April linkfest

You know how Google names its Android versions after sweets like Kit Kat and Marshmallow? Well, writes Justin Pot, Microsoft should name its updates after dogs. (How to Geek)

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Speaking of Kit Kat, the brand is hugely popular in Japan, in part because “Kit Kat” translates to “You will surely win.” (Fortune; h/t MJF)

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A century ago, dozens of American girls were named Milady because of the success of a new product: the Milady Décolleté Gillette safety razor, developed to remove underarm hair. (And did you know that “underarm” was coined as a euphemism for “armpit”?) (Baby Name Wizard)

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In 2014 Airbnb named its new logo the “Belo.” Now Trivago, the hotel-price-comparison company, has created an incomplete-circle logo it calls “Wabi,” from a Japanese word meaning “imperfect.” From the company’s website: “A circle should be closed, but it is not, because we’re never done. We’re never great, which is why the circle is imperfect.”

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Ben Zimmer keeps up with presidential epithet-slinging in an investigation of slimeball and other slimy (and ballsy) compounds. (The Atlantic)

 

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Self-described “word taster” James Harbeck has published Confessions of a Word Lush, a compilation of many of his vignettes about words, as a paperback and e-book. And he’s already working on a second volume. (Sesquiotic)

 

 

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Ben Yagoda considers the trendy suffixes -forward, -facing, and -positive. (Lingua Franca)

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Nine business terms that “everyone hates.” (Oxford Dictionaries blog)

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Ten satirical covers for the terrible books you can’t get away from. (Jo Lou, via Jon Carroll)

 

 

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Lynne Murphy, author of the Separated by a Common Language blog, has published Prodigal Tongue, about British and American Englishes. Test your own knowledge of the subject with a quiz on the origins of some tricky words and idioms, like pen-pusher and bumbershoot. (Quartz)

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Sneck, snib, blether, and other useful Scots words. (Caledonian Mercury)

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“During the past 52 years, a single dollar has lost nearly 87 percent of its value, and so have the words of professional freelance writers.” (Malcolm Harris; hat tip David Klion) 

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This is a real tree placard at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden and I’ve been keeping it to myself for far too long pic.twitter.com/hNwXN8tUcm

— vegetarian librarian (@celesteleighb) April 12, 2018

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Heinz has taken the back-breaking labor out of blending mayonnaise and ketchup. Behold: mayochup. Or ketchonaise. Or salsa golf, if you’re Argentinean. Or fry sauce, if you’re from Utah. Or thousand island dressing, if you’re from a whole lot of American places. (Hat tips: Kory Stamper, Andy Hollandbeck, Peter Bate, Will Boston.)

 

Comments

[susan]

Heh. I always thought "Thousand Island Dressing" is called "Thousand Island Dressing" because of all the little islands of relish bits floating around in the mayo-ketchup mix. I guess not!

[susan]

And I also thought the combination of mayo and ketchup, without the islands of relish, is called "Russian Dressing."

[Nancy Friedman]

Susan: "Russian dressing" was also mentioned in the feedback to "mayochup."
https://twitter.com/search?q=mayochup%20russian&src=typd