Sunday, January 10, 2010

Palaver

The word of the year ("tweet") and word of the decade ("google") have been named. But my favorite is the Most Creative word of the year:
the winner by a big margin was Dracula sneeze, defined as "covering one's mouth with the crook of one's elbow when sneezing, seen as similar to popular portrayals of the vampire Dracula, in which he hides the lower half of his face with a cape."
The purpose of this, as I understand it, is to keep sneeze germs off one's hands, and subsequently, everything those hands touch. But it seems as if one would have an opportunity to wash the hands much more quickly than the elbows...

Also, having consumed Dracula earlier this year, I don't recall his ever actually making that motion. Perhaps he would have been hiding his fangs, but his piercing, menacing eyes (see below) were always enough to tip people off to his identity anyway.

4 comments:

Chick in the Czech said...

Nice pics! And that is funny about the words of the year.

Well-Sugared woman said...

Perhaps the problem is this: when you opened up your mouth to consume Dracula, he had no time to make such a move. Bad joke, right?

I actually sneeze that way as a result of an article in the good ol' Truman Index. Who knows how much it actually helps? Should we be coughing that way, too?

Danielle said...

Actually, that is the sneeze they teach at Mizzou's med school. I believe the idea behind it is that you will sneeze into your sleeve instead of your hands. Where germs will die within seconds on the fabric of your sleeve but can live for hours on direct skin. Now you know :-)

Kathy said...

Danielle, that sounds so funny--"that is the sneeze they teach at Mizzou's med school"! I used to teach first grade a long time ago and I taught the sneeze-in-your-hand-technique, rather than sneeze on your classmates and teacher!