Close....

Big Ugly Fat F*cker

AKA B-52 Bomber

:D

Michale.....

Couldn't resist.

The principle isn't that arbitrary rearrangements are allowed, only that there are two specific places a prepositional phrase can go (even though one is much more common than the other. "Up the riverbank they ran" does sound a little stilted, but nothing like "up the First National Bank they held".

"I think of the acronym BUFF."

Boston Underground Film Festival?

:D

Michale.....

Which is NOTHING like it appears to be... :D

"Standards for using 'epic' are so low, even 'awesome' is embarrassed."

I have to second (third??) my enjoyment of this. It really cracked me up.. :D

Michale....

Grammatical nitpickery! I can't resist...

Heh.

I'm willing to give "viral" another year, as it is only mildly annoying now (but, once it truly "goes viral" it will be worse, of course).

I would have spelled it "an Aha moment" or even "an Aha! moment" (I probably would capitalize Moment as well, and likely would put the whole phrase in quotes, hence "an 'Aha! Moment'"). But, in this case, I had to defer to the LSSU list's syntax. In their defense, they did include a hyphen, so it's not just a "ha" moment...

Back story doesn't annoy me much, and I even occasionally use it. I've always taken it to mean "the historical background of the story, which has seldom been told." In other words, the key thing to me is that not many people know about it. I'd use it almost as akin to "the secret history," although not quite as strong.

I don't hang out with the younger set much, so I don't hear "BFF" much, myself. I liked the "BFFA" suggestion, though.

Your man up example makes perfect grammatical sense. If you're Yoda, that is. Heh. Reminds me of the classic example for people learning English from languages where word position is even more flexible: "house cat" is not the same thing as "cat house." Heh.

I'm willing to bet that Mama Grizzlies (the phrase) will be as hard to ignore next year as Sarah Palin herself. But maybe that's just me...

Google may eventually fight the verbization of their company name, because once you become a common word, you lose your trademark. "Aspirin," for instance, used to be a trademark. Companies who currently fight this as hard as they can: "Kleenex" (officially "Kleenex brand tissue"), "Band Aid," and (to use a verb example) "Xerox." Once a judge rules that the product name is now a common noun, the company loses all control over it. The most recent to have lost this (in a truly stupid judicial decision), in my memory, was "Monopoly" as a board game. This is why zillions of "Something-opoly" games abound on the market today -- because it is no longer a trademark.

And yeah, that "awesome" quote was, indeed, epic.

-CW

--

"Ah-ha moment" has that first h in it. Otherwise it's a mere ha moment, introduced by an indefinite article. I normally prefer the word "epiphany", but if I were talking about them at length I would be glad to have the synonym just for variety.

--

I've always understood "back story" as referring to details of lesser narrative importance, which may be chronologically before the main story but don't have to be. Definitions on Wikipedia, wisegeek.com, dictionary.com, and Merriam-Webster specify chronological priority with no suggestion of lesser narrative significance. The term is apparently too recent to be included in my copy of the OED.

I think I'm right and they're wrong. Look at some prominent instances:

"We show you the story behind the story, revealing a side of news that is rarely seen. ... We hear how correspondents deal with the challenges and human emotions they confront." http://www.cnn.com/CNNI/Programs/backstory/

"Backstory
From around the nation and around the world, Times reporters go beyond the headlines, providing in-depth detail and analysis on the top news stories of the day." http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/podcasts/backstory.xml

"Backstory: inside the business of news" (a book title)

The business of news has been going on for well over a century. To fit the overt definitions of "back story" as being chronologically before, the back story would have to only be stuff like what happened to James Gordon Benett in 1830, before he started the New York Herald. Anything since then is additional detail of what happened after the business of news was already underway, and so couldn't be included. Of course, that's silly.

Even when sources define backstory as being before the events of the story, they undermine that thesis. For example, wisegeek says "Backstory is the foundation upon which a writer knows his or her character as intimately as you might know your child, lifelong friend, or spouse." That can't reasonably be expected to come screeching to an absolute halt at the moment of the first event that gets included in the published story.

Sure, lots of the "in-depth detail and analysis" will be of events before the main story. But not all. So even for details that are earlier, the chronological priority isn't the distinguishing feature.

--

"BFF" sounds ironic to me.

--

"Man up" isn't a phrase I expect to use, ever. The appeal to gender bias should be avoided. But as for picking a fight with it on grounds of "don't verb nouns" and the idea that prepositions should never be used as particles, I'm not on board.

"To avoid confusing prepositions with particles, test by moving the word (up) and words following it to the front of the sentence: Up the bank four armed men held.

"If the resulting sentence does not make sense, then the word belongs with the verb and is a particle, not a preposition.

"Note the difference:
Example A: We ran up the hill.
Test: Up the hill we ran.

"The resulting sentence makes sense. Therefore, up is a preposition."
http://www.towson.edu/ows/prepositions.htm

Particles are perfectly ok, whether it's in "man up" or "hold up".

--

"Refudiate" adds no value that I can see, but only encourages confusion.

--

"Mama Grizzlies": It's getting more attention than it deserves, but will inveighing against it really decrease that amount? Ignore it, who cares?

--

"Google" is a verb. Get over it. "Look up on the search engine of your choice" is bulky, pompous, and just plain stupid.

--

Living life to the fullest means embracing the suffering as well as the enjoyment. They come as a package deal. The trite, overused phrase is indeed trite and overused, but at least it implicitly acknowledges this important truth. The proposed replacement utterly fails to do so.

--

"Standards for using 'epic' are so low, even 'awesome' is embarrassed."

Perfect. I have nothing more to add.