I have to admit, olde-time “Cameleopard” was way cooler than “giraffe”.
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Bird Leaf is nice, but it immediately made me think Tree Feathers which is even nicer and rolls off the tongue like a little poem.
An old favorite of mine: Moose, aka Swamp donkey or ditch donkey.
The thing is, English kind of works that way too, but is somewhat obscured by our use of Greek and Latin words to make many of our compounds. A good example is the German Fernseher (television), While it sounds silly at first to think Germans are calling a television a “far seer”, that’s exactly what tele + vision literally means.
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As discussed on SGU
People Mover is the real name of the monorail in Detroit. 
@newliminted; The soda/pop regional divide strikes again. In Michigan, it’s called barley soda or hop pop.
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Then I guess in the south it would be “alcohol coke”.
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“Alchi-coke.” Almost sounds like a city in Florida. 
That’s awesome! Though perhaps a little disingenuous to give the Germans too hard a time over:
Ocean piglet: Should be Guiana piglet, but we lost the piglet and then confused South America with Africa (shades of current political buffoonery).
Spike pig: porc espin (spined pig)
Pig whale: porcopiscis (porcus pig + piscis fish; cf. classical porcus marīnus (“sea hog”)
Sea pig: (<cough> sea cow)
Lazy animal: Sloth
Bonus, Armadillo (Belt animal) just means “little armored one” in spanish, but in Nahuatl they were Turtle rabbit, which is brilliant.
“Wash bear” is my favorite, though.
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I don’t know if it’s meant to be literal, but “pigdog” has always been a favorite of mine.
early 20th century: from tele- ‘at a distance’ + vision.
In German, oxygen is known as Sauerstoff. Now you might imagine that this is an artifact of an old theory that Acids have something to do with oxygen–nitric acid, sulfuric acid, and so on. silly Germans!
But then, there’s oxygen
Its name derives from the Greek roots ὀξύς oxys, “acid”, literally “sharp”, referring to the sour taste of acids and -γενής -genes, “producer”, literally “begetter”, because at the time of naming, it was mistakenly thought that all acids required oxygen in their composition.
Oh. Never mind.
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Yup. They need water stuff.
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Eventually,presumably, to be pronounced Al kicker-key.
“Cereal Water”? Reminds me of this: Boy, Hipsters sure are defensive about their almond milk
The Superlingo post says it’s a reblog of a tastefullyoffensive post, which credits this Huffington Post story, which has more entries and credits the original sources.
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Calls to mind the time one of the cats brought in a MF-ING-HUGE dead rat. I wrapped it up in a supermarket meat tray, with a label in the supermarket’s Own-Brand No-Frills style describing it as a Drainpipe Rabbit, and arranged to conceal it in my brother-in-law’s freezer.
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Suppose you’re thinkin’ about a plate of tiny lobster…
Uncleftish Beholding, by Poul Anderson
In all other unclefts are found other motes as well, about as
heavy as the firstbit but with no lading, known as neitherbits.
We know a kind of waterstuff with one neitherbit in the kernel
along with the firstbit; another kind has two neitherbits. Both
kinds are seldom…
Some good ones in the comments from the original Imgur trigger:
- Muffins as bread mushrooms
- wrists as “hand ankles”
- jetski > boatercycle
- lasagna: called it pasta cake
- this one reminds me of something my wife would say: asked for a “fan for hair”…we refer to this as a hair dryer
- called chocolate sauce “ice cream gravy”
Here are are pics that an imgurian created off of some comments:
Imgurians’ Phrases For Things - Imgur
