#we love you ms frizzle

[msboutofcontext]

#magic school bus #out of context #ms frizzle #liz #kiss #smooch #we love you ms frizzle #icon #germs #immunity #get vaccinated #get boosted #covid #flu shot #orthopox #Inside Ralphie

[theparadoxmachine]

Tbh I would happily enter a lavender marriage with Bertie Wooster. He and Jeeves could do their thing, Jeeves could run the home like he wants, I wouldn't interfere at all. He'd have all his relatives and Madeleine Bassett off his case and likely receive less scrutiny. I'd show up to the occasional social outing and put on a performance and cover for him if anyone gets suspicious. I wouldn't even need to hide how eccentric I am because of course Bertie Wooster would marry someone as weird as he is. And I'd...have a nice place to live? Travel occasionally? Write? Just come to breakfast, give the boys a little smooch on the cheek and go about my business. Digging up dinosaur bones, a happy and content ND ace married to a rich sweetheart and his ingenious valet/lover

#i draw the line at jeeves controlling how i dress #I'll wear what i like ok #go dress bertie he likes that #ok no he doesn't but he's cool with it #i could make my own clothes #20s and 30s version of ms frizzle #no kids? well that's a bummer but what can you do #if it meant that much we could adopt #or just have cats #I'd need cats #jeeves would be the dad who fell in love with the pet he said he didn't want #bertie likes cats that's canon #we'd be pals going to the theatre together then we'd go home and he'd go to bed with jeeves

[astaroth1357]

Oh God, What Have We Done??: Father!Solomon Headcanons

You know what? I'm a Solomon love-hater but I'll go to bat for him too. You could pick worse.

Contents: Unhinged Ms. Frizzle-style parenting, the horrors of human biology, possible pregnancy implications, fluff

~♡♡♡~

So. I can see this happening intentionally. Solomon craves a happy family, so I absolutely see the thought of rasing a kid with MC coming up once or twice.

That said, I think zero planning actually went into making it happen. This is a spur-of-the-moment decision made by two lovesick dolts. Not a damn thought was spared for the consequences, and it shows.

For starters, MC and Solomon both agreed to raise a child together while they were in the human world and told NOBODY ELSE. So from the outside looking in, they just left the Devildom for “training purposes” and returned with a random infant!

No call ahead. No fanfare. They both stepped out of the portal with a flying stroller and bottomless diaper bag, grinning from ear to ear like it all was just souvenirs from Disney World!

Naturally, all hell broke loose. The brothers were collectively hyperventilating, Simeon almost fainted, and Diavolo noticed that Barbatos wasn't moving or blinking, so the Little Ds had to carry him away like a malfunctioning android...

Does Solomon having a kid make him a grandfather…? He is not ready to ponder that thought. No one is.

Despite Mammon and Belphegor’s insistence they had to “Put it back!” after MC made it clear that raising a baby was what they wanted and that Solomon was there to stay, the brothers made peace with it… to varying degrees.

Asmo was the only one thrilled that his favorite humans now have an even cuter mini-human to take around because he'd get to try his hand at baby fashion design! The least happy was probably Belphegor because a baby means that MC is going to be way too busy to nap now. Plus, he had to deal with a lot more Solomon in his life, which very few people ever ask for...

The crew's reaction to the baby's development is actually pretty funny to see. Humans age much, much faster than their supernatural counterparts so, from their perspective, the new baby is growing at lightning speed!

Mammon was with them when they were teaching the baby to crawl and he started freaking out because, “How’re they movin' already!?” The first day their child came running, physically running, into the HoL without any help actually made Levi scream in fright.

The House had a complete meltdown when Beel was watching the child one day and they lost a tooth while eating some hard candy. They all thought that MC and Solomon were going to burn the place down, so imagine their surprise when the overjoyed parents kept congratulating their kid for losing a baby tooth...

And don't get any of them started on the growth spurts...

The one to take to the kid the most as they grew was, funnily enough, Lucifer. Most likely because their various milestones reminded him of when his brothers were doing the same things.

The child is more than happy to tell “Uncle Luci” anything, which he acts like he only tolerates, but in reality he loves being their favorite brother.

Barbatos is EXTREMELY protective of them. Nearly as protective as he is with Diavolo.

Their kid, of course, has no clue. He's just nice Uncle Barbie (he refused to be called Grandpa) who makes them sweets and watches over them in the Castle. But anyone who get too close while they're playing gets a stare down worse than all of Cerberus’ heads combined...

Mammon swore in front of them once and Barbatos strung him up so tightly that even Lucifer thought it was overkill.

Luke seems to enjoy having a baby sibling of sorts to look after, but he is going to be so upset when they get taller than him in the blink of an eye. He’s going to be their guardian angel for sure, btw.

As a father, Solomon is… spirited. Anyone can see that he’s ecstatic to be a parent, it’s just…

Well, years of isolation on top of being a once-in-a-lifetime prodigy may not have made him the most “in touch” with children these days, you know? MC has absolutely come home to find Solomon has propped up their 6-month-old with a stack of books to start teach them how to play chess.

Daddy-Baby adventure always end in spectacular fashion. Solomon is a very “hands-on science teacher” kind of guy with unwavering confidence in his abilities to keep his child safe. This, to be fair, isn’t unwarranted, however...

Does that mean you should make a plans to take your child to forbidden places for some sightseeing? Or let your child touch, paw at, and gnaw on any magic item that suits their fancy in the name of a making a new teaching experience...? Probably not, but it’s also how he learned so…

It must be assumed that whatever kid these two have, biological or not, will be a magic powerhouse of destructive proportions. All that training from Solomon himself since infancy? They'll have a wand in their hand before they can even work a fork!

I like to imagine that Solomon's kid would have a very, very hard time controlling their magic and it would get uncontrollable at times. Like, a sneeze could knock over a bookshelf or getting angry makes things go flying. But Solomon would never ever scold them for it like it’s they're fault.

He'd never make them feel the same isolation and shame that he did at their age.

It would be very, very sweet. But it also means that MC could come home to a flooded house and, instead of cleaning out the water, Solomon would teaching their child how to snorkel in the living room.

Pure chaos, but MC could never find a prouder father. Solomon would devote his entire being to giving their child all of the love and happiness they deserve. Their kid almost never sees him without a grin on his face, just ready to just wrap them a bear hug for no reason.

On quiet nights, he'd cradle them or rock them to sleep while holding back tears. MC has found him over their crib like he’s still trying to convince himself that they're real, that he's gotten this lucky.

He's not a conventional father. Hell, he's not a conventional human either. But he’s grateful for day he gets to be a parent... Every. Single. One.

#tales from the drafts #obey me #obey me shall we date #shall-we-date-obey-me #obey me solomon #obey me nightbringer #omnb #obey me headcanons #obey me scenarios #solomon x mc #solomon x reader #tw pregnancy #tw: pregnancy

[katewritesthings]

Learning to Deal

So, I've never written fic before, so please be kind. I've had to drink a bottle of wine to finish the smut and gain the courage to post. Please be funny when you tell me this sucks. :D (I also have ideas for a few more short blurbs in this universe)

•pairing: Joe Burrow x Original Female Character

•summary: Caroline Stevens had been known to the fans of the Bengals' as Sam Hubbard's best friend since he got drafted. Now she's dating his teammate Joe Burrow and must navigate the logistics that come with that

•word count: 4.3k

•warnings: SMUT, SMUT, SMUT. Slight angst. Angry Sex. Dom/Sub dynamics. Slight Daddy Kink. Light choking. Ass smacking. Cursing. Drinking. Cannabis Use. Lots of other stuff. MINORS DO NOT INTERACT.

Caroline Steven was sure she’d never get used to how overwhelming being a plus one to an NFL starter could be. Since her childhood best friend, Sam, had been drafted by their hometown football team, she’d attended her fair share of over-the-top events with budgets bigger than her teaching salary. (That is, when Sam happened to be single and his mother was not an appropriate option.) This routine would be coming to an end shortly, though.

Over the last year, Caroline had started seeing one of Sam’s teammates, Joe. Meaning that the next time they walked into a jungle-themed room, she would be on the arm of the man she wanted to walk in with, and Sam would not be hindered in attempting to fix his single status. (at least for the night).

Although he was one of the most private (read: shy) people Caroline had ever met, Joe somehow managed to become the face of the Bengals. Seriously, the guy was so closed off when she first met him that Caroline was convinced Joe hated her. It wasn’t that Caroline disliked the fact that her boyfriend was charismatic enough to become a franchise player; she just hated the legalities that came with it. 

It would only take the entire next Monday arguing with the agents and publicists that the NFL and Bengals put together to officially be Dating Joe Burrow™. Caroline was more than ready to be able to claim the beautiful man she grew to love as her boyfriend, but she knew that Joe was a little more hesitant about what compromises they were going to have to make as a couple to get this approved through the league. There were whispers about using their anniversary to make sponsored posts already.

Walking into the banquet hall the Bengals had rented at Moerlein Lager House, Caroline scanned the room for her boyfriend. While they had texted a few times throughout the day, their conversation before Joe dropped her off yesterday had been acting… off. Joe seemed a little put off about having to use his personal life for marketing, but Caroline hoped he saw her as worth it. The two made their way to a table to the left of the entrance, where champagne flutes were set out for guests to take. 

“Calm down, Stevie." Sam’s voice brought her back to reality, using her childhood nickname. “I really don’t think Danny Devito is here; there’s no need for such excitement.” “You’re such a goober!” Caroline chuckled, pushing a stray auburn curl out of her eyes. “I just wanted to see if I could see Joe. You act like it wasn’t you who set us up, don’t act like you’re annoyed with how we act together.” 

Before Sam could spit a comeback at Caroline, two arms wrapped around her middle and squeezed her tight. Joe’s deep voice boomed, “Hey, babe," before kissing her on the cheek and greeting Sam. Ja’Marr, Irv, and Tee. joined the three, drinks in hand. Greetings were exchanged before Ja’Marr nudged Caroline.

“Damn, girl. I didn’t know your Ms. Frizzle ass had dresses that didn’t have dinosaurs and shit on them.” With an eye-roll, Caroline pulled at the hem of her black dress, trying to make it come farther down than the upper thigh. She was far more comfortable in her themed dresses and cardigans, which helped engage her second-grade students. “I didn’t know you had that much skin; I almost thought your legs was made of cloth like some stuffed animal.”

Before Caroline could laugh at Ja’Marr’s roast, she heard Joe’s laugh, and his grip tightened on her hip. “Don’t be mad, Ja’Marr. You’ve just been salty that I’m the one she chose to know how much skin she has and how to stuff her.”

At that moment,t the various reactions rang through the group. Tee and Irv sent a chorus of “oooohs” to the circle of six. Caroline nearly choked on her drink and sent a look of confusion and panic to Sam, who responded with a chuckle and a “Well, this got weird. This is my signal to leave.”

Caroline turned out the remaining four men, making fun of Sam for running away when sexual topics came up while her mind raced with thoughts. Caroline shifted in her spot, tugging at her dress again. 

Joe seemed to notice Caroline zoning out because a whisper in her ear brought her back to reality. “I’m sorry, Caro. It came out before I could think. I had two drinks before you got here; I'm so sorry.” Tee, Irv, and Ja’Marr were still in conversation, now about the chances Sam would find enough alcohol and a girl to make him warm up to the sexual topics tonight.

Caroline let out a sigh and excused her and Joe from the group. She led them to a corner near a window overlooking Great American Ball Park and a partial view of the river. “You’re forgiven, Joe. You know, I just hate when you get vulgar.” “I completely understand. You’re not a piece of meat. I promise I’ll only brag about our fantastic sex life and your crazy body when you start the conversation.”

 Caroline leaned even farther on her tiptoes than her heels assisted, and kissed Joe on the chin. “That’s all I ask, baby.”

—

Ironically enough, Joe and Caroline had that conversation at the beginning of the night because, at present, the couple currently found themselves in a small group of Bengals and some of their plus ones from the party, playing a drinking game that required the player to answer the question on the card drawn or drink. The night had gone smoothly after the small speed bump that happened when Caroline arrived, so she found herself relaxing into Joe’s side, enjoying the early morning hours.

A small group of Joe and his teammates had decided that after a season of abstaining from partying as hard as they wanted, they’d continue the celebration in the suite Ja’Marr and Joe had previously booked in a nearby hotel. Something had told them they would be too incapacitated to drive and would want to celebrate as late as possible.

“Oooo! My turn! I pick... Joe!” Irv’s little sister Rachel, exclaimed to the circle. Her words were slurred from the mix of whiskey and weed she had been ingesting, but the entertainment was evident in her voice. It was obvious she was enjoying the usually serious men lose themselves in fits of giggles when another teammate admitted something embarrassing.

“What’s the most amount of people you’ve hooked up with in a night?”

“Three,” Joe mumbled, not picking up his drink. 

Caroline sucked in a breath. She knew this, while they didn’t quite know everything about each other yet, she and Joe had talked a lot in the time of their relationship. Early on, though, they found out that their sexual and romantic history was best left on an “ask-only” basis. Caroline knew herself better than to have Joe tell her everything at once. After his last long-term relationship ended, she watched from afar as he numbed himself in ways she didn’t even want to think about. She knew it was best for herself if she only found out what she needed to know and she believed that included whether or not she would be in the same room with one of Joe’s random hookups. Joe seemed to share the same mentality because he had only ever asked her vague questions. 

Next was Irv’s turn to pick a person to interrogate and a card. He scanned the group and chose Sam. His voice filled the air, reading from the card, “What was your most embarrassing sexual experience? Describe what you remember in detail.” “Fuck off, it does not say that!” Sam protested across the table from Caroline. “I’m afraid it does, Sammy boy,” Irv laughed back, waiting for Sam’s embarrassment. Caroline’s eyes shut as she laughed at her best friend’s discomfort. This situation was so much funnier to her than the one earlier in the night. Caroline wasn’t sure if it was because there was some light ribbing going on, the presence of women, and a game that was about bonding, gave her comfort in a way that was not present when it was just Caroline and 5 men.

 “Well, I guess when I was like 16… uh…. The girl I lost my virginity to…,” Sam stuttered. Caroline’s eyes instantly opened. She knew this story. She had figured in 10 years and a professional sports career later, he would have more embarrassing memories. “Well, uh… We had decided that maybe we would try mouth stuff, y’know. Well, uhh. St-she went down on me for the first time and uh.. .she vomited on me.” Sam stuttered through the whole beginning of the story while everyone else was gasping for air through their laughs. “You got puked on?!” T.B. said through howls. 

“Well, that’s not all.. We both made so much noise when my lap got covered. Ma-her brother came bursting through her bedroom door, and, uh.. he caught us.” Caroline shifted in her weight and faintly joined in the echoing laughter. Joe looked at her with a quizzical look and took another hit of the blunt being passed around. Joe wasn’t usually much of a partier, but the Bengals had put up a hell of a fight this season and it looked like her boyfriend was damn sure goign to celebrate it.. He had slowed down on his drinking after embarrassing himself earlier in the night, but Caroline had seen him with a honey-flavored backwood and at least two different rolled swishers throughout the night.

Before Joe could make anything of it, Sam’s name pulled him out of his thoughts to see Tee’s placing a card on the table. It was Caroline’s turn and she was answering telling the most legal trouble she had ever been in.

“So, basically, Sam had gone to practice and I woke up before he did. I went down to the kitchen in his house and two of his roommates were talking about me over breakfast. They were basically saying the most vile things you could think of and it only got more vulgar once they saw me. I threw a cast iron skillet at one of them and was banned from OSU’s campus.” She had shared this secret with Joe a few weeks into seeing each other. He had heard a vague version when Sam moved out of his house midseason. Caroline filled him in on the details after they were together to let him know why she was so sensitive about being in ceratin situations.

The card game continued for another ten minutes before some member of the group suggested they play ‘Never Have I Ever.’ This time, Caroline caught the look Joe sent her as she filled her glass to get ready to play. “You’re sure you’re okay with this? They’re going to get even more raunchy.”

Caroline licked her lips before forming them into a smile. “I’m fine, Joey. I’m having fun, I promise. And if I get uncomfortable, we can always say one of us is tired. Just squeeze my hip twice.”

Rachel explained the modified “late night, here to get fucked up” rules. They’d go around the circle and each person would say something they had never done. Every person has five fingers up and puts a finger down and takes a drink for every time they’ve done what someone else hasn’t. Once all five fingers are down, the person chugs their drink and is out.

The rules seemed easy enough and before long the game was on and laughs filled the air. Caroline wasn’t really paying attention to who had done what. Except Joe. She knew she shouldn’t, but this was a loophole in learning things about him, and without all the details. So far the score had gone as follows:

“Had sex in a football field” - Joe drank. Caroline drank. “Ever made out with someone of the same sex” Joe didn’t drink. Caroline drank. (Joe winked at her) “Cheated on someone” Joe drank. Caroline didn’t drink. “Been cheated on.” Both drank. “Broken a bone.” Both drank.

The group was in good humor, consistently whooping at Caroline when she had admitted she did something. Rachel had changed gears from trying to get everyone’s dirty secrets to just getting Caroline out, picking topics for her and Irv that they had known would get her out.

They were both down to their last finger and Caroline was starting to get drowsy. She had drunk quite a few times during this game and had been tipsy before. Maybe if she were more sober, she would have realized one of the two things happening within the next moment. Rachel gave Caroline a jokingly competitive stare before mouthing you’re going down.

“Never have I ever fucked someone in this room.”

Being the level of intoxicated she was, Caroline didn’t realize that an odd number of people in the room put their fingers down and took a swig of their drink. She also didn’t realize that, while Joe was intoxicated, he was mainly high which caused his mind to work in overdrive. This meant that Joe had noticed that there was an odd number of people who put their fingers down in the room.

Caroline had her cup tipped to the ceiling and was almost to the bottom of it when she felt two distinct squeezes on her hip and her boyfriend growling her name barely loud enough for her to hear. Her mind started racing at what Joe could.

“Actually guys, I’m feeling a little past my limit and am probably going to lay down. Caroline, care to join?” Joe’s strained voice came through his tightly clenched jaw. Caroline followed Joe as he stood up and made his way down the hallway of the suite toward their bedroom.

“Are you feeling okay, Joe?” The question hung between them while Joe fumbled with the keycard and the door handle. Caroline tried to not let her mind race too much as she replayed the last three minutes in her head. If anything, she should be the one a little upset in her opinion. Joe had admitted to cheating on someone in the past, and although she knew of the incidents, she couldn’t fathom why admitting she had sex with Joe would set him off so much.

A low grumble she couldn’t make out brought her out of her thoughts as Joe ushered her through the door.

“Please?” Caroline questioned, indicating to Joe to repeat what he said. “Why didn’t you tell me you fucked him?” Joe demanded again, this time loud enough for the redhead to hear. She was standing a the foot of the bed while Joe still had his hand on the deadbolt. “Uhm, what and who are we talking about again?” Caroline nervously laughed, attempting to put the pieces of the puzzle together in her head. It hit her the same time Joe’s steeled blue eyes met her brown ones and he repeated the question. “Why didn’t you tell me you fucked Sam?” the third time the question was presented to Caroline, frustration and anger overtook her drunken state. “What in the world are you talking about, Joe? When I told you I didn’t need to know details of your sex life you told me the same?” Caroline was confused. She never intentionally kept anything from her boyfriend. 

“I did ask. The first time we hooked up,” Joe’s voice came out strained. He had moved towards the middle of the large room. All Caroline wanted to do was crawl in the large bed directly in front of her and cuddle her boyfriend. This night definitely took multiple turns. “You did not! You asked me if you were the first professional athlete I had gone down on.” Caroline was exasperated now. She didn’t want Joe to think she was lying.

Caroline walked into the bathroom for a chance to break Joe’s gaze. When she reached the mirror she began taking the pins out of her curls. “And I very clearly heard the story of the first time you had that experience tonight, with our mutual best friend, Caro.” Joe loosened his tie as he emphasized the last few words of his sentence. He was angrier than Caroline had ever seen him off the field and she hated that it was because of her. 

The redhead turned her body to face the door where her boyfriend stood. Even when angry, the man was beautiful. Brown waves fell onto his face nose and cheeks red from a mixture of intoxication and anger. He had his button-up undone to his sternum and was working on taking off his belt.

“And I had told you that story when Matthew asked if you knew how to use a lock! I told you he walked in on me in high school and you cut me off. Plus, that happened well before Sam was drafted, therefore not a pro athlete. I thought you were asking if I was a groupie trying to add another to the list.” “I genuinely thought you knew babe,” she said from in front of the mirror, her eyes taking in Joe. He had leaned against the doorway and was watching her in a manner that made her unsure of what he was thinking. Usually, communication was easy between them. Disagreements never lasted long because even if they had conflicting feelings on a subject, they were both willing to hear it from the other’s perspective to attempt to understand.

Caroline unfastened the back of the earrings she was wearing and placed them down in the travel jewelry box she had placed on the counter earlier in the evening. “I told you about how I was a nerdy ginger in high school and had to make a mutual agreement to lose my virginity to my best friend. You didn’t want to know who”

Joe took a deep breath and rubbed his bottom lip between his thumb and forefinger. “I guess, I didn’t think it was Sam. You guys went to different schools.”

“That’s cute that you thought high school Stevie could’ve gotten the attention of a boy besides Sam.” Caroline made the joke, hoping to lighten the mood. It didn't.

“He went to an all-boys school, and everyone in my school was repulsed by me, so we made a pact to keep up with the Joneses, so to speak. When everyone in middle school was talking about making out, we didn’t want to feel left out, and that sort of just progressed on to other things…”

“Do you have feelings for him?” Joe’s eyes flickered with a flash of emotion as he cut her off, clearly not wanting to hear the details. “Oh my God. Absolutely not in the way you’re asking.” Caroline’s brown eyes made sure to keep eye contact with Joe’s blue ones, she wasn’t going to be the first to look away. “It was really just experimenting, Joe.” “When was the last time? Did I know you?” Joe questioned, anger still seeping through his voice. Caroline felt a lump grow in her throat when she thought back to the last time she and Sam had hooked up, or at least attempted to. It was during her and Sam’s sophomore year in college and he had invited her up to visit him at Ohio State. “It was the day we met. At Ohio State.” Caroline uttered. Sam had insisted on taking her to Woody’s, the on-campus tavern, to meet with some of the second-string freshmen. Joe barely said hello to her, before returning his attention to the playbook in front of him. The room was silent for a minute before Joe broke their eye contact, standing up straight. Rubbing his fingers against his lip again, he turned his head to the side. “Fuck, Caro.  I just hate that he’s had what’s mine.” Before Caroline could get out the words, ‘What’s yours?’” Joe closed the few steps between the two. 

“Yes, Caroline. You’re mine.” His proximity to Caroline caused her back to turn flush against the counter. “And tonight I’m going to mark my territory.”

A warm feeling of realization washed over Caroline when she realized what Joe meant. Or maybe it was horniness. Because at that very moment, his hand wrapped around Caro’s throat and bucked his hips into hers.

A moan of agreement left Caroline’s plump maroon lips, causing Joe to growl. “That’s right, baby. I’m going to take what’s mine. But first, on your knees.”

Excitement sent of chill throughout Caroline’s body. She liked it when Joe was dominantt, but it rarely ever happened without her explicitly asking for it. What can she say, the man was all about her gratification by default. 

Before her knees even made contact with the cold tile, Joe’s cock was out and hitting her in the face. A smile spread across her face before she opened her mouth and gave a lick to the head. Caroline still had her tongue out and she worked her mouth down Joe’s shaft. When the head hit the back of her throat, she closed her lips and wiggled her tongue. 

“That’s right, baby,” Joe smirked, raking his hands through the auburn curls at his pelvis. Caroline brought a hand up to cup his balls, retracting her tongue and beginning to move her back and forth. “Fuck.” Joe bucked his hips into his girlfriend’s mouth, causing her to gag a bit. “Gag on Daddy’s cock, that’s right.” He demanded, causing Caroline to loosen her jaw and attempt to take the rough fucking her face was receiving. That was new.

After a few moments filled with slurps and moans, Joe finally spoke again. “Get up. Turn around.” Joe’s voice was still gruff with anger, but possesiveness and lust had also joined in. If Caroline hadn’t already been wet from the worship Joe had just demanded from her, she would’ve been after Joe gave her ass a smack and returned his left hand to her throat. They made eye contact in the mirror in front of them.

“After tonight, there’s going to be no doubt you’re mine last.” Joe leaned in and whispered into her ear. His right hand busied itself tugging down the thong she had under her dress. Caroline lifted her leg slightly to step out of the thin material, Joe took this as his opportunity to line up the head of his dick with the slick of her pussy.

The tip of his dick entered her warmth and he whispered, “My girlfriend,” as he slammed his entire length into her. White pleasure tore through Caroline’s pelvis when this happened. Joe was not small, and feeling him push his entire length into her gave her a sense of fullness that she craved.

Pulling out slowly, his eye contact never wavered from Caroline’s. “On MY arm for events.” He thrust into her again, then pulled out even slower causing a whimper to escape Caroline’s smudged lips. “Mine,” Joe repeated, burying himself to the hilt again. “Any objections?” Caroline shook her head, making sure to keep her brown eyes locked on Joe’s blue ones. She wanted to see his reaction.

“No, sir.”

And she was glad she did. Joe’s eyes somehow got even darker with lust as his right hand pushed her back down, so her chest was flat on the counter and his left found her throat again. The marble dug into her thighs, but at this point, the pain was mixing with the pleasure, Joe thrusting aggressively into her.

Caroline couldn’t make out the chain of expletives leaving Joe’s mouth as she began to feel the intense pleasure building inside her. “I’m so close, Daddy,” she whined, trying on the new title Joe had given himself earlier. “I wanna come on your cock so bad.” If Caroline thought Joe lost himself in lust earlier, she was wrong. He let out a guttural moan and stood Caroline back up again, without removing the hand from her throat. He moved his hand from her back to her clit. He used his long fingers to work circular motions on the sensitive nerves until Caroline lost herself to her pleasure and began twitching lightly. She wasn’t sure if she was actually moaning or just imagining it until Joe’s voice coached her through her orgasm. “I know, darling,” He planted a kiss on her head. “I know, you’re doing such a good job, just breathe.” He peppered more kisses over the top of her head before he moaned again. “I’m going to come, babe. Get on your knees and open your mouth.” Caroline did as she was told, quickly. She wasn’t going to give Joe a reason to question whether she liked this side of him or not. Joe pumped his fist around his dick twice before warm ropes came shooting towards Caroline, most of it making it in her mouth, a little on her lips and chin. She took Joe’s thumb and wiped the excess, before making eye contact and engulfing it in her mouth. After swirling her tongue around Joe’s thumb a few times, she swallowed. She set her lips in an ‘O’ to show off her newly empty mouth to Joe. “Fuck, Caro. You’re going to be the death of me,” Joe said laughing, his cheeks flushed. He patted his girlfriend's head before saying, “Now go clean up so we can go to sleep. I need you to get some rest before I wake you up.” “Oh, yeah?,” Caroline cocked an eyebrow, still on the ground. Her thighs were starting to ache from never taking off her heels. “Yeah, I’m going to fill you with cum and then we’re going to go eat brunch with the rest of the suite,” Joe said, sternness still in his voice.

Caroline stood up and looked at herself in the mirror. Her makeup was smudged and her hair was a rat’s nest, she thought about how this was the happiest she had ever been. Though, she was certain if she continued finding and loving new sides of Joe, it wasn’t the happiest she would ever be.

#joe burrow fan fic #joe burrow #joe burrow imagine #joe burrow fic #joey b #joe shiesty #joe brr #joe burrow x oc #joe burrow smut #joe burrow angst #joe burrow established relationship #plz forgive me #i'm drunk

[stem-sister-scuffle]

STEM SISTER SCUFFLE: ROUND 1 MASHUP 5

Dr. Olivia Octavius (Spider-Man Into The Spiderverse) vs Ms. Frizzle (The Magic School Bus)

Dr. Olivia Octavius is a Quantum Physicist and Roboticist!

Ms. Frizzle is a Science Teacher!

Why you should vote for each contestant:

Dr. Olivia Octavius:

""If you stay in this dimension too long, your body’s going to disintegrate. Do you know how painful that would be, Peter Parker? You can’t imagine. And I, for one, can’t wait to watch." I love deranged evil women she is the character of all time to me"

"Dr. Olivia Octavius, also known as Doctor Octopus, is the secondary antagonist of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. She's also known as 'Liz' by her friends, one of them being Peter Parker's aunt May. She is an evil scientist, CEO of the science research & development company known as Alchemax. She's the scientific advisor for The Kingpin's inventions to open up portals to other dimensions. She's an evil woman in STEM girlboss."

"feral :)"

"Oh I heard you like mad scientist girlies???"

"I know she’s evil but I love her shes so cool. Have you seen her. I support womens wrongs <3"

"MILF. Evil. What more does she need? wowza"

"shes not the best shes the worst and she owns it. milf i mean. who said that"

"I mean. just look at her. she has the robo arms, the awesome hair. also if I recall, she's also been in science educational videos for kids"

"Proves herself as a competent fighter able to take on multiple spider-men at once, plus rocks the mad scientist look"

"Successfully works as a kids' science show presenter while also being a supervillain and working on sketchy projects. Is an absolute dork about her work and about cool phenomena in a way that's really endearing right up until she threatens to lock someone up to slowly die so she can study the phenomenon that's killing them. Probably put bugs in the microwave as a kid to see what happens.

Yes she did get hit by a truck in the fight and disappear but I fully believe she lived and ended up in some other universe.

1. She's a supervillain, she's definitely been hit by a truck before. 2. Out of everyone fighting in there she's had the most experience with this sorr of thing. While missteps are possible she would be going into it with some idea of what the risks are and how to deal with them. 3. Isekai truck trope 4. If she did end up in another universe she would totally find a way to keep herself stable there. She's got science knowledge and robotic limbs built for crime. 5. I like her and I think it would be really funny.

Why did I make this part mostly ""no she isn't dead"". It'd still be funny even if she was dead tbh.

I cosplayed her once and that is irrelevant to the poll but idk. She's fun."

"it's so rare to have female mad scientists in media like her, she's a role model to girls who want to commit crimes against the spacetime continuum everywhere. she's very important"

"She's really cute, too bad about all the murder and stuff :/ Women's wrongs, amirite?👍"

"She has a "For Science!" attitude that makes most male mad scientist look sane and safety minded. I would gladly be her intern/minion. <3"

"is only here to do science for Nefarious Purposes. science without any regard for moral cost. idk i love that this character type gets to be a milf for once. we love to see an evilgirl winning"

"mad scientist lady. cool as hell hair. evil girlboss."

"She's evil. She's evil and I love her"

"Evil milf with giant robot arms that loves chaos."

"Mastered multiple disciplines, managed to break barriers between dimensions, which even in superhero realms is a bit impressive. STEM girlies should be allowed to go a little evil/feral/unhinged. as a treat."

"She is evil! She is sexy! She employs usage of soft robotics into her prosthetic tentacles, is the head scientist at Alchemax, and quite literally built a machine that creates a portal to alternate dimensions! Get you a girl that can both make educational science videos and also rip open a portal to alternate dimensions under dubious moral conditions."

"she's sooooooo cool"

"She is a girlboss she tried to make a portal and while she’s a villain she isn’t the Evillest out there… babygirl head scientist Her glasses are shaped like octagons :3"

Ms. Frizzle:

"*gestures at entire magic school bus series*"

"Embodies the true spirit of scientific discovery: barely-contained chaos."

"She is very knowledgeable about a wide variety of sciences, and uses that knowledge to further the educations of many people. Teachers deserve the world; they do so much for so little in return. (shout out to Mrs. Goates)"

"She loves science and loves teaching kids about science. I love her. Idk I saw she only had one submission and that made me sad so now im here submitting her"

"She is an icon and has cool earrings"

"SHE'S SO COOL!!! She's so smart and so fun and genuinely just an icon. ALSO she has a little lizard on her shoulder. I saw an ask abt the submissions for Ms. Frizzle and the sender was the only person who submitted her.. I couldn't let this go. ALSO one of my professors irl called herself the irl Frizzle and she's a doctor of biology so make of that what you will"

#stem sister scuffle #round 1 #dr olivia octavius #olivia octavius #spiderman itsv #itsv #into the spider verse #spiderverse #spiderman into the spiderverse #ms frizzle #the magic school bus

[ceilingfan5]

For the writing prompts could I please request 3. every mall is haunted, obviously with Taakitz please and please and please?

"Every mall is haunted, obviously," Taako says with the kind of confidence one might use to declare that war is over, or that the sun would burn your tongue if you licked it, or that Ms. Frizzle is a lesbian. 

"Sure," Kravitz agrees automatically, because he's been seeing hearts where important visual information oughta go for like, months now. And then, "Hang on, rewind. You believe in ghosts?" 

"No," Taako spits back, cockily feeding quarters into the breaking room vending machine. "But ghosts don't need to be believed in for spook'emup horseshit. Are you really eating a Lean Cuisine again? I swear to God, I'm going to invite myself over and-"

"No no, don't deflect, you- fucking can't–Taako you say this shit and words have  meanings, you're aware of this, right?" 

"-Like that's not even a joke, or a bastardization, that's culture you're devaluing with those three hundred forty calories, you know that, right? If it were a currency, the bank would be on fire." 

"Taako," Kravitz, exasperated. 

"Kravitz," Taako, cartoonish. He slams the button just liked the taped notice on the thing says to not to, and a Dr. Pepper falls out for the fiftieth consecutive time. "What am I supposed to blame, capitalism? Nah, this is fuckin ghosts, and you know it." 

"I guess if any place in the mall was haunted, it would be the Burlington Coat Factory," Kravitz concedes. 

"Burlington GHOST factory!"

"Uh huh." Kravitz can't be in love with him. He can't. Surely he just has some kind of disease instead. He isn't going to go to the doctor though, so the world may never know. "What spooky thing happened, then, chef?" 

He twirls his path-ketti and takes a Big Happy Bite and does Not gag, no one can claim otherwise. 

"All the fuckin' mannequins were in the grand hallway when we opened! Posed like- I don't wanna hurt your delicate sensibilities–"

"I'm not allergic to dirt, Taako."

"They weren't even fucking! Like, obviously if they were dolly-dallying and Barbie Bussin' it open, pause for applause," 

"Applause," Kravitz says dryly, because Taako won't go on if he doesn't get some acknowledgement, and again, this guy? This one? He's having romantic dreams about this fool? Christ alive and back again for one final tour, get tickets now on KVX9, at 8:30, 12:30, 4:30–

"They were all gruesome murder scenes." 

"Oh. Maybe the prankster just isn't horny."

"Couldn't be it!" Taako does a great big HMMM. "Maybe we should do a stakeout." 

"Why?" Kravitz blinks slowly at him. "The mall can be haunted. It's fine. Ghosts are above my paygrade." 

"Damn," Taako says, sighing and dramatically flopping on the table, and then turning to give him the biggest puppy dog eyes Kravitz has ever seen. "I was hoping you 'n me could bang it out together." 

Kravitz chokes on his heart leaping into his throat, and Taako lounges and languishes as he waits for Kravitz to spit up The Spaghetti Satan Would Deny. 

"Yeah?" He finally manages. 

"Mhm. This." 

"Not like. A movie?" 

"Chaboi can't sit through movies, I don't know why this shocks you." 

"Fair," Kravitz croaks. He shakes his head. There is one true path. He is cursed to fucking Candyland. His fate was set, predestination, there is no Fuck Nah option. "I…guess?" he says, regretting and anticipating in equal measure immediately.

"Fuck yeah!" Taako pops up like a wacky inflatable tube salesman. "I gotta make some snacks!!!"

#taz #taakitz #tazb #the adventure zone #the adventure zone balance #fan5fics #taz balance #taakitz fic #thank you!!

[blorbo-arena]

very biased your last round. you want iroh to lose so badly huh. but listen. he might be a war criminal but he’s a FICTIONAL war criminal so it literally doesn’t matter and its not like we don’t condemn his crimes or whatever. hes a good person now. also i havent seen star wars and im sure leia is rad af but i cant consider her a blorbo since i havent seen her media but thats not the point. uh, thats it. i think.

/dont mean to sound rude, love ur blog!

This is my playroom and these blorbos are the dolls I'm flinging across it with barely-contained glee or rage. He's a war criminal because he killed Ms Frizzle and that's that‼️😩

#blorbo arena #series one #uncle iroh

[emilybeemartin]

Tumblr hasn't been letting me post for the last three days, which has been aggravating because my new book is out!

 A Field Guide to Mermaids released on September 27, and we threw a super fun party at my local bookstore. Over a hundred people came, we sold out of books, I wore a Ms Frizzle mermaid dress that I made, and we had a live mermaid on-site. 

Field Guide is perfect for middle-grade readers who love nature and magic, and for educators looking to sneak some aquatic science in with their fantasy. Pick it up wherever you get your books! If you order it from Fiction Addiction in Greenville, South Carolina, I can personalize it for you.

#please #just upload #have you no heart tumblr #a field guide to mermaids #mermaids #middle grade books #fantasy #science

[starbiters]

I’m just gonna take a second to ramble abt my predictions/theories or just shit I would find funny abt the sun and the star <3

Will is gonna Med Student his way around the cosmic horror that is Tartarus being the body of an ancient deity

Like “oh shit if we’re inside his body does that make the monsters we’re fighting like, his immune system? Since we’re like unknown pathogen?” or “Human bodies r so weird already of course primordial god bodies would be fucked up n weird too.”

And Nico’s like what the FUCK how are you so CALM ABOUT THIS

The reason: Will had a crisis abt how he would feel and react if he was in the Magic School Bus as a kid. Ms Frizzle prepared him for these cosmic horrors.

We all know abt the Orpheus and Eurydice parallel but LISTEN LISTEN I swear I have a fresh take on it

Nico as Orpheus bc he has to put his whole entire trust in Will. He has to believe that he won’t be abandoned again. That someone loves him enough to fight tooth and nail to stay with him. He has to fight against all the trauma he’s gone through and the walls he’s built up to expose his heart and hold on to faith that he won’t be hurt again.

It’s raw proof of the changes and healing he’s gone through!! Being able to be vulnerable enough to openly love, care, and trust again despite all the risks!!

Will as Eurydice bc he needs to know that Nico genuinely deeply cares abt him in the same way he does for him. He’s spent this whole time putting everyone first despite his own emotions and feelings, he needs someone to put him first. Make him a priority, prove that he’s important.

He’s been on the sidelines this whole time. Compared to the rest of the demigods we’ve followed Will is very easily overshadowed, and I think it’s easy for Will to have developed some kind of mindset where he thinks everyone else’s lives and wellbeing is more important than his own.

Bc we always see Will taking care of other people, when have we seen someone take care of him in the same way? Having someone fight to protect just him?

This goes especially hard if it’s some kind of self-sacrifice situation that leads to the Orpheus and Eurydice parallel to begin with

This goes DOUBLY HARD if we throw in the Apollo cabin curse, where Will expected he was going to die from the start like all his siblings before him, but he went anyways bc he’d rather sacrifice himself than let Nico face Tartarus alone again

Idk both Nico and Will struggle with abandonment issues and self worth, but I feel this arrangement is the strongest and most emotionally impactful

I also rlly like the idea that Nico and Will are supposed to represent Balance and Unity vs Chaos and the Abyss

And that’s why the quest is just the two of them!

You can split them apart but ultimately they will always fight to find their way back together again, it’s the natural balance of the universe

I think it would be rlly cute if they reunite at the climax after being split for a portion of the quest and they get to have the cliche reunion kiss our love gives us the power to prevail type moment

A real #lovewins kinda situation

I also think it would be funny bc it would pretty much be gay ppl kissing demolishes the primordial deity of the abyss

I have a couple more but I didn’t wanna make this post too wildly long, but I’ll keep going if ppl want me too!

#cos rambles #the sun and the star #tsats #nico di angelo #will solace #solangelo

[spacefinch]

Magic School Bus Tumblr simulator

🪨arnold-perlstein Follow

I got some new rocks for my collection!

⚾ baseball4life Follow

Shoves these bad boys into my mouth

🐜keeshaaa Follow

Ralphie no

⚾ baseball4life Follow

crumch

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🐦‍⬛birdgirl Follow

My talent is identifying birds

🦖carlosaurus Follow

Ok, what's this one?

🐦‍⬛birdgirl Follow

Yep that's a bird all right

📚da-science-blogger Follow

According to my research, that is a multicolored tanager in the picture. Hope this helps!

30 notes

🦖carlosaurus Follow

Knock knock

🎨timdrawsstuff Follow

Who's there?

🦖carlosaurus Follow

Orange

🎨timdrawsstuff Follow

Orange who?

🦖carlosaurus Follow

Orange you gonna let me in?

🐜keeshaaa Follow

CARLOS!

69 notes

✈️wildcatwanda Follow

Who up solaring they system

📚da-science-blogger Follow

What are you doing up at 0300?

✈️wildcatwanda Follow

What are YOU doing up?

📚da-science-blogger Follow

Astronomy homework

✈️wildcatwanda Follow

lmao nerd

📚da-science-blogger Follow

You are on the nerd website

👾computerdude Follow

Hi what is astronomy homework

📚da-science-blogger Follow

My astronomy homework this week is to go out and look at the night sky and write down observations.

👾computerdude Follow

Did you see anything cool?

📚da-science-blogger Follow

I saw Jupiter and at least 3 of its moons! Fun fact: Jupiter has at least 95 moons total. The four largest-- Ganymede, Europa, Io, and Callisto, are called the Gallilean moons because they were discovered by astronomer Galileo Galilei.

👾computerdude Follow

Ok that is cool, thank you! Right now I am playing Pokemon BW.

✈️wildcatwanda Follow

How far are you in?

👾computerdude Follow

Driftveil City!!

✈️wildcatwanda Follow

The music is SUCH a banger.

📚da-science-blogger Follow

Shouldn't you two be sleeping

✈️wildcatwanda Follow

Sleep is for the weak

15 notes

🎨timdrawsstuff Follow

There's a Great Horned Owl living near my house, so I decided to draw it. I hope you guys like it!

30 notes

👾computerdude Follow

heating up macking cheese in the michael wave

12 notes

⚾baseball4life Follow

⚾baseball4life Follow

Who is voting for Yankees

🐜keeshaaa Follow

You mean the BEST team?

⚾baseball4life Follow

I thought we were friends

🦖carlosaurus Follow

Me, a Giants fan: I'm staying out of this one

200 notes

🌟janet-is-awesome Follow

I have the best blog

👾computerdude Follow

You mean @da-science-blogger has the best blog

📚da-science-blogger Follow

Actually, I think @carlosaurus has the best tumblr.

🦖carlosaurus Follow

You guys are all wrong. @mr-mcclean has the best tumblr.

🧹mr-mcclean Follow

Why are you tagging me? All I do is post pictures of my dogs.

🦖carlosaurus Follow

We know that, and we love you

42 notes

🌈official-friz Follow

Good morning everyone! I hope all of you are having a wonderful school year. Always remember: don't be afraid to take chances, make mistakes, and get messy!

🦎official-liz Follow

:)

🐦‍⬛birdgirl Follow

:)

🪨arnold-perlstein Follow

:)

🐜keeshaaa Follow

:)

⚾baseball4life Follow

:)

🎨timdrawsstuff Follow

:)

✈️wildcatwanda Follow

:)

📚da-science-blogger Follow

:)

🦖carlosaurus Follow

:)

👾computerdude Follow

:)

87 notes

🎬in-your-face Follow

BREAKING NEWS: Mysterious creature spotted in Walkerville Marsh! What could it be??? Find out this Saturday with Gerri Poverri on IN YOUR FACE!

✈️wildcatwanda Follow

K

🦖carlosaurus Follow

U

🐦‍⬛birdgirl Follow

N

🐜keeshaaa Follow

G

🌟janet-is-awesome Follow

P

📚da-science-blogger Follow

O

🎨timdrawsstuff Follow

W

🪨arnold-perlstein Follow

P

👾computerdude Follow

E

⚾️baseball4life Follow

N

🦖carlosarus Follow

I

✈️wildcatwanda Follow

S

📚da-science-blogger Follow

10K notes

((Ooc: characters under the cut))

arnold-perlstein: Arnold

baseball4life: Ralphie

keeshaaa: Keesha

birdgirl: Phoebe

carlosaurus: Carlos

timdrawsstuff: Tim

wildcatwanda: Wanda

da-science-blogger: Dorothy Ann

computerdude: Mikey

official-friz: Ms. Frizzle

official-liz: Liz

janet-is-awesome: Janet

mr-mcclean: Mr. McClean (the janitor)

in-your-face: Gerri Poverri

#magic school bus #fake tumblr post #phoebe terese #arnold perlstein #carlos ramon #Tim #Wanda li #Dorothy ann #keesha franklin #ralphie tennelli #Mikey ramon #Ms frizzle #janet perlstein #unreality

[lingthusiasm]

Transcript Episode 92: Brunch, gonna, and fozzle - The smooshing episode

This is a transcript for Lingthusiasm episode ‘Brunch, gonna, and fozzle - The smooshing episode. It’s been lightly edited for readability. Listen to the episode here or wherever you get your podcasts. Links to studies mentioned and further reading can be found on the episode show notes page.

[Music]

Gretchen: Welcome to Lingthusiasm, a podcast that’s enthusiastic about linguistics! I’m Gretchen McCulloch.

Lauren: I’m Lauren Gawne. Today, we’re getting enthusiastic about smooshing words together. But first, our most recent bonus episode was about secret codes, ciphers, Hildegard von Bingen, cryptography, cryptic crosswords, and Morse code romance. You can listen to it at patreon.com/lingthusiasm.

Gretchen: Also on Patreon, we have 80-plus other bonus episodes on things like swearing and linguistics in fiction and other behind-the-scenes things from Lingthusiasm.

Lauren: Bonus episodes are around the same length as main episodes, but we sometimes do slightly different things like a deep dive into a single academic paper or AMAs and updates on our other projects. Sometimes, we get a little bit silly.

Gretchen: We run on the direct support of our listeners, which means we don’t have to run ads. If you’d like to help us keep existing and making these free episodes for everyone, we’d really appreciate it if you’d consider becoming a patron. Or if you were a patron for a while, and you had to leave for a bit, we’d also love to see you back. There are more bonus episodes for you to enjoy now!

[Music]

Lauren: Gretchen, I have some words that are made up of two other words. I’m going to make you guess what the other two words are that they’re made up from.

Gretchen: Okay, sounds fun.

Lauren: Our first word is “motel.”

Gretchen: Ah, this one I know. This is a “motor hotel.”

Lauren: It is, indeed, because you can drive your car all the way up to the door of your room.

Gretchen: Absolutely. I assume this was invented around when the car became popular, I guess.

Lauren: I had thought that it was maybe a mid-century, being in the ’50s or ’60s when cars really took off, but apparently the earliest citation is from 1925.

Gretchen: That is earlier than I thought it was. Okay, next word.

Lauren: “Smog.”

Gretchen: “Smog.” Yes. This one I know – from “smoke” and “fog,” right?

Lauren: It is indeed that disgusting, thick combination of smoke and fog. That’s from 1905 – a particularly disgusting winter in London.

Gretchen: Also earlier than I expected.

Lauren: Mm-hmm. “Brunch.”

Gretchen: “Brunch.” Now, that is definitely a modern word from “breakfast” and “lunch.” I do it all the time.

Lauren: An absolutely indispensable part of my vocabulary, but it is from 1896.

Gretchen: 1896? They were having brunch in 1896. I love it!

Lauren: Yeah, because it is a very useful concept.

Gretchen: It is, indeed. Okay, I’m feeling really good about these portmanteaus so far. Hit me with another one.

Lauren: “Mizzle.”

Gretchen: Ooo, “mizzle.” I wanna say that one’s from “mist” and “drizzle”?

Lauren: It is, actually. Nice work.

Gretchen: It’s really giving me Ms. Frizzle vibes.

Lauren: If Ms. Fizzle wanted to be more efficient, she’d become “mizzle.”

Gretchen: Yeah. I have no idea how old that one is. Because all of these have been much older than I was expecting, so maybe it dates to around “smog,” I dunno.

Lauren: No, this one is much more recent. It’s one of those late-20th Century / early-21st Century as part of this explosion of these kind of words. The next one is “fozzle.”

Gretchen: “Fozzle.” That’s definitely a Muppet.

Lauren: It does sound like a Muppet name, doesn’t it? Something fuzzy.

Gretchen: Yeah, okay, no, that’s Fozzie Bear, okay. It’s a fake nozzle. It’s a fuzzy nozzle. Fuzzy nozzle is my final answer.

Lauren: Think of it in the context of “mizzle.”

Gretchen: Oh, um, wait, okay, could it be “fog” and “drizzle”?

Lauren: It is, indeed. Lots of subtle gradations on weather, apparently, require a more nuanced creation of new blend words.

Gretchen: I have never heard anyone call it “fozzle.”

Lauren: Great, good. Our final one is “brinkles.”

Gretchen: “Brinkles.” I wanna say, you know, inspired by “brunch,” that’s “breakfast sprinkles”?

Lauren: That does actually sound delicious.

Gretchen: You guys have fairy bread in Australia. That’s sprinkles on bread. That could be breakfast sprinkles, yeah? No?

Lauren: The list that I took it from has it as “bed wrinkles.”

Gretchen: Oh, no, no, no, no, no. That’s much less fun. I don’t care about bed wrinkles at all. I want some breakfast sprinkles.

Lauren: I deliberately chose some very effective classics and some maybe not-so-effective failures, but we are living in this era of portmanteau word explosions. I guess an explosion goes outward, and it’s more like an implosion of two words coming together to create some new word.

Gretchen: There’s a lot of different ways that words can get smooshed together – to use the very technical term of “smooshing.” I wanna say that in some ways “smooshing” is not a technical term, but I have actually been to a linguistics workshop where people were talking about words like “smooshing” into each other and “glomming” onto each other.

Lauren: Oh, “glom.”

Gretchen: Mm, “glom.” It’s not that this is never used, actually, despite seeming a bit silly. It’s tempting, when we’re looking at a dictionary-style sense of words, to think of them as these atomic units that have these clear, white spaces between them. But in practicality, words are often getting smooshed together, squished together, these very visceral [squish noises] words.

Lauren: It sounds unpleasantly messy to my mind, but I guess we’ll stick with it.

Gretchen: Would you say it “squicks” you out, for another one?

Lauren: It “squicks” me out a little bit, for sure.

Gretchen: Okay. I find them very delightful. I think it’s really vivid and, you know, like “slime” that all the kids are into these days.

Lauren: And, as we’ll discover in this episode, incredibly useful words are constantly coming together, crashing into each other, smooshing together as part of the process of how language grows and changes.

Gretchen: It’s a really fun concept. Portmanteaus are one relatively vivid example of smooshing because we’re often still aware of “breakfast” and “lunch” or “motor” and “hotel.” You can see the connection for how they came to smoosh together very vividly.

Lauren: In this episode, we’re gonna look at two very different kinds of linguistic smooshing and how bringing together sounds and meanings in different ways can affect the way that language is used and how it changes.

Gretchen: We did, ages ago, an episode about several different kinds of linguistic nothings, about different ways that aspects of nothing or silence or absence of a thing can mean something. Those came from a whole bunch of different areas. When we were talking about different kinds of linguistic smooshing, that also seemed like a chance to talk about different types of linguistic phenomena that all have this thing in common where the words glom onto each other.

Lauren: We couldn’t help but start with the portmanteau.

Gretchen: Absolutely. The thing that fascinates me about portmanteaus is that some of them really work, like “frenemy,” that’s great. What a good and useful combination which, surprisingly, dates back to 1891.

Lauren: I feel like it’s one of those such satisfying combinations that I’d be unsurprised to discover people have coined it and coined it again.

Gretchen: Yeah, because it’s got this great sense of dissonance between frenemies, but yeah, the OED has it from 1891, even though it feels very modern – to modern-day “Kenergy” or “Kenough” from Ken in the Barbie movie. Portmanteaus are still going. We’re still coining them.

Lauren: English in particular seems particularly prone to them.

Gretchen: I have encountered some examples of portmanteaus in Spanish. If you’re combining English and Spanish in the same sentence, some people might refer to that as “Spanglish” in English. But I’m told that you can also call “Espanglish” in Spanish.

Lauren: Oh, that’s very satisfying. The portmanteau works in both languages so similarly.

Gretchen: I have also come across “amigovio,” which is from “amigo” and “novio,” so that’s “friend” and “boyfriend” or “girlfriend,” to refer to, you know, some relationship that’s got a few aspects of both – maybe friend-with-benefits type thing.

Lauren: Ah, yeah. I do like how portmanteaus pop up when there’s this really satisfying meaning that’s carved out of the two words that come together. They often do fill these cultural niches for some period of time.

Gretchen: Exactly. There’s a really fun Wikipedia article for “blend words,” which is the more technical linguistic term for what’s popularly known as “portmanteau” that has lots of fun examples in various languages. We’re not just gonna read a Wikipedia article to you, but if you want to go click on that, you can.

Lauren: I think “blend” really highlights how you’re blending together the sounds at the end of one word and the beginning of another word, but you’re also blending together the semantics of both of those words.

Gretchen: Do you wanna hear my favourite example of an absolutely multi-step, amazing blend in English?

Lauren: Sure.

Gretchen: Okay. Do you know the word “brot3”?

Lauren: Uh, I absolutely do not. Is that a robot?

Gretchen: This is not R2D2’s cousin.

Lauren: My favourite Star Wars character when people ask now, I’m gonna say, “It’s brot3.”

Gretchen: This is a very Tumblr-in-the-2010s word, I will say, which dates me.

Lauren: I think it’s also good to point out that cultures can be the entirety of English when it comes to “motel” or Tumblr in the 2010s when it comes to “brot3.”

Gretchen: It starts with an acronym, which is “OTP,” which stands for “one true pairing.”

Lauren: Okay, acronym, another classic 20th Century obsession of English.

Gretchen: Absolutely. People who would say, “Oh, these two characters on this show” – or in this book or movie – “I think they should get together. They’re my one true pairing.” Things like that. But then this takes on a hyperbolic meaning, so it doesn’t have to be an actual one pairing that I think is the best, it can just be like, “I think these two characters should get together” or it would be interesting if they got together. Then people start saying, “Well, what if three characters got together?” So, instead of an “OTP,” you had an “OT3”?

Lauren: Mm-hmm, I’m following.

Gretchen: Yeah. But then, if you want three characters to interact in more of a platonic way, maybe like they’re bros, you could then have a “Bro-T3,” which is where the portmanteau part comes in.

Lauren: Amazing. So many processes happening to create this one lexical item.

Gretchen: It’s beautiful, and I love it.

Lauren: And, again, really carving out this particular cultural need. That’s part of what makes a successful portmanteau successful. There’s some really great work from Constantine Lignos and Hilary Prichard where they quantified what makes a good blend word, which I thought was really great. Some of those words I chose for you at the start, Gretchen, came from their less-successful list.

Gretchen: I thought those were very unsuccessful words like “fozzle” and “brinkles.”

Lauren: They also had on that list “wonut.”

Gretchen: “Wonut.” Uh. Oh, wait.

Lauren: It’s not a sad donut.

Gretchen: It’s a donut full of woe. It’s a sad donut. Okay, no, wait, it’s probably like a “waffle donut”?

Lauren: Yeah. In the vein of the “cronut,” the croissant donut, there was this – or it still is an ongoing combination of carb-based bakery foods that tend to get portmanteaued.

Gretchen: Yeah, okay, I dunno. The cronut is fine, but I don’t think wonuts are gonna happening any time soon.

Lauren: And “wegotism.”

Gretchen: No.

Lauren: I love that you refuse to even try and define it for me. You’re just like, “Whatever that is – no.”

Gretchen: I mean, I guess it’s from “we” and “egotism,” but I don’t like it.

Lauren: Yeah, it’s egotism but for more than one person. There’s nothing like seeing a portmanteau that falls flat to make you appreciate how satisfying a really good one is.

Gretchen: Tell me some other good ones. Please wash my brain out of this.

Lauren: Some of the good ones include “mathlete,” “guestimate,” and “mockumentary.”

Gretchen: All really satisfying in a way that “wegotism” just doesn’t do it for me.

Lauren: That’s because you can understand them, and you can figure them out from their constituent parts without needing me to prompt you that we’re talking about baked goods or weather.

Gretchen: One of the other ones that they pointed out as a – I’ll let you guess whether this was a good or a bad example, but I think it’ll be pretty obvious – was “groutfit.”

Lauren: A “groutfit.” Is that when you have an outfit with lots of tiling grout holding it together?

Gretchen: Well, this is the point they make in the paper is “Is it a green outfit, a grey outfit, a great outfit?”

Lauren: No, it’s a “grout-outfit.”

Gretchen: That’s the only version that’s satisfying.

Lauren: If you had an outfit that was made of grout, that would be a very satisfying blend word.

Gretchen: You can dress like that for Halloween.

Lauren: I feel like that’s low on what they call “applicability.” It’s not very applicable to many contexts except maybe if you’re at a fancy dress party for tilers.

Gretchen: If anyone has any pictures of internet groutfits, we do want to see them. One of their factors is understandability, which “groutfit” fails on if it stands for “green” or “grey” or “great.” And another factor is applicability, which “groutfit” fails on if it stands for “grout” and “outfit.”

Lauren: A word has to fit your mouth in a really satisfying way that “guestimate” and “mockumentary” do. The overlap there is so nice, and it feels like a real word.

Gretchen: It has this sense of it feels English-y already. It feels like it’s typical of the language. It helps – and think this is a really interesting factor when it comes to portmanteaus – if the combined words share a syllable or at least a sound, especially a vowel sound. So, “glitterati,” “gaydar, “hacktivism” – all really great.

Lauren: There’s a nice, big, clear hinge at the two points of the word.

Gretchen: You have that “litter” – “glitterati,” which goes from “glitter” to “litterati.” You’ve got a whole “litter” for them to overlap at, which is great, whereas something like, what do you think of “legacyquel”?

Lauren: “Lega- legacy” – “legacy” is a word, and “sequel” is a word, but there’s too much overlap there for my mouth and brain to cope with.

Gretchen: Also, they’re spelled very differently, the C in “legacy” is with C-Y, versus S-E for “sequel,” which makes it look really weird on the page.

Lauren: I’ve just looked at where you’ve written that down on the page, and like, I didn’t even look at that as an English word.

Gretchen: Yeah, it’s really bad. How do you feel about “privelobliviousness”?

Lauren: It sounds like a very fancy word, and it looks like an absolute car crash written down.

Gretchen: It just doesn’t look like the other words that we have in English. Or “gymtimidation.”

Lauren: Again, I think with English it’s such a writing-based language that for any portmanteau to have legs, it has to be satisfying written down as well as spoken.

Gretchen: They also had “condesplaining” in their list, which I will grant, written down, doesn’t look too bad, but yeah, I dunno.

Lauren: I think that’s because a lot of the time another thing that blends have going for them is that they’re fun.

Gretchen: Yeah.

Lauren: It’s a fun and playful thing, and “condesplaining” is not necessarily a thing you’ll use in a fun way.

Gretchen: I mean, like “mansplaining” has definitely caught on, but it doesn’t have that extra syllable of “condesplaining,” which really makes the word seem more insufferable. But their examples of fun words like “Sharknado” and “sheeple,” I’m like, “Yeah!”

Lauren: Yeah, I think portmanteaus are definitely a kind of word play, and the more novel-but-satisfying a portmanteau you can come up with, the better a success that is.

Gretchen: I first got introduced to the linguistic analysis of portmanteaus through a paper by a linguist that I knew in grad school named Cara DiGirolamo. She was analysing specifically fandom pairing names. This is things like if you have Sherlock Holmes and John Watson, and you call them “Johnlock” or something like that. She was analysing, in particular, names from the TV show “Glee,” which was popular at the time, and how the fans talked about various combinations of wanting those characters to get together by combining their names into portmanteaus.

Lauren: Right. A very useful activity for people deep in this particular fandom.

Gretchen: And a very useful activity for linguists because sometimes it’s hard to come up with, okay, we need these two words to combine with each other, and then we also need it to have a plausible meaning, and so on and so forth, whereas with the characters, you can just pick any two characters and be like, “What if they were a couple?” You can end up with these phonologically implausible combinations because, obviously, the creators of the show weren’t thinking, “Oh, I’ve got to name my characters stuff that will be combined well.”

Lauren: Of course, this is why big linguistics bankrolls major TV and pop culture so that we can create the conditions in which we can study the ways that people blend character names to create fandom pairings.

Gretchen: Absolutely I wish that was the case.

Lauren: I assume this is how she collected her data.

Gretchen: I think she may have been hanging out with the fandom, to be fair, at the time.

Lauren: Right, okay, was more of an anthropological observation thing than billionaire-media-mogul-creates-natural-experiment thing.

Gretchen: Please, if there are any billionaire media moguls listening who want to fund this research –

Lauren: Have we got some natural experiments for you to run.

Gretchen: We can connect you with some grad students. She has this really fun case study of the two characters Rachel Berry and Quinn Fabray, who various members of the fandom wanted to get together. At first, they made their pairing name “Quichel,” which is from “Quinn” and “Rachel.”

Lauren: Okay, I guess it is – “Quinn” and “Rachel.” “Quichel”? “Quichel.”

Gretchen: Yeah, well, so it’s sort of fine if you say it out loud, but if you write it down, a lot of people see it, and they think “quiche,” like the food.

Lauren: Oh, “quiche” – “Quiche-el.” Yum?

Gretchen: Yeah, but not exactly like the connotation that they were trying to convey. The fandom actually decided that “Quichel,” “Quiche-el,” was too difficult of a pairing name combination to have. They held a vote for what should be the replacement name for referring to the combination of these two characters.

Lauren: Very democratic.

Gretchen: They ended up with “Faberry.”

Lauren: “Faberry”?

Gretchen: Which does have this nice B overlap. Because remember if two words have a sound in common, you can overlap them at that common sound from “Fabray” and “Berry” to “Faberry.” She used this poll to argue for, okay, “What are the criteria that people are using to figure out whether a combination feels satisfying or not?” One of those is pronunciation, but another one of those is “Does the spelling seem to correspond to that?” using English’s notoriously irregular spelling system.

Lauren: So, that stuck, and they stopped being called “quiche.”

Gretchen: Apparently, yeah.

Lauren: So good.

Gretchen: No more “quiche.”

Lauren: The playfulness of blends fits into their origin in a lot of ways. People have been playing around with this way of doing things in English off and on for a long time. As we said, definitely, the 20th Century was the rise of the portmanteau, but Lewis Carroll is generally credited with making them something quite popular with his 1872 poem “The Jabberwocky.”

Gretchen: So, “Jabberwocky” starts, “Twas brillig, and the slithy toves / Did gyre and gimble in the wabe: / All mimsy were the borogroves, / And the mome raths outgrabe.” This is a poem of mostly nonsense words in between normal English function words like “the” and “and.” You can tell what they’re supposed to do, but you don’t actually know what a “borogrove” or a “rath” or a “slithy tove” looks like.

Lauren: Some of these words were the combination of two other words.

Gretchen: Right. So, “slithy” is from “sly” and “filthy.”

Lauren: That’s interesting because I pronounce it as /slaɪði/.

Gretchen: Oh, I mean, apparently Lewis Carroll wants people to say /slaɪði/. I just looked at it and said /slɪθi/ because that’s what it looked like to me, which is, again, an example of how English orthography is not necessarily a guide to how to actually pronounce something. This shows up in portmanteaus a lot. He also really wanted it to be /gæɹ̩ ænd gɪmbl̩ ɪn ðə wɛɪb/ but like, I instinctively pronounce that /d͡ʒæɹ̩ ænd d͡ʒɪmbl̩/, so you know, this is one of the things that happens with coining a word is that you don’t necessarily retain control of it.

Lauren: What’s really interesting is that some of his portmanteaus from the poem have stuck. So, “chortle,” which is generally considered a blend of “chuckle” and “snort,” has become a word that has its own life outside of “Jabberwocky” the poem now.

Gretchen: Carroll called these words “portmanteau words” because a “portmanteau” was, at the time, a relatively commonly used word in English to refer to a briefcase or a travelling case or a bag for clothes or other necessities and, originally, from French meaning a coat carrier, to carry a coat. The idea was, for him, that it was two meanings packed up into one word as if you put them in a little suitcase together.

Lauren: It’s so funny that we’ve kept the meaning of the word for words and not for transporting clothing.

Gretchen: It kind of is. I find – like, the technical linguistic term is “blend,” which is a very bland choice of like, “Okay, we’ve blended these two words together.” “Portmanteau” is interesting but also a bit obscure because we don’t use that word for suitcases anymore. We can call them “suitcase words,” I guess, but that also seems a little bit weird.

Lauren: I was devastated to discover that “portmanteau” is not actually a portmanteau. It’s long enough, and it has the feeling that it could be a blend of words, but it’s just actually a compound in French of like, “port,” “carry,” and “manteau,” “coat.” Disappointingly not a portmanteau.

Gretchen: I love it when words like this for, especially, silly linguistic phenomena are themselves examples of the type of thing they’re trying to describe. What if you could make a name for blends or portmanteaus that is itself a combination of two words? I dunno. “Blerd” for “blend word.”

Lauren: Aw, it’s hard when your portmanteau creates a word that is a word already. We have “blurred,” so that’s probably not –

Gretchen: That’s true.

Lauren: Or it just sounds terrible saying “wordbination.”

Gretchen: “Worbination,” “werbinate” – hmm.

Lauren: “Word” and “combine” don’t actually have anything in common. Trying to smoosh them together is an exercise in failure. It doesn’t help that “word” and “blend” are both words that are very short.

Gretchen: What are some other words that are related to words that are longer?

Lauren: I guess if you had a lot of blends – because they create a lot of utility in the way that we speak – you could say that a group of blends is a “flexicon.”

Gretchen: Ooo, like a “flexible lexicon.” It’s got this nice little “lex” combination there.

Lauren: I think I’m definitely stretching what could be relative to referencing a portmanteau word.

Gretchen: Yeah. And a “flexicon,” it’s a satisfying word as itself, but it doesn’t transparently connect to the meaning of a blended word or a smooshed together word or a combined word. I guess we have to keep calling them “portmanteaus” and “blends” because there isn’t a better self-defining option, but I wish there was.

Lauren: Do you know another word that’s a portmanteau word?

Gretchen: Many, but it sounds like you have one in mind.

Lauren: “Lingthusiasm.”

Gretchen: [Laughs] Oh, hey, of course it is! So, our podcast, in case you hadn’t noticed this from the byline is a combination of “linguistics” plus “enthusiasm.”

Lauren: It’s a podcast that’s enthusiastic about linguistics.

Gretchen: We sure are. I think we did an okay job at coming up with this blend, but I will say it is a little bit hard to pronounce.

Lauren: It definitely writes better than it speaks.

Gretchen: Yeah, it writes better, but when I’ve tried to be on other podcasts or tell people about podcasts, I’m like “ＬＩＮＧ – ＴＨＵＳＩＡＳＭ.” I have to say it very carefully because having the /ŋ/ before the /θ/ is just sort of a lot.

Lauren: Yeah, that /ŋ/ is right on the back of your mouth, and /θ/ is just tucked in at the teeth there, so you’re moving really far through the mouth.

Gretchen: It’s ironic that, as a linguistics podcast, we have a name that is linguistically objectively difficult to say.

Lauren: What I enjoy about it, Gretchen, is it lets us see the different ways that people deal with this. Some people hyper-articulate and hit both the /ŋ/ and the /θ/. Some people just don’t even bother sending their tongue all the way back for that /ŋ/ sound, and instead just pronounce it something like /lɪnθʊziæsm/ or /lɪmfʊziæsm/ – I quite like that.

Gretchen: Or sometimes people introduce a bit of a K sound or a G sound in between to provide a transition the way that sometimes you hear people say /hæmpstɹ̩/ as “HAMP-STER” with a P even though there isn’t originally, etymologically a P there, but you can produce a P in /hæmpstɹ̩/ to help you say it. You can have like /lɪŋkθʊziæsm/, like give it a bit of a K there. All right, I’ll take it. It’s an interesting, fun linguistics experiment that we’re doing on everybody.

Lauren: The great thing is that this way that people either create that K by taking the /θ/ back a little bit or create a /n/ instead of a /ŋ/ and bring the tongue forward, this is a very common type of sound change process that creates another kind of smooshing.

Gretchen: This is our second kind of linguistic smooshing which is often happening within a word but sometimes happening between words when they’re said very close together and making the sounds more similar to each other.

Lauren: This is a process known as “assimilation,” which is a very useful, does-what-it-says word when it comes to linguistic sound processes.

Gretchen: “Assimilation,” as in the sounds become more similar to each other.

Lauren: Yeah. Not a great word in other contexts.

Gretchen: No, it has rather unfortunate social implications, doesn’t it.

Lauren: Yeah. People assimilation – not great. Sound assimilation – super common.

Gretchen: Very common. Really in, I think, basically all of the languages, at least languages that are actually being used by humans who have bodies in this day and age.

Lauren: We are efficient.

Gretchen: If you are learning to cook or something, and you’re a new cook, you’re gonna take your knife and chop the carrots in a very slow and awkward and clumsy process, whereas if you see a video of someone who’s very professional and they’re just like [chopping sounds] and doing this very efficient, smooth, no-wasted-movements process for chopping their onions or whatever, that’s what you’re doing with your tongue when you’re making the sounds just a little bit more similar to each other in order to make them a little bit easier to produce.

Lauren: You get these really interesting consistencies in the way that sounds get smooshed together.

Gretchen: Because we’re working with bodies that have very similar constraints. One of my favourite examples of linguistic assimilation is what happens with sounds like M and N in some contexts. Let me give you some words and tell me what they have in common.

Lauren: Okay.

Gretchen: I have “inactive.” “inedible,” “imperfect,” “imbalance,” “independent,” “instable,” and “incurious.”

Lauren: They all start with I. I want to say they all have a prefix that means the same thing like “not.” You’re not edible; you’re not stable; you’re not cautious. They’re basically the same prefix. Some are N, and some are M.

Gretchen: Sometimes, we write this prefix like “im-” – “imperfect,” “imbalance,” “immaterial,” “immovable.” There’s loads of them. Sometimes, we write this prefix like “in-” like in “inactive,” “inedible,” and “incautious,” “infrequent.” But we pronounce it slightly differently, especially with that “IMperfect,” where it gets an M, versus “INdependent,” where it goes an N. This is because of the next sound.

Lauren: So, “imperfect,” we have a P. “Independent,” we have a D. P, like an M, is made with the lips, and D, like an N, is made just behind the teeth.

Gretchen: Exactly. In writing, we make this distinction between /m/ – M and N – but there’s actually a few more subtle differences in terms of how the sounds are made between “infrequent,” which you could say as /infɹikwɛnt/. But often, people actually move that N a little bit closer and pronounce it with the teeth on the lips as well as the F – /in̪fɹikwɛnt/.

Lauren: /in̪fɹikwɛnt/.

Gretchen: Or /in̪vəlɪd/.

Lauren: Congrats to everyone joining us on public transport or while out for a walk just going “Fuh-ree-kwent,” “Innnn-frekwent.”

Gretchen: Yeah, please make some sounds and make people next to you look at you a little bit funny. It’s fine. Welcome to the club. Or, you know, make it with your mouth and don’t articulate if you have to. There’s this /in̪fɹikwɛnt/ – and the same with something like /iŋkɑʃʌs/ or /iŋkəɹiʌs/, /iŋkəɹɛɪʃʌs/ where you tend to move the nasal sound – the N – to be more of an /ŋ/ like in “sing,” move it back to the same place that you’re constricting your tongue as with the /k/ sound – /iŋkɑʃʌs/. It’s like “ink-cautious” – “ing-cautious, “ing-conceivable.”

Lauren: It’s so interesting some of these turn up in the writing system, and some of them don’t and completely escape our notice.

Gretchen: The M is right there in writing, and so you have to remember, “Oh, you have to write it different,” but the pronunciation is right there and straightforward. Then the N in “incautious” or “incurious” is not there in the writing, but you know to pronounce it that way because it’s just easier to do even if no one’s actually told you. You’re just like, “Oh, well, that’s easier.” There’s a few that are just totally in the writing system. You also have words like “illegible” or “irreplaceable.”

Lauren: Because we’re just decided instead of saying, “IN-legible” or “IN-replaceable,” it’s just easier to make that one sound.

Gretchen: That’s just way too hard. These words – the “in-” prefix in English – goes back to Latin, so you find words like this in a whole bunch of languages that have gotten these words from Latin because already in Latin they were like, “Yeah, you just have to make it more similar. That’s what you do.”

Lauren: It’s not just in these prefixes that this assimilation happens because we saw with “LING-thusiasm,” it’s that same kind of thing with the nasal moving to accommodate for the next sound. Or my favourite, which is if you listen to pretty much anyone say the word “handbag” in rapid speech, a lot of the time it’ll become “HAM-bag,” as in –

Gretchen: The bag that you keep ham.

Lauren: The place where you store your ham. Mmm.

Gretchen: Mmm.

Lauren: But it’s pretty unlikely that you’ll be talking about ham storage situations at the same time as you’re talking about the purse that you grab every day, and so we don’t actually pay attention to the distinction because we normally don’t need to.

Gretchen: My favourite example of this is in the word “input,” which is not from the kind of “in-” that means “not,” because it’s not the opposite of “put” – you can either PUT something or you can IN-put it – it’s from the thing that you “put in,” where this other “in” means “inside of” and is not the same thing. But because it’s so hard to say “IN-put,” most of the time in rapid speech, people are actually saying /ɪmpʌt/.

Lauren: I feel like I often type “imput.”

Gretchen: Yeah, me, too! And then they underline it in the red squiggles, and I’m like, “No! C’mon, you know what I meant. This is the better way to spell it anyway.” There’s a bunch of Latin prefixes that do it like the Latin prefix “com-” as in “with.” You have “companion.”

Lauren: With an M.

Gretchen: Someone you break bread with – “com-pan.” There’s the M before the P. But “collect” – that “coll-” – the double L – is still a nasal that’s just been [whooshing noise] made to be like the L.

Lauren: Really? I’m so mad right now.

Gretchen: And “consume” – there it is as an N.

Lauren: Uh-huh, it’s not “com-sume” because that’s too hard to say.

Gretchen: Even “coordinate,” before a vowel, you just drop the following nasal entirely in that case.

Lauren: I’m also angry.

Gretchen: They’re all the same prefix. It just means “with.”

Lauren: Right.

Gretchen: Same with the Greek prefix, which comes to us via Latin, “syn-” meaning “together.” So, “symphony,” where that M becomes like the P-H sound, the /f/, /sɪmfəni/. And “syntax.”

Lauren: As in –

Gretchen: All the same “syn-”.

Lauren: “Syn-” and “sym-” in “symphony” and “syntax” are the same.

Gretchen: They’re all the same “syn-”.

Lauren: Ugh, this thing with nasals turns up all over the place – and not just in English and Latin and Greek. We have links to papers in the shownotes to Jakarta Indonesian, Arsi-Bale Afan Oromo, and also Akan, which is a language of Guana. There are so many languages where this is a super common process.

Gretchen: This is basically if I found a language that had a nasal and then another consonant, and they didn’t assimilate, I’d be sort of surprised at this point.

Lauren: Mm-hmm. It’s so common that the phrase “homorganic nasal assimilation” is just one of those phrases that you pick up, and it sticks with you because it turns up again and again.

Gretchen: I like “homorganic nasal assimilation” because it seems really complicated, but you can break it down etymologically in a way that’s really satisfying. You have “hom-organic,” so that’s the “homo-” prefix meaning “same” and then the “same organ.” So, it’s the same part of the mouth – whether it’s the lips or just behind the teeth or towards the back of the roof of the mouth or various other places. You want to have the nasal sound be at the same spot in the mouth as the sound that’s coming after it.

Lauren: “Homorganic nasal assimilation.”

Gretchen: It’s really nice.

Lauren: Very satisfying. Of course, not the only process of assimilation. There are a lot of these processes that happen. They happen with vowels getting more similar to each other.

Gretchen: We did a whole episode about the kind of assimilation that happens with C and G before different vowels, like why C and G seem to come in hard and soft versions, unlike most of the other consonants, because they tend to be affected and made more similar to the next vowel that’s coming after them.

Lauren: And rest assured that signers as well as speakers are good at being efficient when it comes to articulation. You get assimilation in signed languages as well.

Gretchen: There’s a really interesting video from 1913 – which has got to be some of the older videos of signed languages – about this signer named George Veditz in his film called, “The Preservation of American Sign Language.” It shows him signing the old ASL word “remember.” In this video from over a hundred years ago, he’s signing it starting with an open hand at the forehand, and then the hand would come down and close into a fist, and the thumb would touch the top of the other thumb from the non-dominant hand. Now, it’s just the thumb at the forehead to the thumb touching the other hand, both in fists the whole time. You can see videos of this. We’ll link to it in the description.

Lauren: It’s such a charming old video. He just has this olde-y time-y – the footage is old, but he also does this little head nod while he’s doing it. It’s incredibly charming. But as you said, you go from having the open hand to a fist with the thumb, and now, over a century of assimilating the handshape, people just go from the thumb at the forehead to the thumb down at the other thumb.

Gretchen: It’s an example of making it more efficient by not changing the movement midway through the sign.

Lauren: You see a lot of these changes in signed articulation where people will just keep the same handshape, or they won’t change location for a sign where the position of the body might have moved in an older version of it to keep things efficient.

Gretchen: I think it’s neat to look at the sign examples because, when we write words down, it’s not always clear that M and P have this particular relationship of both being produced with the lips. You have to go back and think about that as a speaker. A lot of sounds happen inside the mouth so that can’t really see them very well. You can see the signs becoming more similar to each other in a way that’s obscured for us by writing systems sometimes.

Lauren: Writing systems are really holding us back when it comes to thinking about assimilation because they’re so conservative. We really lose a lot as written language users when it comes to keeping track with changes that are happening in speech but don’t necessarily reflect well in the writing system.

Gretchen: Sometimes, we do start writing words in ways that correspond more closely to how they’re being spoken. I’m thinking of words like “gonna” and “hafta,” which have been respelled from “going to” and “have to.” I don’t think very many people at all say, “I HAVE to go to the store.” You might say, “I have TWO donuts,” but “I HAF to go to the store.”

Lauren: But you definitely can’t write “gonna” or “hafta” in a school essay.

Gretchen: No, they’re not part of this formal register, but they’re very much part of the texting or social media or informal written register, and there are relatively consistent ways of writing them even though they’re not formalised. Like, “gonna” tends to be written with two Ns, “gotta” with two Ts, “wanna” also with two Ns. They have these consistent ways of spelling them even though they’re part of this informal writing register.

Lauren: It’s interesting to watch this little “to” here, this function word, which, if you say it by itself, you get the full word.

Gretchen: “Going to.”

Lauren: But when it is in these quicker phrases, you can see that it’s getting squished into the previous word. That sound is being assimilated, and that vowel “to,” which is very much at the back of the mouth with the tongue, but it gets more and more towards the middle, and the lips get less and less rounded as it becomes less articulated.

Gretchen: Yeah, it gets more and more of a neutral, default /ə/ vowel – the schwa vowel – which is the least extreme of anything your mouth can be doing. It’s the most efficient vowel that you just say if you’re making an “uh” – like making a grunt sound or an “uh,” a neutral sound. It gets made to be the easiest thing to do because these words are super high frequency, we’re saying them all the time, and you don’t really need that added information of what else could it be in that context. So, “going to” becomes “gon tuh” becomes “gon na.”

Lauren: This reduction that constantly goes on is part of how language gets used. It’s like a path that we continue to wear down, and things become more assimilated through that phonetic process, and they start to lose particularly clear meaning, and then you create this ability for the language to generate things that eventually just become part of the grammar or part of a single word through this smooshing.

Gretchen: It’s a trajectory from very concrete words to very abstract, grammaticalised words, so from something that means like, “go,” as in physically move to a place, versus something that just means a generalised, abstract concept of “future.” So, “I’m going to the store” is physically moving to place, whereas “I’m gonna bake a cake” is a notion of future that doesn’t mean that I’m going to walk to the cake in the same way.

Lauren: I love it when you eventually get to it’s totally fine to say, “I am going to come,” and it’s just like, if you think about them in their semantic sense, it’s a contradiction, but this happens across languages. The future is often created in this way. If a language didn’t have a future tense, it will create one through this process.

Gretchen: Or sometimes create a second, bonus, extra future.

Lauren: You can never have too much future. You get this reduction in the sound. You get this reduction in how much meaning is in a word, and it becomes less concrete and more abstract.

Gretchen: Or sort of, yeah, a reduction in terms of how much concrete meaning but an enhancement in terms of the ability to express more abstract concepts.

Lauren: Well, yeah, it becomes a very useful part of something that becomes more grammatical.

Gretchen: My favourite example of this process and how cyclic it is is the French word “aujourd'hui.” “Aujourd'hui” in French means “today.”

Lauren: Great.

Gretchen: That’s just what it means. If you look at it, and you have a little bit of French, you might say, okay, “aujourd'hui,” we could break that down. The “au” means “at the” or “on the” – itself smooshing from ��à le,” but we’re gonna ignore that. The “jour” part means “day.” Great. Itself also a smooshing from something in Latin, but we’re also gonna ignore that.

Lauren: Yeah, it’s smooshing all the way down.

Gretchen: It’s smooshing all the way down. There’s really so much smooshing smooshed into this one word. The “d’” – the D + apostrophe – is from “de,” which is itself, again, smooshing – it means “of.”

Lauren: Oh, I’m shocked.

Gretchen: So, these are fairly well known French words if you break them down. And then you have this last part which is spelled H-U-I. It’s pronounced /wi/ – “Aujourd'hui.”

Lauren: I’m gonna guess, Gretchen, that that’s been smooshed down from something.

Gretchen: Oh, Lauren, you’re so right. “Hui” /wi/ – which sounds like the French word for “yes” (oui) but is not – is an obsolete word that also means “today,” which is what the whole thing means.

Lauren: Amazing. So, the word “today” in French, if you break it down etymologically, means “on the day of today.”

Gretchen: But we don’t even need to stop there.

Lauren: Right.

Gretchen: Because “hui” comes from Latin “hodie.”

Lauren: Right.

Gretchen: Which is a contraction of “hac die” meaning “on this day.”

Lauren: “On this day.”

Gretchen: So, “aujourd'hui” – “au jour de hodie” – is literally “on the day of on this day.”

Lauren: Amazing.

Gretchen: It’s got two days in it. It’s not today – well, it is two-day – but it’s “two,” T-W-O.

Lauren: It is extremely today.

Gretchen: It is extremely today. It is extra much today because it’s like you had a path that started eroding, and so you put some extra paving stones in to sure it up and added an extra “day” so you wouldn’t get confused about the word “oui” that means “yes.”

Lauren: It’s stories like this and it’s the realisation that language is constantly doing this that makes me feel really comforted by the kind of processes of use. Because it’s not a wearing out of language; it’s a lovingly using and laying down – and, you know, our portmanteaus today will become concrete words, and then they might get eroded down or re-blended or used again to create new, what could be grammatical forms. It all just continues on across history. It’s easy to see when you look across time how language continues to just get loved and used and worn.

Gretchen: It’s like how we can forget that “chortle” started off as a joke word from Lewis Carroll in this poem, and we’re like, “Well, that’s just a word that means a thing.” It’s not particularly a portmanteau. It’s just a word that I have. And we could then re-portmanteau it into another word and keep doing this process over and over again and building things up and smooshing them together and then building up more stuff and smooshing it back together. It’s a really exciting process of making stuff. I like how smooshing reminds us of the physicality of language and how, when you say a word that’s been smooshed, your body – your tongue, your hands – are tracing a path that so many other people’s bodies have also traced. It’s like when you’re walking down a set of stone stairs that have this dent in the middle from this very soft groove of everyone steps in it over centuries. You can feel that you’re going where some else was going. When you’re using a smooshed word, you’re participating in this language pathway that has been part of so many people’s bodies for so many generations.

[Music]

Gretchen: For more Lingthusiasm and links to all the things mentioned in this episode, go to lingthusiasm.com. You can listen to us on all of the podcast platforms or lingthusiasm.com. You can get transcripts of every episode at lingthusiasm.com/transcripts. You can follow @lingthusiasm on all the social media sites. You can get scarves with lots of linguistics patterns on them including the IPA, branching tree diagrams, bouba and kiki, and our favourite esoteric Unicode symbols, plus other Lingthusiasm merch – like our “Etymology isn’t Destiny” t-shirts and aesthetic IPA posters – at lingthusiasm.com/merch. Links to my social media can be found at gretchenmcculloch.com. My blog is AllThingsLinguistic.com. My book about internet language is called Because Internet.

Lauren: My social media and blog is Superlinguo. Lingthusiasm is able to keep existing thanks to the support of our patrons. If you wanna get an extra Lingthusiasm episode to listen to every month, our entire archive of bonus episodes to listen to right now, or if you wanna help keep making the show running ad-free, go to patreon.com/lingthusiasm or follow the links from our website. Patrons can also get access to our Discord chatroom to talk with other linguistics fans and be the first to find out about new merch and other announcements. Recent bonus topics include secret codes, inner voices, and how we made vowel plots with Dr. Bethany Gardner. Can’t afford to pledge? That’s okay, too. We also really appreciate it if you can recommend Lingthusiasm to anyone in your life who’s curious about language.

Gretchen: Lingthusiasm is created and produced by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our Senior Producer is Claire Gawne, our Editorial Producer is Sarah Dopierala, our Production Assistant is Martha Tsutsui-Billins, and our Editorial Assistant is Jon Kruk. Our music is “Ancient City” by The Triangles.

Lauren: Stay lingthusiastic!

[Music]

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

#linguistics #language #lingthusiasm #podcast #episodes #transcripts #episode 92 #smooshing #blend words #assimilation #morphology

[msboutofcontext]

#magic school bus #out of context #ms frizzle #keesha #da #dorothy ann #carlos #how does she do that #not easily i expect #we love you ms frizzle #volcano #Blows Its Top

[idiopathicsmile]

Doing a little summertime sale of my polymer clay creations! Everything is in the $8 to $15 range (before shipping) and you can click the read more for closeups and prices.

Pug earrings! Show your love for those smushy-faced darlings. $10 per pair.

Monster mash trio. We've got the classics of the genre: a vampire, a were-yorkie, and a zombie. $8 individually, $20 as a group.

Brown dog earrings. What breed? Brown. $10 per pair.

Cthulhu babies. Listen, Lovecraft was a racist shithead and I see no reason to take his legacy seriously. Made with glittery clay for an extra I-don't-know-what. $7 each or $18 for three.

Glittery pink tentacle earrings. For those days when you wanna cosplay as Vaguely Unsettling Barbie. $10 per pair.

20,000 Leagues Under The Sea Tentacle magnet. Yes, it will look like your fridge has a tiny porthole that a kracken is bursting through. Maybe you want that feel in your kitchen decor? I'm not here to judge. $12.

Liz the Lizard pin. If you're thinking of being Ms. Frizzle for Halloween, this is a good alternative to carrying a stuffed reptile all night. I love this one but I've Frizzled like three times and it's time to pass the torch. $15.

If you're interested in anything, comment or toss me an ask and we can work out the details in chat. Thanks for reading!

#polymer clay #wee clay figurines #dipping a toe into the dreaded world of commerce

[chaosnojutsu]

listen a lot of authors of fanworks (myself included) struggle with finding an existing’s character’s voice and not making them unbearably ooc and that’s part of the writing process, it’s fine, follow the ms. frizzle rules and keep creating art

what i’m interested in are the patterns that emerge in fanwork characterization that are BEYOND the initial phase of “i’m learning how to write this character.” i love getting into a new media and scrolling through fics and seeing the same characters with the same modern au jobs every time because we’re all like “yeah that makes sense” and then it turns into this characterization tidbit that we all accept. same goes for explanations of canon injuries/disabilities that don’t apply to the context of a “real world” setting, and kinks, and how they know xyz side character, and even how they use social media.

i also love when authors challenge those unofficially-official norms and come up with something better, or even something not as plausible but so, so interesting nevertheless

anyway you should put your media/character’s “fic thing” in the tags

#char chats #writing #fanfic #ao3 #tag game #i guess #writing game #characterization #character analysis

[cookinguptales]

From the soft asks:

23) What's your favorite piece of clothing?

26) What movie would you want to live in?

I'm gonna give you my top three articles of clothing!!! Because all three fulfill different needs!

The one I probably wear the most is an oversized sweatshirt that I got from Torrid years ago. I don't think I have any photos of myself wearing it, so here's one from their website.

I loved it so much that when they put it on extreme clearance at the end of the Halloween season, I bought two more. I think the design is super fun and cute (why yes, I do love both spooky shit and drinking cocktails) and it's also one of the most comfortable things I've ever worn. Soft and cozy but not too warm. I have to be very careful about overheating, so it's kind of a go-to in the fall through spring.

The one I wear occasionally, when I want to wear a dress, is my dinosaur dress! I got it from... I want to say modcloth?

It's such a fun and cute print!! It always makes me feel like Ms. Frizzle when I wear it. And I think I look nice in it. I don't always want to wear a dress, but when I do... this one is a go-to. It's definitely my favorite dress that I own, lmao.

Finally, an article of clothing that I almost never wear because it's fragile, but I love it. ;; My dad got me a jacket as a Christmas present when we were in Kyoto a few years ago. I wear it in early spring, typically. I get overheated easily so I can't wear it once it gets too warm, but it's so nice to wear out and about when the cherry blossoms are just starting to bloom in Philadelphia.

It's embroidered and really lovely. The design is a fox spirit wedding in the spring, which is why I tend to get it out seasonally! Also I'm just afraid of damaging it lmao.

That was long, but oh well. lmao

As for your second question... I guess there are probably a lot of movies that I'd enjoy living in, but I think the first that comes to mind is Kiki's Delivery Service. It's not a perfect world, but it's one full of kind people and just a touch of magic. A lot of Miyazaki's worlds look achingly appealing, and that one's right up there. I've struggled with depression for a lot of my life, so seeing her get through her struggles with the help of people who love her in a warm bakery full of delicious bread in a town by the sea... It fills me with a kind of wistfulness. ;;

#replies #ask games

[stem-sister-scuffle]

STEM SISTER SCUFFLE: SEMIFINALS LEFT MASHUP

Ema Skye (Ace Attorney) vs Ms Frizzle (The Magic School Bus)

Ema Skye is a Forensic Scientist!

Ms. Frizzle is a Science Teacher!

Why you should vote for each contestant:

Ema Skye:

"I love her a lot and she's very important to me. We get to see her story from being a high school student who's really into science, to becoming a detective, to then finally passing her forensics exam and becoming a forensic scientist like she always wanted. I cosplayed her before"

"Ema has been interested in forensics ever since she was a kid. She's extremely passionate about it. She works very hard and despite bumps along the way she does manage to achieve her dreams/career goal and get into forensic science. She is amazing and I love her enthusiasm and I love her :D When she was like 16 she personally had her own spray bottle(s) of luminol testing fluid, what a dork (in the best way!). Forensic science is practically her whole life. What an inspiration. The first thing on her wiki page is the quote "Yes! Isn't it amazing? Ah, the power of science. It's my life." Bless."

"this girl is so silly. Her favorite thing is luminol. You have an ace attorney pfp you know her. She is my favorite ever. She calls Klavier Gavin a "glimmerous fop" (accurate description). She wears a lab coat over her school uniform. She brings snacks to crime scenes.i love her your honor"

"shes like every enthusiastic autism girl with a science special interest who then gors to college and gets a job and is tired and a mean lesbian but still is a freak about forensics. i love her"

"SHE WORKED SO HARD TO GO INTO FORENSICS. SHE HELPS EVERYONE DO FORENSICS. SHE THEN FAILS WHEN IT COUNTS AND BECOMES BITTER BUT GETS OUT OF THOSE FEELINGS LATER ON. I love her dearly she's so silly and fun when she needs to be, and I think her failure is fascinating but I'm SOOOOO GLAD she was able to become a forensic scientist in the end :)"

"Showed up and gave Apollo random forensics supplies at just the right time. Not sure if this was authorized. Does not Mayte though she can do anything she wants. C’mon man you know her you know why she’s the best you get me right"

"She's fun and good at science and has pink lenses in her glasses and I like her a lot"

"She is so excited to be using her fun little toys to solve crimes."

"She’s a gosh darn professional in a house of fops. Is passionate about her work and was inspired partially by a murder case she was involved in as a witness. She’s really cute and really quirky, and ya girl knows how to snack. She accessorizes really well. I cosplayed as her once and found myself more and more impressed with her style choices as I was putting it together. We stan a fashionable yet practical STEM queen."

"she is literally everythingggg to me. she has wanted to be a forensic scientist since she was 16 y/o and introduces forensic investigation mechanics to the series like luminol and dusting for fingerprints. when she does not get her dream job, she becomes depressed and bitter, only cheering up when she talks about forensic science. later on, when she attains the job, she is much happier! science is her entire life and her career and she is tremendously autistic about it. also she's such a girlboss i love her <3 ema must go through btw. she is the ultimate woman in stem"

"Ema Skye has been interested in forensics for many years due to case that occurred when she was younger. Even though she didn't pass the test to become one at first she had still continued trying till she made it. She always lights up at the mention of anything revolving sciene. She gets so happy when she's able to work with her forensic tools and investigate the crime scene <33"

"Teaches Phoenix wright about forensics"

"she wears a cool lab coat and I don't really know what else to put here but she's neat"

"she is so autistic about forensic science. she goes against the police rules to take fingerprints. she infodumps to anyone who will listen about forensic science. ema is so special to me and I love her very much"

"Ema is a girlboss! She started using forensics and scientific investigation to help solve murders when she was just 15 years old. she autistic and bisexual bc I say so :)"

"Literally the only character in universe that uses hard evidence in trials."

"The skyentific detective…."

"Its literally her personality ok. Just listen to her theme(s). I just love her"

"She is literally me <33 I love her. I need to see her grow up happy and healthy and i need to tell my friends and family about her."

"Wants to be a scientific investigator and solve crimes scientifically, forced to be a cop. Goes from teen with a weird hobby to reluctant cop to everything she ever wanted and I am so proud"

"She’s just a little weirdo. And she keeps trying to be a forensic scientist, but she has to finish high school first. She solved the murder her sister was accused of "

"Forensic science fascinates her. She sure is a woman jn stem. I am sorry I am very tired i dn what to write"

"I need to actually finish AA but it’s her. You probably have more submissions with better reasoning but I like her vibes from what I did play."

"She's got all sorts of cool gadgets which utilize the DS touchscreen"

Ms. Frizzle:

"*gestures at entire magic school bus series*"

"Embodies the true spirit of scientific discovery: barely-contained chaos."

"She is very knowledgeable about a wide variety of sciences, and uses that knowledge to further the educations of many people. Teachers deserve the world; they do so much for so little in return. (shout out to Mrs. Goates)"

"She loves science and loves teaching kids about science. I love her. Idk I saw she only had one submission and that made me sad so now im here submitting her"

"She is an icon and has cool earrings"

"SHE'S SO COOL!!! She's so smart and so fun and genuinely just an icon. ALSO she has a little lizard on her shoulder. I saw an ask abt the submissions for Ms. Frizzle and the sender was the only person who submitted her.. I couldn't let this go. ALSO one of my professors irl called herself the irl Frizzle and she's a doctor of biology so make of that what you will"

#stem sister scuffle #semifinals #ace attorney #aa ema skye #ema skye #the magic school bus #ms frizzle