Boathouses and Houseboats
Boathouses and Houseboats
[A chart with three rows and three columns is shown, both with the same heading "car", "house", and "boat". On the top left a text with the word "this" two times embedded in a bubble and an arrow respectively pointing to the row and column heading reads:] A this that holds this
[Most entries have the common word in black, but crossed out in red with another word below also in red. Two entries remain in green.] A Car that holds a Car: Tow truck Carcar A House that holds a Car: Garage Carhouse A Boat that holds a Car: Car ferry Carboat A Car that holds a House: Mobile home Housecar A House that holds a House: Apartment Househouse A Boat that holds a House: Houseboat (green text) A Car that holds a Boat: Boat trailer Boatcar A House that holds a Boat: Boathouse (green text) A Boat that holds a Boat: Lifeboat Boatboat
[Caption below the frame:] I really like the words for "boathouse" and "houseboat" and think we should apply that scheme more consistently.
The first version of the comic image used a different wording to indicate which word held the other. The column word holds the row. The original wording can be seen here .

Most English compound nouns can be constructed recursively. In many cases they are written open or spaced like "piano player" (a player of a piano.) But closed forms like "wallpaper" (paper for a wall) are not less common.
Randall is engaging in creative linguistics again. This time he is humorously suggesting to use a consistent naming scheme for things holding other things, the same way we call a boat holding a house a houseboat. He is extending this to all combinations boats, houses and cars. This would, however, be somewhat impractical, as these names do not include why one thing is on an other, and are also sometimes ambiguous: a carcar can be a tow truck as much as a car carrier, and a househouse can be either an apartment (house in a house) or an apartment building (house containing houses).
Additionally, he is somewhat inconsistent in some parts of the chart. While the chart is supposed to show examples of neologistic compound words <x><y> that refer to a <y> that holds an <x>, rather than a <y> in an <x>. However, Randall's examples sometimes are those of the latter example. He proposes to call lifeboats, which are boats held by other boats, "boatboat", instead of using that to refer to boats holding other boats, such as floating drydocks. Additionally, it is established naval practice to refer to a boat which is carried by another vessel as a "ship's boat", and call any vessel that carries a boat a "ship". In other words, according to usual naval terminology, a "boatboat" is a contradiction in terms; it is either a "boatship", synonymous with ship and hence redundant, or a "shipboat", the ship's boat. "Apartment" is a similar case: an apartment is a house in a house, while a house that holds a house is an apartment building or apartment complex. (However, in the title text, Randall points out an <x><y> could also refer to a <y> in an <x>, similar to the lifeboat and apartment examples. Nevertheless, "lifeboat" and "apartment" do not fit with the rest of the items of the chart and disobey the rule annotated in the corner.)
In the title text: "Truck food" is in some areas a common term for the meals offered by " food trucks" . Car phones were a feature in automobiles throughout the late 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, serving as the predecessors to mobile phones, although they were permanently installed into a car and not removable. Bananaphone , a song by Raffi Cavoukian, is also mentioned.
[A chart with three rows and three columns is shown, both with the same heading "car", "house", and "boat". On the top left a text with the word "this" two times embedded in a bubble and an arrow respectively pointing to the row and column heading reads:] A this that holds this
[Most entries have the common word in black, but crossed out in red with another word below also in red. Two entries remain in green.] A Car that holds a Car: Tow truck Carcar A House that holds a Car: Garage Carhouse A Boat that holds a Car: Car ferry Carboat A Car that holds a House: Mobile home Housecar A House that holds a House: Apartment Househouse A Boat that holds a House: Houseboat (green text) A Car that holds a Boat: Boat trailer Boatcar A House that holds a Boat: Boathouse (green text) A Boat that holds a Boat: Lifeboat Boatboat
[Caption below the frame:] I really like the words for "boathouse" and "houseboat" and think we should apply that scheme more consistently.
The first version of the comic image used a different wording to indicate which word held the other. The column word holds the row. The original wording can be seen here .
