Thursday, June 2, 2011

intestable \in-TES-tuh-buhl\, adjective:

• Not legally qualified to make a will, as an infant or a lunatic.

Intestable shares the same root as testify, the Latin testā, "to bear witness."

MBAese

• The indecipherable language taught in MBA factories where the user has mastered the art of using large, multisyllabic words to make meaningless, intelligent sounding action statements.

The presenter stated in MBAese, "We are aggressively leveraging existing assets to affect a paradigm shift interdepartmental synergy."

quoted translation: We got a loan to buy a new phone, and then called Steve from HR.

Trivia

Which is the only dog breed named after a fictional character?

• The Dandie Dinmont Terrier. It was named for a farmer who owned six of the hunting terriers in Sir Walter Scott’s 1814 novel Guy Mannering.

History

• Grover Cleveland: married Frances Folsom, becoming the first (and, so far, only) president to be married in the White House (1886)
• Native Americans: were granted US citizenship (1924)
• Lou Gehrig: Yankee slugger died of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, a rare degenerative disease that now carries his name (1941)
• Queen Elizabeth II: coronation of the long-reigning monarch was held in Westminster Abbey; she wore a gown embroidered with floral emblems of the countries of the Commonwealth (1953)

Birthdays

• Martha Washington (1731-1802): America's first First Lady; First Lady Helen Taft (1861-1943) shared this date
• Thomas Hardy (1840-1928): the novelist who wrote Tess of the D'Urbervilles; plus, writers Marquis de Sade (1740-1814), John Lehmann (1907-1987?) and Barbara Pym (1913-1980)
• Johnny Weissmuller (1904-1984): swimmer who switched strokes and became an actor, Tarzan the Ape Man
• Marvin Hamlisch (67): composer of A Chorus Line; and, musicians Edward Elgar (1857-1934), Charlie Watts (70) and Merril Bainbridge (43)
• Kyle Petty (51): racecar driver
• Wentworth Miller (39): Michael Scofield on Fox's Prison Break; also, actors Sally Kellerman (74), Stacy Keach (70), Dennis Haysbert (57), Dana Carvey (56), Wayne Brady (39), Zachary Quinto (34), and Dominic Cooper, Nikki Cox and Justin Long (all 33)

Read more: http://www.answers.com/