Judge — March 16, 1929 — page 18: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This is a linguistic humor piece by Dr. Theophrastus Seuss (Dr. Seuss) critiquing the misuse of old English words. Three cartoons illustrate outdated terms whose meanings have drifted: 1. **"Frazzle"**: Shows a man being interrogated about the term, satirizing how it's now used casually when it originally referred to something more specific. 2. **"Agog"**: Depicts someone climbing a tall figure, illustrating the word's current misapplication. The text references Lindbergh landing in Paris and uses of "agog" that strain the original meaning. 3. **"Befuddled"**: Shows physical comedy with a top hat, explaining how the term once meant being hit on the nose in a specific game, now misused to mean simple confusion. The satire targets how colloquial speech has corrupted precise Victorian-era terminology. Seuss's characteristic whimsical drawings accompany this prescriptivist language commentary.