Robert: Hey, there’s a tiddlywink on the floor.
Lucie: What’s a tiddlywink?
Me: It’s half of a tiddlyblink.
[cricket sounds]

When I was on holiday a few weeks ago, I got into the habit of reacting to bad news with an even worse Johnny Carson impression. “The Chinese government is cracking down on Tibetan protesters? That is weird, wild stuff,” I’d say. “The world is coming to an end? Boy, that is weird, wild stuff.” [...]

Aw, for Christ’s sake — who put the bomp in the bomp-a-bomp-a-bomp? I’ve told you people a million times: It doesn’t go in there. Now it’s all ruined!
If there’s any ram in that rama-lama-ding-dong, I’m gonna be pissed.

Greetings to you on what is an important religious holiday celebrated by millions of faithful worshippers. I refer, of course, to Buddha’s birthday, which is generally celebrated on the eighth day of the fourth month of the lunar calendar, but is just observed on April 8 in Japan, where they don’t hold any truck with [...]

If you’ve never quite liked the name your parents gave you, you’d love being a kid in Hong Kong. You get to pick your own name. Actually, you sort of have to. Adopting an English name in addition to your own Chinese name isn’t quite mandatory, but it’s very strongly encouraged.
Some of the names picked [...]

Immediately following the publication of the April issue of my friend Elizabeth’s newsletter on writing and language issues, which deals with eggcorns this month, I ran across this Ask Metafilter thread on misused expressions. It’s full of plenty of the usual enjoyable complaining about the death of the English language.1 But what I particularly liked [...]