Behold, my angry bearded foreign tongue!

Welcome to Lingo Bizarro, a place for silliness, etymology, cartooning, crosswords, palindromes, made-up words, poetry, secret codes, puns, definitions, jargon, postcards, buzzwords, scat-singing, children's books and anything else I can think of that fits under the giant umbrellas of "WORDS" and "NONSENSE."

Why Lingo Bizarro?
Because a million other people took "Wordplayground" first. Because I am pretty sure a lot of people might think my opinions on language belong in Bizarro World. Because Lingo is a riveting game show. Because tagging those Os at the end just makes it sound more exotic.

Or, here is some handy information that I copy-pasted from the Online Etymology Dictionary.

Lingo
"foreign speech," 1660, possibly a corrupt form of lingua franca (q.v.), or from Prov. lingo "language, tongue," from O.Prov. lenga, from L. lingua "tongue" (see lingual)

Bizarre
1640s, from Fr. bizarre "odd, fantastic" (16c.), originally "handsome, brave," perhaps from Basque bizar "a beard" (the notion being of bearded Spanish soldiers making a strange impression on the French); alternative etymology traces it to It. bizarro "angry, fierce, irascible," from bizza "fit of anger."

What conclusions can we draw from this? Perhaps nothing.
Instead, here's a highlight from Edward Lear's 1871 Nonsense Botany: a lovely piece titled "Manypeeplia Upsidedownia."



You keep on tellin' it like it is, Mr. Lear.