Gary Larson entertained us with his surreal sense of humor in the newspaper comic
The Far Side
from 1980 to 1995. Although the last comic ran over twenty years ago,
Larson's loony ideas have become part of the real world in many ways.
The Far Side gave us useful new English words, like Anatidaephobia and Thagomizer.
Stegosaurus
is world-famous for its lime-sized brain and the quartet of
nasty-looking spikes on its tail. A 1982 "Far Side" strip decided to
have a little fun with the latter attribute. In that cartoon, we find an
early human anachronistically lecturing his fellow cavemen about
dinosaur-related hazards. Pointing at the rear end of a Stegosaurus
diagram, he says “Now this end is called the thagomizer … after the late
Thag Simmons.” Without meaning to, Larson’s strip plugged a gap in the
scientific lexicon. Previously, nobody had ever given a name to the
unique arrangement of tail spikes found on Stegosaurus and its
relatives. But today, many paleontologists use the word “thagomizer”
when describing this apparatus, even in scientific journals.
Read more
wonderful stories about The Far Side at mental_floss.
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