I admit it: I’m an old fuddy-duddy. [Half of this post seems to have ended up in the English notes below, beginning with fuddy-duddy.] Case in point: I fought like hell the introduction of wikis into the daily working life of our lab. Eventually, I folded, and it did not go without notice: one day in a lab meeting I mentioned my delight at having edited something on Wikipedia, and one of our graduate students was delighted to point out the unavoidable contrast with my oft-stated position on such things: Ha, Kevin’s using a wiki!
Today I am delighted once again: I just edited my first French-language Wikipedia entry! Here’s the before-and-after. Can you see the word whose spelling I edited–twice? (You’ll find it in the French notes below.) Of course, being excited about having spotted a French-language spelling error means that before noon I’ll have said something stupid enough to make the entire lab bust out laughing, mais c’est normal, ça, it happens every day anyway…
Before:
After:
English notes
old fuddy-duddy: “one that is old-fashioned, unimaginative, or conservative” (Merriam-Webster)
I’m an old fuddy duddy. I’m not ready to embrace tablets yet. I like a mouse and keyboard.
— Beware of Darkness🕵 (@BwareofDarknss) November 23, 2017
Am I a joyless old fuddy-duddy for not liking Logan? No. No, it’s the children that are wrong.
— Humanist (@humanist451) November 6, 2017
I am getting such an old fuddy duddy!!!! Cannot stand the smell of alcohol on men, makes me want to scowl at them 🤣🤣 #chilloutoldlady #iblamemydad
— sarah jane (@sarahjodonnell) November 22, 2017
like hell: an intensifying adverb. It means something like very hard .
This is complete and utter BS. Ajit Pai, like all other Trump appointees, is trying to stack the deck for the 1% and against all other Americans. We must fight like hell to #SaveNetNeutrality. https://t.co/72IVIBcz8x
— Adam Best (@adamcbest) November 21, 2017
Last night wasn’t “spewing stuff.”
It’s fighting like hell for Americans who are getting ripped off by this tax bill. -SB https://t.co/n0Pjg5nXFh
— Sherrod Brown (@SherrodBrown) November 17, 2017
How I used it in the post: I fought like hell the introduction of wikis into the daily working life of our lab. Eventually, I folded, and it did not go without notice.
There’s another use, meaning “very much,” often appearing with the verb to hurt:
Friends can break your heart too man and that shit hurts like hell
— Funny Tweets™ (@Lmao) November 18, 2017
Using semicolons is like wearing stilettos; they make you feel sexy, but use them too much or when they don’t fit, and it hurts like hell.
— Charles Clymér🏳️🌈 (@cmclymer) November 22, 2017
At some point, I’ll harden and tell myself that I’m strong and unaffected. But for now, losing you still stings like hell.
— Suki (@skickwriter) November 20, 2017
…and there’s another use, explained by Merriam-Webster like this:
— used to say in an angry and forceful way that one will not do something, does not agree, etc. “It’s your fault!” “Like hell it is!”
“I hope to earn the respect of my fans”
You just admitted to having sexual relations with a minor???
Like hell you’re earning my respect.
Another band I’m done with.— Bekah (@BetweenYou_Eye) November 17, 2017
“I voted Remain, but…” Yeah right. Like hell you did, mate.
— AnniHawk (@AnniHawk) November 23, 2017
“Take that mask off!”
“Like hell I will. It took them six hours to spirit glue it to my face!”#svengoolie— Joe Blevins (@Joe_A_Blevins) November 19, 2017
(that why you need to buy me a drink I control the story here) Like hell you do you just comment on what I do. Oh here my blood weed. (Really you almost started to bash and beat ppl for that?) Hell ya. *start rolling a cig*
— Loki the God of war (@ThothLoki) November 15, 2017
to fold: to give in, to give up, to surrender.
Evangelicals have shown their true colours. They preach and preach and when time came for them to stand by that preaching, they folded. https://t.co/kaA2dIsoik
— BTMactual (@BTMactual) November 14, 2017
MAN YALL I BEEN VEGETARIAN FOR DAMN NEAR 23 WHOLE DAYS BUT MAN MY MOMMA MADE THIS BOMB ASS TURKEY AND THIS SHIT NOT DRY AT ALL I FOLDED MAN FUCK IT SREMMLIFE LMAOOOOOO
— ISSYURNFUMINIFISSPLANYAT (@GODDUDEFLESSIN) November 24, 2017
My mama used to think that it was only weed I rapped about
I capped a lot at first, but that didn’t last too long
No, that didn’t last two songs before I folded like futons
I’m on my croutons, I’m on my Groupons
Like shoutout, say money with no coupons
I brought the coupe out— GHOULIEMAN (@Itumeleng_Les) November 23, 2017
Lol i told myself not to go to my family’s dinner but of course i folded and here i am annoyed as fuck
— puma (@pottiiemouthgod) November 23, 2017
How I used it in the post: I fought like hell the introduction of wikis into the daily working life of our lab. Eventually, I folded, and it did not go without notice.
to bust out: to suddenly begin doing something–intensely, I think. You might bust out laughing, for examply–suddenly you start laughing, hard. This feels pretty informal, limite slang, because of the word bust, which is a low-register word (versus the word to break, which would be a more appropriate choice at work, in a classroom, etc.).
One time I️ was reading to my momma and I️ pronounced “as” as “ass” and she busted out laughing. One of my fave childhood memories
— James Crockett △⃒⃘ (@thedaileyjam) November 7, 2017
I’m 100% certain just looked this girl dead in the camera as she was taking a picture of me…and she busted out laughing…
— Turner Lay (@turner_layyy) October 31, 2017
My brother was singing to Ariel while I was outside and she busted out crying lmao
— rad cat 🥑 (@Satanzmainbitch) October 26, 2017
You kill me. I busted out laughing in class. You’re ruining my education.
— Michela Dell’Aquila (@MichelaAquila) November 23, 2017
How I used it in the post: Before noon I’ll have said something stupid enough to make the entire lab bust out laughing.
French notes
le mûrier : blackberry bush; mulberry tree
Zipf's Law 
Mistakes are good.
They correct any lurking tendency toward complacency and puncture our pretensions that we might be “getting there”.
I am now the street project. My grammar and pronunciation is sternly but humorously corrected every time I talk to my neighbours.
Talk about immersion!!! No English speakers here.
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I am torn between wanting to be a project, and wondering whether perhaps I already am one, but just haven’t figured that out.
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I bought mûrier in the market in Spring not knowing what I had bought. I asked him what they were and he said ‘mûriers’ but it was only when I got them home that I realized i had stumbled upon Mulberries. Which I last ate when my Granny was still living in her own home which would be about 50 years ago. I found them to be absolutely brilliant once I had worked out the preparation and cooking of them. A delectable delight as must be picking up an error and being able to correct it on a French website.
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I love buying stuff without realizing what it is. Last really good episode I can think of: a bag full of octopus tentacles in some kind of really greasy…substance. I love octopus, and that was not an issue–but, choking down that greasy stuff was quite a chore, and I couldn’t finish the bag.
What I realized only years later was that they were meant to go in something called oden, a Japanese winter dish of soup with various and sundry forms of fish paste floating around in it. It is an amazing “comfort food” (I wonder how you say that in French; I wonder if the term exists in British English), and had that greasy stuff been in a bowl of oden broth, it would have been greasy no more, but a delicious bit of octopus-stuffed yumminess.
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Dommage! I have had Oden and you are right – it is delicious. Mystery shopping is great fun though and mostly I like the results. In British English we certainly use the expression ‘comfort food’ …. it applies to pretty much everything we eat between September and May and sometimes all summer long because the weather just isn’t playing that year. Excellent examples would be bangers and mash with onion gravy, steak and kidney puddin’ (note omission of the ‘g’), cottage pie (or shepherds if it’s being made with lamb), fish pie, any sort of pie, in fact; hot puddings like jam roly poly, treacle tart and the fantastic array of steamed suet or sponge puddings, Yorkshire pudding – pretty much all puddings, in fact …. You get the picture – potatoes, puddings and pies …. comfort food the British way. I hope one of your readers will enlighten as to whether French DOES have a similar expression because if it does, I want to use it 😊
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Indeed, it’s an expression that I often fish for–unsuccessfully–in French.
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