Today, while reading an entertaining piece by St. Olaf professor Gordon Marino on the author David Mamet's fondness for Brazilian jiu-jitsu, I was surprised to find the word transmogrify slipped into a piece of otherwise stolid prose. I, of course, immediately connected this word to Calvin and Hobbes and pegged it for a sly tribute. Not so, according the the Online Etymological Dictionary, for transmogrify dates back to 1656. Go figure.
2 comments:
If "transmogrify" dates back to the 17th century, it's of course only because Calvin used his transmogrifier as a time machine and left a temporal implant back there.
Haha, excellent point.
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