On the day they were handing out brevity...

Big Ten Wonk Word Of The Day for Thursday, November 17:

two-graf

Well, folks, this is a first...I was unable to find the answer to a question on the internet.

I hope you were sitting down for that.

I gather the above term is used to convey a sense of brevity. It's commonly used as an adjective -- among the links I found -- but Wonk used it as a noun, or at least one of those other-type-of-word-used-as-noun things. Furthermore, Wonk preceded the word with "money," used as an adjective. Sort of a linguistic cross-up (which was a sweet play in Madden '92 when you had a fast third wideout, or just decided to put your halfback in the slot by running the shotgun with your normal offensive package on the field...although technically it was a pick play and should have been illegal...but then again, this was the game in which you could review and overturn pass interference penalties).

However, I could not find one reference that explained the true meaning of the term or its origin. I was going to ask this guy -- because (1) he's a journalist, and (2) he used the term last month in a way that implied he once learned its origin -- but his latest post mentioned how he is currently too busy to respond to e-mail. See, sometimes when a person writes stuff like that, a reader notices and decides not to send him mail he won't read! Kind of like how neurochemicals work.

From what I can tell, "two-graf" comes from print media; from a grid-like arrangement of content; and from the need to fill a small area that remains after the more important content has been arranged. And so far, it's my leading candidate, among Wonk Words Of The Day, for the Underutilized Inigo Montoya Quote Award ("I do not think it means what you think it means").

Of course, Faulkner once criticized Hemingway for hardly ever using a word that required the reader to look it up in the dictionary to see if it had been used correctly. Yes, I happen to know just about everything that is not the answer to a Trivial Pursuit question. [I knew you were wondering. See?]