not that, uh, i've ever done this

[rone]

Billy O'Connell, Kristin Hersh's husband and manager, has coined the following term:

IMbush v. to interrupt or virtually 'jump' someone when you spy their IM status change to 'available'

Comments

[thedarkages]

In Pidgin, this has been known for years as a "buddy pounce."

[sunburn.livejournal.com]

I've been reading Undaunted Courage by Stephen Ambrose, about Thomas Jefferson and Meriweather Lewis, and the Lewis & Clark expedition. Lewis at one point concerns himself about an "ambuscade" from the Sioux, and while it's apparent the word means "ambush," I checked the etymology.

The word began as "embuscher," meaning "[hiding or merely to be] in the bush." This is one of the ways french makes idioms-- creating a verb by describing the circumstances of the action that suggest the action. E.g. they have "enculer," which is a verb that could be translated as "to in-the-ass." Precisely what action can be performed in the ass is left as an exercise to the reader.

Anyway, embuscher, which became Italian imboscata. The french then borrowed their own word back from Italian to get embuscade, and the anglos made it ambuscade, which was an acceptable variant of ambush.

Fortunately, the word for bush survived all that romantic nonsense, but ambush carries the baggage, so it's practically a coincidence that ambush involves bushes, and only when it does.

This is the legacy on which IMbush was founded.

[mezdeathhead.livejournal.com]

I am absolutely glad I read all of that. thanks for typing that out. Language can be pretty hillarious.

[racerxmachina.livejournal.com]

I recently had someone do this to me on Facebook. "Facebush" has a connotation I'd rather not think about.