, gets a big thumbs up from me.
Eww! That’s such a blunder! I’m sure they’ll change it pretty damn quick.
I was editing some copy this morning that included the phrase “a kind of sweet-sour marinade-come-dressing”, and like you I knew to change it to “cum”, but – oh dear. It’s right, but it feels so wrong…
Comment by Tom Freeman — January 10, 2012 @ 7:20 pm |
Oh no… :-s
Comment by substuff — January 10, 2012 @ 8:16 pm |
When you think about it, its an unexpectedly appropriate metaphorical slide from the original meaning – “cum” used to designate a combining of two things, and now it designates the result of combining two humans. So not so different, then.
Comment by Victoria — January 10, 2012 @ 8:22 pm |
I don’t get the reference to Wenger. What does Arsène have to do with this?
Comment by Alistair Dabbs — January 10, 2012 @ 9:11 pm |
Bugger, it’s Vanger, isn’t it. Where did I get Wenger from? I’ll change it!
Comment by substuff — January 10, 2012 @ 9:16 pm |
All this talk about cum, I thought perhaps ‘Wenger’ was a hitherto obscure Yiddish term along the same lines as ‘schlong’, ‘putz’ or ‘shmeckel’. Except ‘Wenger’ makes it sound longer.
Comment by Alistair Dabbs — January 10, 2012 @ 9:27 pm |
Oh dear. Now I’m worried about what my subconscious is getting up to!
Comment by substuff — January 10, 2012 @ 9:46 pm |
I can’t imagine what this post and these comments have done to your site SEO…
Comment by Alistair Dabbs — January 10, 2012 @ 10:41 pm |
Today’s search terms tell me it’s not good. *shrug*
Comment by substuff — January 11, 2012 @ 6:04 pm |
I thought it was “danger”. Unless there’s subtle sporting wordplay going on.
Hot Collins news – some sort of family filter has definitely been applied. I’ve been testing it with some assiduity…
Comment by Freelance Unbound — January 11, 2012 @ 10:32 am |
Curse this predictive typing: “wanger”…
Comment by Freelance Unbound — January 11, 2012 @ 10:33 am |
Wanger danger. Is that related to stranger danger?
Comment by substuff — January 11, 2012 @ 6:03 pm |
I subbed for a sleazy men’s mag some years ago where house style dictated we only use “cum” in the traditional this-cum-that sense and “come” for all other uses. They also had us writing “Web site” and “e-mail”. So annoying!
Comment by AussieSub — February 6, 2012 @ 12:43 am |
Haha, brilliant! “We may be working in sleaze, but there are STANDARDS.”
Comment by substuff — February 6, 2012 @ 8:16 am |
Thought you might appreciate this brilliantly censored ninth par from this match report from thisisbristol.co.uk
http://www.thisisbristol.co.uk/time-Reading-1-Bristol-City-0/story-15062805-detail/story.html
Now if it had been a “cross cumshot” skidding inches beyond the far post, they might have had a point!
Comment by Dave B — February 7, 2012 @ 6:05 pm |
Oh my. Now that’s something special!
Comment by substuff — February 7, 2012 @ 7:04 pm |