At the IHOP on I-75 north of Knoxville, a waitress asks me and husband if we would like our bacon “crispy or limpy.”
Without missing a beat, we both respond, “limpy.” ‘Cause that’s the only way that bacon’s any good.
Glad there’s finally a word for it.
Oh — and for more new words and turns of phrase, check out Ben Schott’s blog Schott’s Vocab, on the New York Times website. Astute readers will know Schott from his highly readable Schott’s Original Miscellany and its two sequels.
In this blog, Schott captures neologisms that “encapsulate the times in which we live” — terms like “affluent thrift,” “uplandlords,” or “nomunication.”
I often find discussion of the “discovery” of new words to be self-congratulatory and annoying, but Schott’s casual manner, which includes no judgment of the value or linguistic integrity of the words, feels different. He seems to be writing more as a word archaeologist than linguist-gone-jovial.
I like that.