Time Sink

Courtesy of The Week magazine, which was courtesy of my father, who loved keeping me in reading materials, I share with you these websites.

Language lovers, beware: you may find entire days missing from your life.

First is www.urbandictionary.com: a compendium of hip-speak. If someone in your household has used a term with which you're unfamiliar, look it up here. I recently looked up "jones," a term that I have understood in a general way to mean "craving," as in, "I'm jonesing for Nanaimo bars, so let's go by M&M's to pick up some." What I didn't know was that "jones" originally referred to heroin.

If U R a Noob to acronyms and slang, see www.noslang.com. It has separate tabs for British Slang and Drug Slang. You can take quizzes!! It's also a translator: type in the mystifying combination of letters and receive enlightenment.

Those who feel so "out of it" should check www.onlineslangdictionary.com for reassurance. One of its best features is a map that shows who uses a term and where that person lives. So if you don't use the term "snoogy" for "hoodie" (hooded sweatshirt), take heart: it's really just one guy in Massachusetts.

These sites may or may not be useful for translating between American and Canadian. The urban dictionary does list "toque," or as we called it in Oklahoma, "stocking cap." However, you have to know how to spell it--it's pronounced "too-k," not to be confused with "took," like "I took your stocking cap." It's also not how you spell "toke." Not that I know that, like, personally or anything.

Enjoy!