Lexical Compendium
Wait... what is this? Sometimes I come across a word, phrase, idiom, quote, reference, bit of slang, person of interest, etc that either I don't know or I find amusing, interesting, etc. This is a collection of those items so that I can refer back to them in emails, texts, etc.
Recent Entries:
- 17 Jul 2025: Streisand Effect
- 13 Jul 2025: borked
- 08 Jul 2025: Engels' Pause
"...an effective plot must be 'unexpected but inevitable'..."
I came across this quote in the television series Mythic Quest. In that show, it was attributed to Aristotle, but I haven't been able to confirm this.
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Date Added: Unknown
Date Modified: 08 Jul 2025
Shoe Leather
"Shoe Leather" is a bit of television/movie jargon that refers to all of the boring/procedural parts of an exchange that often get eliminated from a script.
For example, you often don't see actors answering the phone with "hello" or even saying "good-bye" before hanging up. These little exchanges don't do much to move the plot forward.
(Note: there are other definitions of this term as well to refer to an "old fashioned" process, especially in police or detective work)
The origin of the phrase seems to refer to the sound of someone walking, i.e. the sound of their shoe's leather soles hitting the ground.
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Date Added: 09 Jul 2024