What the heck is a “hermitage?” A place where a hermit can live with other hermits?

Why is it that if you throttle your car it speeds up but if you throttle your wife she slows down?

When did “awesome” become the opposite of “awful?”

You can pipe up or pipe down, buckle up or buckle down. If you buckle your belt, it holds up your pants. But if you buckle you knees, everything falls down. You can hold off or hold on or hold up, and they’re all pretty much the same thing, but holding down is something different altogether.

Overheard around town: “they should just give the banks the money and get out of the way. The banks just need to be ‘reincentivized.’” Please tell me that’s not really a word. I’m not sure, but I have the feeling that the problem is that they have been too incentivized. Maybe I misheard, and he said “deincentivized.”

I’m also rather fond of a term coined by UC Irvine’s Chief of Anesthesiology who was suspended for filling out the forms describing the course of the surgery and the patient’s post-op recovery before the operation began. In his defense, he said that “there was no patient injury, no compromise of care…associated with the pre-documentation.”

Legalizing gay marriage has had one interesting lexicographic effect: for the first time, the word “bridegroom” makes sense. Until now it has been, at least as far as I am aware, the only one-word oxymoron in the language. Some people, particularly the frequently-married, have said that “gay marriage,” is itself an oxymoron, but they are using “gay” in the more traditional sense….

And then there’s the term so popular with economists right now, “negative growth.” This is an oxymoron that really belongs in the list I started back at the beginning of the year, in with euphemisms like “pre-owned” for “used” and “gaming” for “gambling.” So I think I’ll just slip it into that piece in the archive (are you going to remember it wasn’t there originally?) and say no more about it.

And finally, in the Onomatopoea Division: “Ping Pong” is allegedly so named because that’s what it sounds like. Not when I play it. “Gnip Gnop” would be much better. Maybe it sounds different in Chinese….