Tuesday, November 10, 2009

M-W

If you are in ever a need to know the meaning of a word, you go to a dictionary. These interesting books also help you with spelling, part of speech, and sometimes even origin.

Oftentimes the book will give the phonetic pronunciation of the word, in squiggles and lines and backwards e's that no one understands.

The internets have changed the dictionary forever.

On M-W.com, Merriam-Webster, those divine dictionary divas, have banded their forces of good together to create a world wide web of word wonder. The info is all there -- the definition, the spelling, the phonetic pronunciation, the word type.

But yes, oh yes, there is something much grander.

M-W will PRONOUNCE THE WORD FOR YOU.

*crickets*

OK, perhaps that's not very exciting on its face. But think of the possibilities.

This site may or may not include "bad" words. Curse words! Things that would get you detention!

I may or may not have played some of those "bad" words in my day. I, along with others, may or may not have played them really late at night at the college newspaper. There may or may not have been loud speakers involved.

"What, Emily? You don't like the entertainment page? My computer has something to say to you--"

Computer: Mother$*@!#^

It's also possible that we constructed our own phrases by playing two computers off each other. A favorite word of some of my friends was, ahem, "Ass clown." (Pardon me, I'm quoting.) It is possible that two computers side by side could mimic the saying of this particular compound word by having one computer say, well, "Ass," and the other one saying "Clown," making up for the fact that the particular combination of the two was not in the dictionary (not that I would know).

We laughed and laughed. Well, you know, we may or may not have laughed and laughed at these things.

(Let's be honest, I may or may not have looked at the site and played some of the words while writing this blog. And still laughed and laughed. It's possible I'm 12.)

Of course this all would have happened after deadline really late at night. If it happened at all. And I'm not saying it did. But if it did happen, it was pretty freaking funny -- or, well, would have been pretty freaking funny. If it happened. Which it may or may not have.

I'm going to get retroactively fired from the paper. Sigh.

5 comments:

Emily said...

You forgot about the best word ever: son of a b$&@!. The literal pronounciation is OK, but even better is the colloquial version: soooome b&$@!. :-D

Stacie said...

Yeah, SOOOOOOMMMMM B!%@$ was my favorite, but I wasn't sure how to spell it. I did go listen to it tonight and giggle. :)

Children of the 90s said...

Hahaha, I'm equally mature in these types of situations. I distinctly remember freshman year of college abusing that IM service for blind people where some poor sap has to read whatever you write to your friend, no matter how unspeakably filthy. To all the blind people who couldn't get through on the line, I'm endlessly sorry.

Sadako said...

I used to do this so much when I accidentally pressed a button and figured out (on my old mac) how to make it read what I had typed. So fun.

Children of the 90s--how deliciously evil.

Stacie said...

Children of the 90s, that is hilarious. Evil, evil girl.

Sadako, my sister and I did this recently with my dad's IM. We would send him IMs (while we were in the same room) that said things like "Mom is a poop." And then crack up. She was sitting right there and thought we were idiots. (I'm seriously 12.)