Writerly Insults - 21 October 2013

<p>This week on "A Way with Words": Sure, it's scary to send your writing to a literary agent. But pity the poor agent who must wade through hundreds of terrible query letters a week! One of them shares excerpts from those hilariously bad query letters on a blog called SlushPile Hell. And get ready for some colorful conversation: Purple cows do exist--only they're made with grape soda and ice cream. And yes, Virginia, there IS an English word that rhymes with "orange"!  Plus, catawampus, mesmerize, all's I'm saying, plus messing and gauming.<br /><br />FULL DETAILS<br /><br />A query letter from SlushPile Hell, the blog of a curmudgeonly literary agent, reads, "Have you ever wished you had represented the author of the Holy Bible and placed it with a publisher?" Erm, sure. <br /><br />The exclamation Fiddlesticks!, meaning "a trifle" or "something insignificant or absurd," goes back to the time of Shakespeare. It endures in part because it's fun to say.<br /><br />Dorothy Parker, known for her acerbic wit, was once described as a stiletto made of sugar.<br /><br />What do you say when you're in a restroom and someone knocks on the door? Many people answer Ocupado!, which has made its way from bilingual signage--including old airline seat cards from the 1960's--to common speech.<br /><br />Our Quiz Guy John Chaneski struts his stuff with a Miss Word beauty pageant for words beginning with mis-.<br /><br />All's, as in the common clause all's you have to do, isn't grammatically incorrect.  It's a valid contraction of the archaic construction all as.<br /><br />Another cocksure query letter received by the book agent at SlushPile Hell includes the line: "The writing is final, and I do not want it changed." Okay, then.<br /><br />The idiom dead on, meaning "precisely," might sound morbid, but it makes sense. It's a reference to the fact that death is certain and absolute.<br /><br />When someone's standing in front of the TV, do you shout, "Move over!" or something more creative? How about Your daddy weren't no glass