verb. TO SMASHTICATE

Nay, if you be no better in the Reare then in the Van I shall make no doubt to vanquish, and vanquash you, too, before we part.
Dick of Devon (c1626)

The OED is boring. The definition there is “To Smash,” but that doesn’t really conjure the meaning I think of when I hear vanquash. It conjured the word vanquish (to deafeat, conquer) along with squash. If something has been vanquashed, it wasn’t just smashed, it was annihilated, (Check out Charles Hodgson’s excellent post/podcast on annihilate), hence my definition of SMASHTICATE.

It’s a very useful word, especially when describing incredible feats and defeats in history. Remember when the Rebels blew up the second Death Star? Empire got totally vanquashed.

A snowclone, if you’re not familiar with the term, is “a type of cliché and phrasal template originally defined as ‘a multi-use, customizable, instantly recognizable, time-worn, quoted or misquoted phrase or sentence that can be used in an entirely open array of different variants.’” (from Wikipedia). For example, X is the new Y, as in “Black is the new pink” or “Sixty is the new forty.” For enough snowclones to build an army of snowclonemen, check out The Snowclones Database.

I became immediately interested in snowclones after learning about them. There are a lot out there… I’m sure one could fill several books with examples.

Today I want to share with you one of my favorites. Any guesses on what it is? I’ll give you a clue: the title of this post! I hope you’ve seen Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, it’s a wonderful movie but I’m not here to review the film.

I’ve been combing the net for for examples of this Snowclone just for the heck of it. Now that I’ve got this blog, I’ll show my findings. Below are examples of “How I Learned to Stop Worring and Love the X”: (more…)

noun. Coolness; adj. Cool and crisp

By Cold, and by a kinde of Frescour (as we now-a-days speak).
Bacon’s Life & D. (1627)

OED says noun, but there are some wonderful ways to use it as an adjective as well.

The first four letters of frescour are the same as those in fresh for a reason. Frescura is Italian for “having the quality of freshness.” Frescour is something so fresh that it’s cool. It’s like biting into a fresh cold cucumber. Frescour seems to carry with it the meaning of “crisp” as in a crisp cucumber, but frescour has the lovely coupling of texture and temperature.

Now say “frescour cucumber” ten times fast.

This morning was a rather frescour morning. Fall has finally started; the days are getting colder, the clouds stay in the sky longer, the ugly-sweater-gift-from-last-Christmas is making appearances. The weather channel says it’ll be a frigorific 57°F tonight (very cold for those who have only ever lived in Southern California). Brrrr!