Thursday, February 05, 2009

A trip to the linguistic foundry

You know when you walk through deep, freshly-fallen snow? What's the onomatopoeic word for the sound your footsteps make in the snow? It's definitely not 'crunch'. If the snow has lain for two or three days, and gone through a couple of freeze-and-thaw cycles, then it will make a crunching sound, but that's because of the higher ice content. Freshly-fallen snow doesn't crunch, it's a more complex, staggered, semi-muffled, compaction sound. I reckon you can refer to a staggered crunch as a 'scrunch', but what's the term for a semi-muffled scrunch?

And another thing: you know when you've taken a dump, and the main mass has been expelled, but there's a little straggler hanging on? You have to give it another squeeze, and maybe a wiggle, before the little fella plops into the bowl. What's the word for such a faecal straggler? If there isn't one already, how about calling it a brown loafer?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Crump

Gordon McCabe said...

Mmmmm, not bad. Although, this on-line thesaurus seems to associate 'crump' with something involving the teeth:

http://thesaurus.reference.com/browse/crump