Grin and Ferret

Researchers have ferreted out a link between Vicks VapoRub and high mucus production.

Researchers are attempting to ferret out a swine flu vaccine.

Stoat's Vocab

Schott sez:

Co-vocabularists anxious to differentiate between weasels and stoats should not be confused: they are weasily recognizable being so stotally different.

Always glad to see stoats in the news but as visceral appeal goes I think "stotally" is awfully drab compared with "stoatally." Why the difference? I would tentatively attribute it to that old remark of Fowler's:

Another suffix that is not a living one, but is sometimes treated as if it was, is al; & it will serve to illustrate a special point. Among recent regrettable formations are coastal, creedal... Now, if al were to be regarded as a living suffix, it would be
legitimate to say that coast and creed are now English words, & could have the suffix attached straight to them; but if it is tried with analogous English words, the resulting adjectives shoral, hillal, beliefal, and trustal show that it is not so [...] the other requirement -- that if both elements are Latin, they should be properly put together; coastalis and creedalis are disqualified at sight for the Latin because of the -oa- and -ee-; costal & credal would have been free from that objection at least.

We have been desensitized to coastal, of course, but I would say that creedal still seems viscerally half-bred and feral to me, and so, of course, does stoatal, which makes it peculiarly apt being stoatlike.

StoatCounter

I don't think one can rename the statcounter widget appropriately. On the other hand there are other free widgets out there.

PS my air conditioner's thermostoat is dood.

Stoats from the Underground I

(Thanks to ADL for the title.)

"I don't think it's too much to ask Niall Ferguson to, for God's sake, stop digging."

Stoatomayor Confirmed

Sonia Stoatomayor weaseled her way through the Senate confirmation process.