Phoebe and Her Unicorn by Dana Simpson for June 20, 2014
Transcript:
Phoebe: If laughing is called "laughter," why is coughing not called "coughter?" Marigold: I do not know. Phoebe: I've been asking everybody I can see. So far, the unanimous answer is "to make little girls ask questions." Marigold: So just your parents, then. Marigold:Summer vacation is a hard time to learn anything useful.
Jmodene1701 over 10 years ago
Not to mention the plural of a computer mouse.
Templo S.U.D. over 10 years ago
You must know the Olsen twins’ song “One Buffalo, Two Buffali.” If not, then look for it on YouTube.
Simon_Jester over 10 years ago
Two Jacki….
Nebulous Premium Member over 10 years ago
Not to mention Man’s laughter.
ckcsmum Premium Member over 10 years ago
Why does a shipment go by car and a cargo go by ship?
PMark over 10 years ago
Why does ‘cave’, ‘Dave’, ‘gave’, ‘save’, and ‘wave’ all rhyme but ‘have’ does not?
PMark over 10 years ago
Why do we park on driveways and drive on parkways?
PMark over 10 years ago
If ‘brethren’ is another word for brothers, why isn’t ‘sistren’ another word for sisters?
Q4horse over 10 years ago
Summer is for riding, not asking silly questions.
Stellagal over 10 years ago
I’m still trying to understand why we call daughters “Daw-ters” and not “Daff-ters”.
WaitingMan over 10 years ago
Why is Madison Square Garden round?
DDrazen over 10 years ago
As the George Carlin auditions continue….
Piksea Premium Member over 10 years ago
When my niece was 2 she got a cut and learned what blood was. For a while afterward, she was convinced that in the present tense you were blooding and in the past tense, you blooded.
Comic Minister Premium Member over 10 years ago
Agreed Phoebe.
John W Kennedy Premium Member over 10 years ago
The actual reason is that in Old English and Middle English, the words “laugh” and “cough” were quite different; they wore down to resemble each other in Modern English, but “laugh” had already given birth to “laughter”.
Same basic idea for the “daughter” question. This is why God gave us the Oxford English Dictionary; all other dictionaries are kiddy toys.
As to Madison Square Garden, you’re parsing it wrong. The current building is the latest of a series of buildings by that name in New York, and the original one was located on—ta-da!—Madison Square. So it’s “the garden that is [or used to be] on Madison Square”, not “the square garden named ‘Madison’”.
bopard over 10 years ago
Welllll, we’ve got an OED , and net links to The Lexicon on every floor my bldg. It’s saved my behind many a time.
nailer Premium Member over 10 years ago
Feel the need to do a meme with that close-up in the third panel.
Stephen Gilberg over 10 years ago
Why isn’t “slaugh” the verb form of “slaughter”?
reynard61 over 10 years ago
One tooth.Two teeth.
One telephone booth.Two telephone beeth?
ColonelClaus over 10 years ago
I still wanna know why Theatre in the round is performed in a rectangular room
docopenhaver over 10 years ago
“Antique” and “barbeque” are two I find rather annoying. You can see why English is considered to be a difficult-to-learn language. There seem to be more exceptions than rules!
Khatkhattu Premium Member over 10 years ago
If all of the respondents to this strip breathe a very deep breath also known as a sigh, could the sound we (imagine we) hear be called sighter? (Not to be confused with the person fixing his/her gaze on a distant object).
dogday Premium Member over 10 years ago
….and is one of my favorite pursuits. If knowledge is power, and if words have power, then the knowledge of words and how to use them is invaluable!
Xaa over 10 years ago
Answer: Because “laugh” entered the English language from German, while “cough” entered the language from Dutch. Two different origins, and two different resulting conjugations of the word after it passed through Old English.
John W Kennedy Premium Member over 10 years ago
Johnson’s dictionary was a good beginning, and the best available at the time, but it’s been out of date, both in terms of its learning and in terms of its subject matter, since Jane Austen’s day. Here’s a riddle for you: how is the spelling of the word “knight” related to the spelling of the Scottish name “Culzean”?
reynard61 over 10 years ago
@ Mochipants: Heh! I see what you did there!
Rainbow Sprinkles over 3 years ago
“So just your parents, then” brought on a laughing fit.