Cicisbeo (pronounced chitch-is-BAY-oh) - a married woman's male companion or lover.

This is awesome! I didn't even know there was a word for such a thing :D

(I am such a language nerd lol.)

This Monday, I like... naming the models in hairstyle magazines.


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So, for reasons that I'm not going to go into for the minute, I went searching back through some old notebooks and found my bullet-pointed summary of "Ancient legends + history of Ponyland (Terra Equerum)". Oh boy. This was... pretty ambitious. I mean, I don't know when I thought I was going to get time to write such an epic. o.O' The bullet- ( Read more... )

Clutch, purse or handbag: what would you call the kind of receptacle for personal items which a woman would carry at a party? And if it had a shoulder strap, would that make a difference to the terminology? Thank you!

...I've had a reminder tonight of exactly why I left academia. Writers' group was supposed to be holding a poetry writing workshop. It turned into part-lecture, part-tutorial about poetic theory, the nature of meaning and the audience-as-author, with a little bit of biographical/historicist material for good measure. Roland Barthes got mentioned ( Read more... )

The public has spoken, and Kingston has come out on top. But in the course of proceedings I've also decided to give my hero a middle name, sooo...

Meet Adam Fitzroy Kingston :DDD

Adam: *rolls his eyes, drinks his whiskey*

Well, at least say "hello" to the nice people who named you.

Adam: ...Hello. (aside) Can I go now? This is embarrassing.* ( Read more... )

Giving this one last bump. I'll make my final decision next Saturday. Thank you to everyone who's taken part so far!

In case some people missed it, I'm just posting this link to my first random and mysterious question of 2014. If you haven't taken part already, I would appreciate your input, thanks :)

Well, one was bound to turn up sooner or later.

Poll Surnaming the hero

In 2013, I...

- turned 33.

- asked a lot of mysterious and random questions of my LiveJournal friends, as I fact-checked elements of a story.

- got slooooowly back in touch with Ruth, Lesley and LJ, my old university friends, in an attempt to make human contact outside of work.

- discovered the time-wasting potential of TrendHunter.com- ... and ( Read more... )