In place of the post I was planning to post tomorrow on the National Spelling Bee, I bring you some very sad news...
Thursday morning I made my usual rounds of the internet and was stunned when I came to my favorite word-related site. Schott's Vocab. I was dumbfounded to read the following...
"After two and a half years, thousands of posts and tens of thousands of comments, Schott’s Vocab is closing its doors.
"It has been an absolute pleasure to trawl the seas of linguistic development – netting the flotsam, jetsam and ligan of neologism, and presenting the choicest specimens for display and comment...
"But this blog would not have been an inch as much fun without the comments and quips of a legion of co-vocabularists who, not least at the weekends, raised eyebrows and smiles in equal measure."
The weekends were such a joy as Ben would offer up a competition on a wide variety of topics meant to stimulate thought and wit. The subjects included such wonderful topics as Greeting Card Slogans, Conversation Stoppers, Prayers, New Bond Film Titles, Linguistic Resolutions, Ways to Leave Your Lover, Define Friendship, Graffiti, Define Family, Crossword Clues, Fool's Errands, Define Education, Unlikely Excuses, Euphemisms for Death, Malapropisms, Pun(ishment), Euphemisms for Stupidity, Thingummyjigs, Imaginary Libraries, Tom Swifties and Favorite. Word. Ever.
The comments, indeed in large numbers, were thought-provoking, witty, down-right hilarious and time well spent.
I sincerely hope the NYT will archive all of those competitions. It would be sad to lose all of that genius.
I am deeply saddened to see this all come to an end. It has Ben great - you took your best Schott and hit a bulls-eye that many could not even see.
Thursday morning I made my usual rounds of the internet and was stunned when I came to my favorite word-related site. Schott's Vocab. I was dumbfounded to read the following...
"After two and a half years, thousands of posts and tens of thousands of comments, Schott’s Vocab is closing its doors.
"It has been an absolute pleasure to trawl the seas of linguistic development – netting the flotsam, jetsam and ligan of neologism, and presenting the choicest specimens for display and comment...
"But this blog would not have been an inch as much fun without the comments and quips of a legion of co-vocabularists who, not least at the weekends, raised eyebrows and smiles in equal measure."
The weekends were such a joy as Ben would offer up a competition on a wide variety of topics meant to stimulate thought and wit. The subjects included such wonderful topics as Greeting Card Slogans, Conversation Stoppers, Prayers, New Bond Film Titles, Linguistic Resolutions, Ways to Leave Your Lover, Define Friendship, Graffiti, Define Family, Crossword Clues, Fool's Errands, Define Education, Unlikely Excuses, Euphemisms for Death, Malapropisms, Pun(ishment), Euphemisms for Stupidity, Thingummyjigs, Imaginary Libraries, Tom Swifties and Favorite. Word. Ever.
The comments, indeed in large numbers, were thought-provoking, witty, down-right hilarious and time well spent.
I sincerely hope the NYT will archive all of those competitions. It would be sad to lose all of that genius.
I am deeply saddened to see this all come to an end. It has Ben great - you took your best Schott and hit a bulls-eye that many could not even see.
As one of your co-vocabularists in many a Weekend Competition, I could not agree more with this post. I also hope the Times will archive the previous competitions, and even provide a way, as Ben put it, for readers to keep posting l'esprit de l'escalier that keeps presenting itself.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Mark. I hope many others join in our sentiments.
ReplyDelete