BITS & PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE: WORDS,WORDS, WORDS

page from THE NEW CENTURY DICTIONARY

For words, like Nature, half reveal
And half conceal the soul within.    
                         Alfred Lord Tennyson
quoted in metaphors be with you by Mardy Grothe 
(New York: Harper, 2016)
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COMIC BOOK SLANG

Splash Panel -- " The first panel of a comic book story, larger (sometimes, or full page) than the other panels; it acts as a 'hook; or 'teaser' for the reader. Joe Schuster started the splash panel in the 1930's."

Ron Goulart, editor. The Encyclopedia of American Comics (New York: Facts on File, 1990)

Added information from T.Campbell, editor of WORDPLAY:

I looked into this, and the real creator of the splash panel is probably Will Eisner in 1940. While Siegel and Shuster did experiment with making their panels bigger, what makes a splash panel a splash panel is that it's bigger than the other panels on the same page--Siegel and Shuster's big panels were all the same size.

http://www.multiversitycomics.com/news-columns/ghosts-of-comics-past-july-in-comics-history-acmp-jailed/

A related term is "splash page," which is a single-panel illustration that takes up the entire page. 

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ABOUT CONDITE/ RECONDITE

Recondite - (adj)  Little known; abstruse.

"Remove the prefix “re-,” and you are left with the verb “condite,” which means “to pickle or preserve.” “Condite” is possibly a more recondite word than “recondite” itself."

Word Genius (July 11,2024)
https://www.wordgenius.com/words/recondite?utm_source=daily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2234646812
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NOT ALL WORDS LAST FOREVER

For a short period in American culture, telephones were humorously refrerred to as "Ameches," an allusion to the fact that Don Ameche played the role of the telephone's inventor in the 1939 movie -- The Alexander Graham Bell Story.
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FROM AUTHOR AND EDUCATOR DAVID GETZ

" I went back and checked, and tonto in Spanish means silly, or stupid, depending on context. So Spanish people hearing the Lone Ranger call his buddy Tonto was probably hearing this white guy call this Indian guy silly or stupid, depending on the context.  It's kind of funny if you just substitute "Silly," into the Lone Ranger's dialogue. It shifts the Lone Ranger into a gay guy in chaps."
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THE STING & STING II Movies

The meaning and relevance of a "Sting" is that it can be defined as a confidence trick, a scam, confidence game or a con. The use of the word sting to mean this is a metaphor based on the hurt or pain of a bee sting doubling for that of being a victim of a swindle."  iMDb trivia 

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SLANG FOR MARIJUANA
"Weed. Mary Jane. Chronic. There are dozens of slang synonyms for marijuana. But one of the strangest is the word pot. How did the word for a common kitchen instrument become slang for marijuana?
The origin of pot has nothing to do with the culinary tool. The word came into use in America in the late 1930s. It is a shortening of the Spanish potiguaya or potaguaya that came from potación de guaya, a wine or brandy in which marijuana buds have been steeped. It literally means “the drink of grief.”"

Dictionary Com. April 20, 2024
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/FMfcgzGxSlWQzPGZfSfLPZBXXsfwtLSH

THE FILM INDUSTRY & THE DESTRUCTION OF WORDS
"No industry did more to destroy the meaning of words. The follies are too familiar to need laboring here -- how the story of a couple of cowboys quaarreling over a girl became an epic, the tale of a small-time 'hoofer' a deathless saga. Colossal, terrific, stupendous  -- these words became the small change of film advertising. A reservation was put on a whole series of other adjectives like throbbing, rending, tingling, pulsating, pounding, sizzling, scorching, stark, elemental, volcanic, and searing. No story was ever taken from life  -- it was ripped or torn from the mighty canvas of humanity."

E.S. Turner. The Shocking History of Advertising! (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1953)
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In the Nick of Time

"During the 18th century, business owners would keep track of debts, interests, and loans on “tally sticks,” with notches carved on the wood. When you arrived to pay off your debt right before the next notch was carved, you had arrived 'in the nick of time.'"
https://www.wordgenius.com/outdated-phrases/Xr0yWBPAJQAG8w9c
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THE TEFLON ADJECTIVE

"I loved Teflon as an adjective; it gave us a Teflon president
(Ronald Reagan) and it gave us a Teflon Don (John Gotti) whose Tefflonness eventually wore out, making him an almost exact metaphorical duplicate of my Teflon pans."

Nora Ephron. "i Just Want to Say Teflon" in I Remember Nothing
and other reflections (New York:Alfred A. Knopf, 2010)

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WARNING

Please keep a safe distance
Between you & this poem.
Many careless readers
Have fallen victim
To the viciousness of words.
Words in lines 3 & 4
Have been known
To leap off the page
& bite readers in the face,
Causing great injuries
&, in some cases, numbness
To the beauty of great poetry.

Louis Phillips