Tuesday, May 27, 2008

What Does This Mean


Seen on a window sign at Taco Bell, in the small print at the bottom: "Made with natural fruit flavors." 

I would understand what "Made with natural fruit" means -- that there is real fruit in it. And perhaps that it was grown "naturally," and not, I don't know, cloned, or injected with a lot of growth hormones, or hatched from an eggplant. But the next sentence fragment on the sign reads, "Contains no fruit juice." So, unless it's made with dehydrated fruit, that's a no go.


Perhaps they're just trying to say that it tastes like real, natural fruit, and not like, oh, strawbananicot, or frankenberry, or dingleberry marmalade. But they don't say that it tastes like fruit. Only that it's made to taste like fruit. It may taste like rat piss, but they started with natural fruit flavors.


So what does "Made with natural fruit flavors" really mean? I guess what they're really trying to say is this: "Our fruit-flavored drink is fruit-flavored." 

A waste of ink, really.

Thursday, May 22, 2008

Today's Word: lore

Just when you think you know what a word means . . .

lore: The space between a bird's eye and the upper edge of its bill or beak or between a fish's or snake's eye and its nostril.

I don't know why this particular area of an animal's face would need its own name, but there it is. It appears to have a completely different etymology than the other lore, knowledge of a particular, traditional area. It does make me wonder, though, if the famous loren ipsum actually has something to do the a deviated septum.

Thursday, May 8, 2008

Today’s Word: quisquous

quisquous: Baffling or perplexing. To some the word might be self-referential. Think of the Scrabble points you could earn if you built this off of quo, is, or us (using, of course, a wildcard tile).

Overheard at a new Middle Eastern–Inuit fusion restaurant: "My, what quisquous couscous!"

Wednesday, May 7, 2008