Well, well, well...

… I love learning new words, but I never thought I’d learn one while watching the live Yahoo UK text feed for the Tour de France. We’ve been riveted. The Tour is at a critical stage where there are four contenders, one of them, gasp, French. But he’s a gurner. He grimaces on the mountain stages, apparently more than others on this grueling 3-week hellride. Well worth a gurn or two if you ask me.

Gurning is a time-honored tradition, celebrated by competition in the oldest fair held in the United Kingdom dating back to the reign Henry III in the thirteenth century. It means making faces. Gurners often disfigure themselves by, say, having all their teeth removed, the better to swallow their noses.

Really. See. Here.