Wednesday Word Snoot: Silly Words

Courtesy of Graphican.com

You may remember that during the run-up to election 2012, Mitt Romney accused Barack Obama of using "silly word games." I half-heard that news report and what I heard was "silly words."  That set off a train of thought that ended, as many of my trains of thought do, with a spot of Googling. (Search engines are the best thing to happen to procrastination since ... crossword puzzles. You can waste a lot of time Googling, as with completing crossword puzzles, but you almost always learn something.)
Who knew there was a linguist who's compiled a list of the "100 Silliest Words in English?"  Check it out here.  My favorite is "bloviate," which means to speak pompously or brag. Some of the words on the list are actually phrases, but let us not split hairs.
Writer's Digest has compiled a list of funny words to help writers write funnier stories. I'm not sure I see the innate hilarity of words like "bulgur" and "knickers," but a fair number of the words on the list not only sound funny but have obscure definitions (which they don't give, I guess assuming that writers will know what they mean). And extra points to you if you know what a "bumfuzzle" is. (If you don't, check it out at dictionary dot com.
Wikipedia has an entry on "Inherently funny words" that's extremely academic but has some interesting pop culture references, including one to a Star Trek: Next Generation episode where Joe Piscopo tells Commander Data that words ending in K are always funny.
But if you want to know what words are really inherently funny, it's best to have a little kid around. If you find them repeating a word or phrase, it's going to be because it tickled their fancy. (My sister, for reasons unknown to the rest of the family, thought the name "Gene Siskel" was hilarious and was prone to using it to punctuate sentences when she was a little girl.) Dr. Seuss was the master of silly words, and his word "grinch" is now a permanent part of the lexicon.
Wouldn't you love to invent a silly word that got adopted by everyone?

Running the numbers--Equal pay for equal work

One of the candidates for President does not believe that  it's a problem that women don't make as much as men in the workplace.
A lot of people believe that the same candidate's wife, who chose to be a stay-at-home mom, said this about equal pay for women:  "Why should women be paid equal to men? Men have been in the working world a lot longer and deserve to be paid at a higher rate."  It's a great little soundbite, the perfect kind of quote to generate outrage but Ann Romney never said it.  For info on who created and propagated the bogus quote, check out this post on About.com's Urban Legend's channel.
So maybe people should quit damning Mrs. Romney for things she didn't say.
Her husband, though, has said a lot of things on the subject and he just will not be pinned down by pesky reporters who keep asking him for his opinion on equal pay for women.
What is known is that he opposed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.
(Who is Lilly Ledbetter you might ask.   She's a woman who sued her employer, Goodyear, claiming she'd been paid significantly less than her male counterparts. 
Here's a thought to take with you into the polling booth--Women college graduates make, on average, $8000 less a year than their male peers.  Don't take my word for it, check out this article.