Speculative Grammarian is “the premier scholarly journal featuring research in the neglected field of satirical linguistics,” if they do say so themselves.
We are nearing the end of our transition from the real world to online, and we have nearly completed digitizing the tattered remains of our once glorious Archive, re-publishing each issue on the internet.
Having re-emerged from the shadow of our most recent exile, we are, of course, also looking for submissions for forthcoming issues of SpecGram. Standards have never been lower, so get published while you can!
They have just put online Better Words and Morphemes:The Journal of the Linguistic Society of South-Central New Caledonia, Volume I, Number 3 (May 1991), with (among many other items of equally dubious value) an entirely new scientific folk etymology of wombat. You thought it was of Australian Aboriginal origin? Well, you’re right, but they’ll do their damndest to convince you it’s “a purely English descriptive compound.” Go, enjoy, but don’t say I didn’t warn you you might get your brains addled.
The wombat etymology reminds me of my own discovery of the etymology of “pregnant”, derived from *gnant = “giving birth; making guttural sounds”. An
obsolete analogous form was *postgnant.
Alas, the home page now says:
Ave atque vale, or as one might speculatively say: Have a fat valet!
♫♪ Alles hat ein Ende, nur die Wurscht hat zwei… ♪♫