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.

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”:

• How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Paki-Bomb
• How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Commodity
• How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Blog
• How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Propaganda
• How I learned to Stop Worring and Love the Dead
• How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love the suicide
• How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love the Bass
• How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love the Resolut
• How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love the Dual-layer [DVD]
• How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love the Dance
• How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love the Death Panels
• How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love the Leak
• How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love the Internet
• How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love the Merge
• How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love the Anonymous Comments
• How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love the Pen
• How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love the Pixel
• How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love the Music
• How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love the LiveJournal
• How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love the Diesel
• How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love the Cause
• How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love the Pillow
• How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love the Blonde
• How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love the Sandman
• How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love the DSLR
• How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love the Book
• How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love the Web
• How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love the Dallas Mavericks
• How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love the War
• How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love the Want
• How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love the Home
• How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love the Bread
• How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love the Debt
• How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love the new Smart Choices
• How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love the Cramps
• How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love the layers
• How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love the Moneybomb
• How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love the Bum
• How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love the Lies
• How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love the Ride
• How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love the Stock Market
• How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love the Single Life
• How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love the Dice
• How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love the Corporation
• How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love the New Moon Soundtrack
• How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love the Complexity

There are many many many more out there, but I think you get the idea. The snowclone has other forms as well: “How I Learned to stop X and Love the Y”:

• How I Learned To Stop Racism And Love the ‘Bama
• How I Learned To Stop Driving And Love the Walk
• How I Learned To Stop Drinking And Love the Run

I also found one example of “How X Learned To Stop Worrying And Love Y”:

• How Californians Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Global Warming

There are some creative ones in there, aren’t there? If they sound weird, it usually makes more sense if you read the rest of the blog or article. I didn’t follow most of the links, though. I don’t really care to find out what “How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love the Cramps” is referring to.

Feel free to send me more examples of this snowclone if you happen to spy some.

I’ve been collecting other snowclones, too; you’ll read about them sometime in the near future. Do you have a favorite snowclone?

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!

A sort of meditation on future airgonation, supposing that it will not only be perfected, but will depose navigation.
Letters, Horace Walpole (1784)

One who travels by hot-air-balloon is (also used by to Walpole) an airgonaut. Airgonauts airgonate just as astronauts astronate. Have you been astronating lately?

There’s probably not a whole lot of use for this word (airgonauts, please prove me wrong!) but it’ll be a fun one to pull out of your wordsack when next you go ballooning. What do people call themselves when they go in balloons as a hobby or for work? Ballooner, Balloonist, Balloonie, Bologna?

Don’t confuse hot air balloons with cold air balloons. One of those won’t get you very far. Horace Walpole says above that he thinks air travel will eventually replace sea travel. O, his prophetic soul! Do you think he could have predicted the internet’s vast supply of adult content? I think not.

He had an handsome man-case, and better it had been empty with weakness, than (as it was) ill-fitted with viciousness.
The church-history of Britain, Thomas Fuller (1655)

Hey there Thomas Fuller, are you eying someone’s man-case? You sly devil, you.

No, it’s not a suitcase that’s just for men (following the man-bag pattern). But man-case means body? For seriouslyness? That sounds all kinds of ostrobogulatory. No matter how you parse it, it’s an odd term. The man is the body so the body is the man-case? Is the body the man or is the man IN the body?

I love man-words but this one is too mangled for my taste. Maybe we should find a new meaning for man-case. Any suggestions? I’m sure you can manage to think of one.

[the Church] shold be holi and without blemish, or rather Amomous..that is irreprehensible, safeguarded from the bitings of Momus, one of the feined Gods among the Gentils.
Theologica Mystica, John Pordage (1683)

What do you mean, Mr. Pordage, when you say the church should be amomous? Are you saying it isnt!?

Apparently this word is borrowed from Greek word for blameless, amomos; how convenient! It’s a shame it hasn’t been used in so long. So many unamomous people claim to be amomous, you’d expect someone to say amomous. And why not? It’s fun to say!

My parents always thought I stole the cookies from the cookie jar, but I was entirely amomous. It was my imaginary enemy. Damn you, Roderick.

I named the site On Words and Upwards and not A Nonce-Word A Day Keeps the Doctor Away or something similar to allow for the site to cover multiple topics if I felt like it. On Words just means I need to talk about language! Look how clever I am. The main purpose of the site (wait, I have a purpose in life?) is still to share nonce and obsolete weird words with you; that won’t be changing anytime soon.

And just so there’s something language related in here, I advise you to beware the fysigunkus.

Ostrobogulously,
Gedaly

His Works hereafter will be more favourably receiv’d..by the Meists and Selfists.
Common Sense (1737)

A meist (or me-ist) is someone who subscribes to some form of me-ism. You know the type. Maybe you are the type. I don’t know, you tell me: are you a youist?

Hey, it’s another perfect name-calling word. Oh frabjous day! Callooh! Callay! Now you can call all the big-headed people you know meists. You can nickname the most meistiest one the meist-meister!

The confusing thing is who you’re referring to when you say it. If I say, “I’m a meist!” that of course means that I’m full of myself. But if I ask, “Are you a meist?” couldn’t I be asking you if you’re full of me? I could say youist, but then it’s unclear if the person I’m referring to is full if him/herself or others.

That such a Doctrine..should be left thus faintly, thus obscurely, and, if I may so say, obitaneously, declared.
Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit, Samuel T. Coleridge (1834)

Last time I obitaneously suggested that infidelity can be humorous. I apologize, it should have been less obitaneous.

Here’s another one of those words that you can season your conversation with quite easily to sounder more smarter. Instead of saying “by the way,” or “B. T. Dubs,” you can say “Obitaneously, you still suck.”

Even if you don’t want to sound smarterer, it’s still a fun word to use. I recommend using it thrice a day after meals for 30 days or until you have received several obitaneous looks of disgust from your friends and family.

If your wiues play legerdeheele, though you bee a hundred miles off, yet you shall be sure instantly to find it in your forheads.
All Fools, George Chapman (1605)

A play on the word legerdemain, which literally means “light of hand,” used to refer to sleight of hand or trickery and deception. In the citation above, legerdeheel refers specifically to infidelity, not a laughing matter. Except for the times that it is.

If being light of hands is prestidigitation, then being light of heel must be prestipeditation. Perhaps meaning that you can sneak off somewhere else without being noticed, as if by magic. Or maybe it means you can do card tricks with your feet.