Wednesday, February 21, 2007

The grocery store is unfair

I put off going to the regular grocery store for weeks, making do with the house-brand goods at Farmer Ted's for as long as possible, but tonight I had to get dish soap and butter and facial scrub and a rotisserie chicken, and there's only one place within walking distance that has all those things. It took about the length of one song for me to pick everything up and get checked out, and that one song was Eric Carmen's "Make Me Lose Control." Why? Why? I could have dealt with, say, "Hungry Eyes." A Go-Go's song started up as I was leaving. Goddamn grocery store.

This is not an intended slur on Eric Carmen's singing skills, but if I were to use the word "batrachian*," would anyone here know what I meant? I had to look it up recently and am trying to figure out if that was just me or not.

*I apologize for the earlier misspelling. It is my weekend and I have been kicking up my heels by misspelling terms for amphibians. Don't say copy editors don't know how to have fun!

3 comments:

Kelly said...

"Batrician"? Oh, my! I'm afraid you've stumped me, Ms. Blackwood!

You also seem to have stumped the normally fairly reliable M-W.com. I would go to by big three-volume dictionary, but the bookcase is currently blocked by a large box of garage sale/Goodwill fodder, and it's still too early in the morning for me to work up the energy to move it.

AE said...

OK, I am the worst copy editor known to man. The word turns out to be BATRACHIAN. And that is in M-W.com, but I still would never have known what it meant without looking it up. (My feeling is that "amphibian" should be subbed as being a more familiar term.) Editing post accordingly...

I at first thought your M-W reference meant Mr. Wufflekins!

Chris said...

The definition I found, after blinking several times and then googling, included that it referred to creatures "with long hind limbs for leaping." I think that's just a lovely.