New words, and when they were first used (part 2)

I often like to recycle old ideas, and this week is no exception, as the Charles Fudgemuffin blog takes another look at a variety of words, and when they were first invented.

Regular muffins.
Well, regular in that they're not fudgemuffins,
but muffins which can talk are certainly not regular!

All of the following 'first use' dates were taken from racist dictionary Merriam-Webster*.

* See previous blog post.

1703: Muffin

When the word 'muffin' was first used in 1703, the word 'fudge' had already been in use for 29 years, with its first recorded use being in 1674. The word 'fudgemuffin', however, only came into common use fairly recently!

Silly tautologies

A friend of mine is a big fan of tautologies, or rather he's a big fan of pointing out when other people use tautologies, and I have to admit that until a few years ago I didn't know what a tautology was.

Movement of the people.

So for the benefit of anyone in a similar position, a tautology is when you use needless repetition of a word, idea or phrase in an unnecessarily repetitive way, or an unrequired duplicate manner.*

* That was a deliberate tautology.

Here are a few examples...

1) Mass exodus

There's no such thing as a small exodus. By definition, an exodus will always be massive. There's therefore no need to clarify that it's a mass exodus as that's already implied. A 'mass exodus' is therefore a simple example of a tautology.

Weird headlines (part 2)

It's time for another round-up of weird and wonderful headlines, with this week's headlines featuring chickens, submarines and 'anonymous' quotes...

1) 'Why did the chicken cross the road?'

If you have any information as to why the chicken crossed the road, please inform the police.

Is this some kind of joke? No, it's a real headline which appeared on the BBC website.

To be fair, it's better journalism than you usually find on the BBC website.

Why did the chicken cross the road?

Quiz for idiots

From time to time I've occasionally featured various quizzes on the Charles Fudgemuffin blog, including 'true or false' quizzes, 'Star Wars' quizzes, a 'photoshopped or real' quiz, and even a 'Are you officially old?' quiz.

Puffins.
Or to refer to them by their Latin name, 'fratercula arctica'.
Editor's note: "Charles, you've given the game away, you daft fool!"
Charles: "Oops, sorry! Hopefully the readers wont notice."

So what better way to start off the New year than with another quiz! This time it's a really straight forward quiz and the questions are so easy that I'm sure everyone will get ten out of ten answers correct!

1) 'Puffinus puffinus' is the Latin name for which bird?

A) Puffin
B) Manx Shearwater