Pages

Saturday, May 26, 2012

Mortimer Snerd Had a Bowel Movement

This week, I’m ignoring my every verbose instinct and just cutting to the chase: This word sounds funny.
sherd (sherd) — noun: an historic or prehistoric fragment of pottery. 
Yes, that’s sherd as opposed to shard. A shard, for your records, is the same irregular, jagged shape as a sherd, it’s just that the latter is made of stone or glass. A sherd — short for potsherd — has to come from old, broken pottery. It’s just an added bonus that sherd sounds like a regional accent pronunciation for the past tense of “shit.” Even if the distinction is type that diehard archeologists would come to blows over, why make it? I mean really — would’t it be easier to just have shard cover your bases for all manner of broken knickknacks? Of course not. Because there’s actually a third term to throw into the mix for when the broken piece has writing on it: ostracon.

Archeologist fights are the best, of course, because they all carry bullwhips.

Previous words of the week after the jump.

No comments:

Post a Comment