Nathan Sanders writes on Facebook to display the nameplate for his new position at Haverford College:
There are few people in LINGUISTICS who have not been afflicted by the spelling LINQUISTICS, or else LINGUSITICS. But it is a little-known fact that these are actual names of academic disciplines quite distinct from linguistics.
LINQUISTICS. A cross-over area combining cultural studies and computer science, linquistics is the study of linques. A linque is an affected, pseudo-French computer link (also known by the vernacular name Miss Piggy link): “Just click on moi!”
LINGUSITICS. Long a controversial academic area, lingusitics examines linguses, that is, penises, in their every aspect (lingus ‘penis’, an Indo-Greek portmanteau, lingam + phallus). There is some dispute within the field as to whether it should be viewed as a hard experimental science or as a field of interpretive humanistic scholarship.
Etymologists are unsure about the relationship between this noun lingus and the non-technical noun dingus. From NOAD2:
N. Amer. & S. African informal used to refer to something whose name the speaker cannot remember, is unsure of, or is humorously or euphemistically omitting: here’s a doohickey — and there’s the dingus. ORIGIN late 19th cent.: via Afrikaans from Dutch ding ‘thing.’
There’s a close phonetic relationship here, and also the possibility of a semantic relationship, given the use of dingus as a phallic euphemism, an avoidance term for dick or dong, as in
I rammed my dingus into his doo-hickey.
lingusitics-2. There is, in fact, an entirely separate academic area known as lingusitics (this sort of multiple use of a discipline name is not uncommon; consider the many fields of study labeled morphology, in linguistics, biology, astronomy, and geology). This lingusitics is a branch of engineering devoted to the study of linguses, where a lingus is a fleet (of ships or planes), as in the name of the Irish airline Aer Lingus ‘air fleet’.
There’s a breakaway group of lingusiticians who view the field as a branch of social science or ethology, studying the behavior of ships and planes in groups.
