View from the North 40: Spoiler alert: It's more gross than funny

Fatberg, it’s like an iceberg, but made of fat. It’s a thing. You can look it up.

In fact, you can look up the word definition in a 28-volume Oxford English Dictionary — which is arguably the premier authority on words in the English language — so if the OED says it’s a thing, it’s a thing.

Fatberg is, in fact, a very big thing, hence its blending of the words fat and iceberg. The term for the blended words — like smog, Brexit and jakalope — is portmanteau, in case you wanted to know. The portmanteau, fatberg, rose to popularity among sewer managers in London in the early...