Mieux vaut dormir debout que courir couché.
Better to sleep standing up than to run lying down. This expression is attributed to someone named Ruppert (with two "p's") Barnes. Pompon (this blog's mascot pictured above) and I have searched high and low online and cannot for the lives of us find out anymore about the enigmatic Ruppert Barnes than what is available on a dated and quirky Website which would indicate that Barnes is perhaps the self-proclaimed and latent master of "gromologie."
Gromologie, a play on words, is a mot-valise or portmanteau; a fusion of gros and mot to create a neologism or newly coined word.
Vocabulary
gros(-se): big, large
un gros mot: a swear word
un portemanteau: a coat rack or coat tree; as distinguished from a "portmanteau," a term first used by Lewis Carroll in Through the Looking Glass (1871) explaining the combination of words to form a new one, "two meanings packed up into one word" (N.B., at that time the French derivation "portmanteau" meant "suitcase" in English)
un mot-valise: literally a "suitcase word," a reverse translation from the English portmanteau
endormi(-e), ensommeillé(-e): sleepy
©2012 P.B. Lecron
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