Number 88
Signs in cars' rear windows: A diamond shaped sign with black and white stripes on the top half, and "OXYGEN" on the bottom half. Is that a safety sign for transporting oxygen tanks? Another car had what looked like a loosely plastic-wrapped cylindrical container in the rear window, labeled "ABRASIVE". Is there a danger of chafing if the bucket spills in the back seat?
A town called Morraine: At first I confused it with "murrain", which means pestilence (as in the curse, "A murrain upon you!), but Morraine means more reasonably "an accumulation of boulders, stones, or other debris carried and deposited by a glacier". (Reminds me of an uncooperative, ignorant, lazy, misogynistic, useless computer vendor I had to deal with once who was perfectly named Nadir. I don't know what "Nadir" means in whatever his ill-begotten language was, but in English it means "the lowest point". I'm glad he immigrated just so he'd have a chance to learn that. A murrain upon him.)
Newly paved roads that may have little more than lane dividers are posted "NO EDGE LINES" ~ in case you didn't notice. Do you find that you drive right off the road into the ditch or into concrete dividing walls without those painted edge lines? It's like the signs in Colorado that say, if I remember rightly, "GUSTS MAY EXIST" (how existential). But you can't prove a negative. Perhaps the road builders are worried about lawsuits from people who drive off the edge of the pavement because they don't know it's the pavement they need, they're looking for edge lines.
No signs for these, but I learned that truck drivers call those strips of busted, exploded tires on the road "gators".
I passed at least one "Medical Center". Is this different from a hospital or a collection of doctors' offices? It was very big, so I'm thinking hospital. If so, why not say so?
Real estate for sale: "Lake access, no chickens, call Tony." Wonder if this meant the property had no chickens, or no chickens were allowed. I should have called Tony to ask.
When I mentioned to my friend that I have particularly enjoyed all my Japanese students, she said, "Yeah, they're crispy." I didn't ask her if that's a family word, but they've used it before to mean alert, clear, focused, not mushy, fuzzy, fluffy, or wooly.
In a high-end furniture catalog: A traditional roll-arm sofa has just a "soupcon of understatement". Because I don't think special characters with diacritical marks will translate into everyone's e-mail, let me explain that the "c" in soupcon has the little cedille underneath it, and the word means "suspicion" in French, or "just a little". How can you have just a hint of understatement? It would be like cooking food with just a hint of water. Understatement would get lost in all the other more eye-catching sofa features that are not understated. You could have an understated sofa with just a soupcon of flamboyance, but I guess a little flamboyance, like tassels on the arms or something, could underscore the understatement more thoroughly than the reverse, like understated black sequins.
"There you heard the other side of the coin!" (Sounds like heads to me.)
"It played a big factor in . . ." The word "factor" comes from math, while "played" used here suggests acting, as in "play a role".
"The lie of the land." I've always heard "the lay of the land", which is ungrammatical but nevertheless the colloquial expression. "Lie of the land" is correct, but my brain is imprinted with "lay of the land".
"I'm glad we decided not to put up window treatments." She meant curtains or shades or something. They did, however, use floor treatments, seating treatments, and wall treatments. Why is it that people love using less specific words for all occasions? "Treatments" is going the way of "area" and others of that ilk; it sounds just unfamiliar enough to seem fashionable, and because it's vague it requires less thinking than "curtain". It's just not crispy enough.
"I painted it out." A woman said this a couple of times, talking about painting her cupboards. I don't know if this is a personal or a regional idiosyncrasy, but I've always heard "paint it out" to mean concealing something on a surface with paint, like graffiti or nail holes, rather than simply painting something a new color.
The "official supplier of pain relief for the Olympics" was Tylenol, and a phone service that I forget was the "official source of information (on your tiny phone screen) for the Olympics". There's no question that "official" means "we bought it". It has no relation to the word's real meaning, having a position of authority. My unofficial opinion is, how cheap.
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