Writerly Insults (Rebroadcast) - 19 January 2015

<p>A query letter from SlushPile Hell, the blog of a curmudgeonly literary agent, reads, "Have you ever wished you had represented the author of the Holy Bible and placed it with a publisher?" Erm, sure. <br /><br />The exclamation Fiddlesticks!, meaning "a trifle" or "something insignificant or absurd," goes back to the time of Shakespeare. It endures in part because it's fun to say.<br /><br />Dorothy Parker, known for her acerbic wit, was once described as a stiletto made of sugar.<br /><br />What do you say when you're in a restroom and someone knocks on the door? Many people answer Ocupado!, which has made its way from bilingual signage--including old airline seat cards from the 1960's--to common speech.<br /><br />Our Quiz Guy John Chaneski struts his stuff with a Miss Word beauty pageant for words beginning with mis-.<br /><br />All's, as in the common clause all's you have to do, isn't grammatically incorrect.  It's a valid contraction of the archaic construction all as.<br /><br />Another cocksure query letter received by the book agent at SlushPile Hell includes the line: "The writing is final, and I do not want it changed." Okay, then.<br /><br />The idiom dead on, meaning "precisely," might sound morbid, but it makes sense. It's a reference to the fact that death is certain and absolute.<br /><br />When someone's standing in front of the TV, do you shout, "Move over!" or something more creative? How about Your daddy weren't no glass maker, or You make a better door than a window.<br /><br />Messing and gauming, meaning "dawdling and getting intro trouble," comes from gaum, a term for something sticky and smeary like axle grease or mud. A baby with schmutz all over his face is all gaumed up.<br /><br />Oliver Goldsmith said of the lexicographer Samuel Johnson that there's no use arguing with him, because "when his pistol misses fire, he knocks you down with the butt end of it."<br /><br />The term mesmerize, meaning to attract strongly or hold spellbound, comes from Franz Mesmer, the German doctor who