empretzeled

[Wilson Gray]

Really? Thank you. That's about as transparent as "smoke someone over"
: look at someone. A pretzel is either not twisted or it's twisted in
a particular way that's so entirely predictable that a lab rat could
figure it out.

Or maybe I'm simply unfamiliar with the wide variety of ways in which
pretzels may be twisted. If I were any more unfamiliar with pretzels,
the word wuld be only a literary term for me.

-Wilson
–––
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
-Mark Twain





On Thu, May 21, 2009 at 4:40 PM, Benjamin Zimmer
<bgzimmer at babel.ling.upenn.edu> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender: Â  Â  Â  American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster: Â  Â  Â  Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU>
> Subject: Â  Â  Â Re: empretzeled
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Thu, May 21, 2009 at 4:33 PM, Wilson Gray wrote:
>>
>> WTF does it mean: "empretzeled"? I'm not familiar with the relevant
>> dialect of English.
>
> Convoluted, contorted, tangled, twisted... like a pretzel.
>
>
>
>> On Wed, May 20, 2009 at 5:30 PM, David A. Daniel <dad at pokerwiz.com> wrote:
>> >
>> > From that same review: "...but "Terminator Salvation" seems more like a
>> > throwback than a harbinger of things to come." OMFG, to quote Gossip Girl.
>> > How can one then take "empretzeled" seriously? We are simply presented with
>> > an ignoramus who has access to a key board and, apparently, gets paid to
>> > beat upon it. Is his usage worthy of note for those who track the progress
>> > of the Mother Tongue? Sadly, perhaps it is.
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > -----Original Message-----
>> > From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of
>> > Benjamin Zimmer
>> > Sent: Wednesday, May 20, 2009 4:49 PM
>> > To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>> > Subject: empretzeled
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > From A.O. Scott's review of "Terminator Salvation" in the New  York Times:
>> >
>> > ---
>> > http://movies.nytimes.com/2009/05/21/movies/21term.html
>> > A detailed recap of the franchise's empretzeled chronology will not be
>> > possible here.
>> > ---
>> >
>> > The word has been used a couple of times by Time Magazine columnist
>> > Joe Klein. He used it in a 2004 column and again last year on the
>> > Swampland blog (though he spelled it "empretzled" that time):
>> >
>> > ---
>> > http://www.time.com/time/election2004/columnist/klein/article/0,18471,692822
>> > ,00.html
>> > "Tearing Kerry Down" (Sep. 4, 2004)
>> > The attacks on Kerry ranged from the reasonable-he certainly has
>> > empretzeled himself on Iraq-to the outrageous: Zell Miller's assertion
>> > that Kerry would take his orders from Paris.
>> > ---
>> > http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2008/10/06/embarracuda/
>> > "Embarracuda" (Oct. 6, 2008)
>> > I mean, don't the hateful doings at Palin's church and Hannity's
>> > perfidy deserve a lengthy exegesis from Pete Wehner or Jennifer Rubin
>> > or one of the other empretzled ideologues over at Commentary?
>> > ---
>> >
>> > Norman Mailer also once used the word, in his preface to _First
>> > Flowering: The Best of the Harvard Advocate_ (1977) -- republished in
>> > _The Harvard Book_ (William Bentinck-Smith, ed. 1982) and the Mailer
>> > anthology _The Time of Our Time_ (1999):
>> >
>> > ---
>> > It was only on the next day, after the claims of liars had been
>> > checked against the quiet evidence of reliable witnesses who had found
>> > themselves analogously empretzeled in every room and on the stairs,
>> > that the news came back.
>> > ---
>> >
>> > --Ben Zimmer
>
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