Editor's Corner

Hello dear people,

I’m reading a book for our Knowledge Enablement business group book club (actually, I don’t know the real name). I do know the name of the book, though. It’s called Because Internet, by Gretchen McCulloch. Two chapters in and I love it. It is about the change in language, punctuation, emojis, linguistics, how different generations write and speak, and much more. So far, my favorite thing is this German phrase: “I will slap your ears with the cooking spoon, you monkey!”

Okay, there’s more in there besides that, but I’m telling you, the Germans have the best punishments and insults from what I can tell in the different translations I find.

Seriously, though, the following is actually one of the things McCulloch mentioned, and I thought I would check it out. It is the DARE Dictionary. DARE stands for the Dictionary of American Regional English. The link only gives you access to a short list of words, unless you want to pay $50, so we are exploring “on the cheap.”

The first term that caught my eye was pinkle-tink. I thought maybe it was an adjective, like, “That shirt is a lovely pinkle-tink green.” But no, pinkle-tink is a thing. The definition still did not tell me what it is. Pinkle-tink, a word used in the Martha’s Vinyard, Nantucket, Massachusetts area, is defined as:

pinkle-tink (noun)

also pinkwink, tinky

a spring peeper

What the heck? A spring peeper? A pervert looking through the window in the springtime is a pinkle-tink, a pinkwink, or a tinky? That sounds like the folks in the Martha’s Vinyard area think voyeurs are cute. No, that couldn’t be what a pinkle-tink is.

I read further and saw “a peeper, a tiny tree frog.” Well, that’s more like it! I don’t think there’s much of a chance I’ll ever be rich enough to hang out in Martha’s Vinyard, so they won’t have to worry about me calling 911 for a tinky sighting.

Spring peeper

Tom the peeper

Kara Church | Technical Editor, Advisory | Technical Publications

Pronouns: she/her | Call via Teams | jackhenry.com

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