Monday, September 27, 2004

Sailors, thongs, and doom

Do any trafficking or trading in a commodity lately? If so, you’ve been "mongering"--today's word of the day, which is a more popular part of compound words that I could have dreamed.

According to Google, “fear-mongering,” “hate-mongering,” “rumor-mongering,” and “war-mongering” seem to be the most popular examples, but I also found “scare-mongering,” “hype-mongering,” “threat-mongering,” “peace-mongering,” “slogan-mongering,” “blame-mongering,” “panic-mongering,” “excuse-mongering,” “coup-mongering,” “scandal-mongering,” “communist-mongering,” “power-mongering,” “terror-mongering,” "penguin-mongering," “noise-mongering,” “profit-mongering,” “ballad-mongering,” “nostalgia-mongering,” “list-mongering,” “malaise-mongering,” “fad-mongering,” “sleaze-mongering,” “doom-mongering,” “victim-mongering,” “gossip-mongering,” “publicity-mongering," and "thong-mongering." Ok, I made that last one up, but it has a nice sound to it, no?

I particularly enjoyed finding these variations on a theme: “paranoid political conspiracy-mongering,” “far-fetched conspiracy-mongering,” and “strident and despicable conspiracy-mongering.”

The most amusing one I found was probably “sailor-mongering.” Though I swear like a sailor, I'm not eager to know the intention behind that word. Is it possible that some enterprising young lad or lady sells sailors by the seashore like they were bags of peanuts or yummy bubble teas? Only the Secretary of Defense knows for sure.

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