Ink Pen by Phil Dunlap for December 30, 2010

Bad guys at high noon Cappy…

Bad guys that way

Head them off at… I’ll pass.

Flight or fight? Flight or fight? For Superman, it can be both. for Cap, it’s survival of the flightiest.

Interesting… The first definition of “scurrilous” in Webster’s 9th is “using or given to coarse language.” So might the Scurrilous Seven be the words you can’t say on television?

Also, on the facing page I saw “scrofulous” which, apart from its primary meaning of “having swollen lymph nodes in the neck [scrofula]”, has a secondary usage as “morally contaminated.”

Actually, I meant Webster’s. Merriam-Webster is the publisher, but Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary is the correct title of the volume.

There’s a text-box on the back cover which states “The name Webster alone is no guarantee of excellence. It is used by a number of publishers and may serve mainly to mislead an unwary buyer”, but the other Merriam-Webster texts they show are titled “Webster’s Third New International Dictionary,” “Webster’s Collegiate Thesaurus,” “Webster’s Legal Secretaries Handbook,” and so on…

And you didn’t credit the late Carlin for the seven words reference. Tsk, tsk.

There may be a Webster’s 10th New Collegiate out by this point, but I got mine (new) in the mid-90’s. It’s the one they issued my at my job, and I still have the same copy. Of course, it’s at my desk at work and I’m at home now, so I can’t check the copyright date. But it’s legit.

The only dictionary I have at home is the Official Scrabble Players Dictionary (4th ed.). It’s not the same as the official Scrabble word list, because it gives a (brief) definition for each word, as well as the spelling. However, it contains no words longer than eight letters. Actually, this volume, too, is published by Merriam-Webster…

(And freeholder, I figured that the “seven words you can’t say on television” is commonly understood to be Carlin’s, and needed no attribution, any more than “Who’s on First” needs attribution to Abbott and Costello, or references to dead parrots need attribution to Monty Python. Particularly since I didn’t enumerate them, I don’t think I can be accused of trying to pass the idea off as my own.)