Three penultimate comments

Comments on my posting on penultimate (in penultimate Frisbee) took three directions: a comic association with antepenultimate; complaints about a relatively recent non-standard use of penultimate (to mean ‘absolutely final, absolutely the best’); and complaints about using ultimate and unique and other so-called “non-gradable” adjectives as gradables (modifiable by degree adverbials).

On the zeugma watch

A BBC News summer fluff piece coordinating a literal and a figurative sense of transitive drop (in the passive):

The southern Californian city of Laguna Niguel has been enjoying an annual ritual, in which locals and visitors bare their bottoms at passing trains.

For 30 years, the city has hosted “Mooning Amtrak” as crowds line up along the railway tracks, dropping their trousers when a train passes by. [there is a photo]

… The event even has its own website, this year proudly headed “31st Annual Mooning of Amtrak”…

It features directions to Camino Capistrano, the road where trousers and dignity are dropped each year, and helpfully lists train times through the day, so that people can schedule their disrobing.

Hey, boy! Drop your dignity and show us what you’ve got!

(Hat tip to Chris Ambidge on soc.motss.)