I don't have Michael Drout's blog bookmarked in Firefox (which decided to have a toddler's meltdown and kept crashing today - what the hell, Firefox?), so I googled "wormtalk and slugspeak" to find it. Google asked "Did you mean 'wormtalk and slayspeak'?" Which is an interesting thing for it to ask, since such a search shows no results, not even with quotation marks removed. And "slayspeak"? Not a word.

Not that I should be doing anything other than thesis right now...

I've spent a ridiculously long time pondering the question of clinch vs. clench. It all started when I came across "clinched teeth" in a piece I'm copyediting. It's probably a typo, because e and i are easy letters to mix up while typing, being in mirroring positions on the keyboard. And it's a mix up that apparently a lot of people make, at least according to Google on the matter. LanguageLog doesn't seem to have anything on the question. So off to the OED online I go. It seems that "clinch" has many meanings, including "a limp, as by a man lame of one leg" and the corresponding verb form. Also, several of the word's definitions are obsolete, most notably "to close tightly." (There's also a word (now obsolete), "clinchpoop" - or "clenchpoop" - meaning "[a] term of contempt for one considered wanting in gentlemanly breeding."

Anyway, the verdict, after such meanderings, is that it is a typo. There will be no clinching of teeth on my watch.

And this is how I manage to squeeze a substantial portion of the ten hours of Scribendi work I'm supposed to be doing this week out of the four pieces that I have to edit.