Books Blog: English Literature & Linguistics

The results of the 2008 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest are in, and they are spectacular! The grand prize went to Garrison Spik of Washington, D.C. for this bit of prose:

Theirs was a New York love, a checkered taxi ride burning rubber, and like the city their passion was open 24/7, steam rising from their bodies like slick streets exhaling warm, moist, white breath through manhole covers stamped “Forged by DeLaney Bros., Piscataway, N.J.”

Other beauties include Shannon Wedge of New Hampshire who won in the Adventure category:

Leopold looked up at the arrow piercing the skin of the dirigible with a sort of wondrous dismay — the wheezy shriek was just the sort of sound he always imagined a baby moose being beaten with a pair of accordions might make.

As well as Graham Thomas of St Albans, Hertfordshire, U.K. who ran up the Purple Prose:

The complementary crepuscularities of earth and sky shrank away from one another as the roseate effulgence of a new dawn burst forth, not unlike a reclining pneumatic beauty’s black silk stocking splitting apart at the seam to reveal the glowing radiance of an angrily sun-burned leg.

If you haven’t seen it, you should check out the Cant Dictionary of Thieving Slang, 1737:

ANGLERS

ANGLERS, alias HOOKERS; petty Thieves, who have a Stick with a Hook at the End, wherewith they pluck Things out of Windows, Grates, &c. Make ready your Angling Stick; a Word of Command used by these petty Villains, to get ready the Stick with which they perform their Pranks, and as a Signal of a Prey in Sight. In the Day-time they beg from House to House, to spy best where to plant their Designs, which at Night they put in Execution.

It’s a classic.

I “invented” the term stomache the other day, by noticing how the words stomach and ache overlap. Why should you say “stomach ache” when they both already share an ach? Take that ach out! Here is a visual depiction of the future evolution of the phrase “stomach ache”:

Urban Dictionary has a definition of its own:

1. Stomache

An idiot who can’t spell “stomach”.
Guy1: Man, my stomache is killing me.
Guy2: It’s stomach, dumbass.

2. stomache

Upset stomach, contracted form of “stomach ache”
You can’t sit on my lap, pet, I have a stomache.

The rest of the Google references will take you to pages about gastroenterology, under the assumption that stomache is really just a common mispelling of stomach. Unfortunately, I’m writing this to tell you that it’s not. It’s its own new portmanteau word, replacing “stomach ache.”