Supposedly, the word cornobble means 'to hit someone in the head with a fish.'

What? Where? Who? Why?

Well, lexicographically, answers to those questions might not be forthcoming, because cornobble seems to be one of those stunt words, like blamestorming, that exists mostly because it's fun to tell other people what it means. (Call it lexical performance art.)

There is an 1890 glossary of Gloucestershire dialect that shows this (thank you Google Book Search!):



But whence the fish? How did this word go (possibly) from just a plain ol' beat-down with whatever was handy, to a very specific piscine assault?

I'm wondering (highly speculatively) if there was some sort of interference from *another* obsolete word, cor, which the OED defines as:

Salt cod, salt fish as distinguished from dry or stock-fish.

(Salt fish, being harder, would pack more of a wallop, but would not deliver the satisfying *thwack* that one assumes a fresh fish would.)

Obviously, just having those three letters in common doesn't mean there's really a connection, but it's the best I can come up with.

If you've seen this word in print, please leave a link in the comments! (The deleted Wikitionary article for this word has a link to the alumni magazine of the University of New Hampshire, but the link is truncated and a search of their site turns up nothing.)

Many thanks to Ben Zimmer, Grant Barrett, and Will Shortz for their helpfulness! And thanks to Kenton in Dayton for hitting me in the head with this word (metaphorically) in the first place ...

I was traveling this past weekend and thus sent many text messages, from my handy Treo 700.

I love, love, love text messages, as for me they incorporate all the pleasure of a phone call (immediacy, convenience) with none of the downsides (the noise of jackhammers in the background, my tendency to meander conversationally).

However, the only downside is that using the semicolon in a text is really difficult! That's the sad-but-telling-part: I want to use semicolons IN TEXT MESSAGES. (Next I'll be complaining about the lack of the interrobang.)

Anyway, to type the semi (on the Treo, at least) you have to use this combination: option-k-alt-select. I'm fairly sure the only reason you have the option to use the semicolon at all is because it is an integral part of the winky smiley emoticon, ;-).

If you send me a text message using a semicolon -- bonus points. Massive bonus points. Prizes to be determined later.

Labels: punctuation, txting

Okay, this is great -- a Canadian artist (or an artist in Canada, there's a subtle difference), Margaret Flood, is calling for help to illustrate the dictionary. (You know "The Dictionary" -- not any particular dictionary, just the ideal one.)

What is the Shapetionary? It's a visual index of objects.

It started from looking at the dictionary and wondering why some words are illustrated and others aren’t, then thinking it would be interesting to illustrate the whole dictionary, or all the object nouns...then organize them by shape.

So I extracted all, or most (aprox 9500), of the object nouns, now I am setting out to get them illustrated by as many different people as possible. I am interested in our subjective/collective understandings of objects. So far over 400 people are participating, I estimate that between 1200-1500 drawers are need[ed].

If you're interested in participating, click on the image above to visit Ms. Flood's site.