A miscellany of links quirky & curious that's updated
as regularly as making a living elsewhere allows
That awful F-word: where did it come from?
November 10, 2008: The history of the awesomely powerful "F-Bomb" continues to mystify lexicographers, says Time. First printed in 1503, it pre-dates the printing press and has been traced to a number of origins: Middle Dutch, Germanic, English, Scottish and even Latin.
The magic – and danger – of certain words
October 22, 2008: Many people think that uttering a spell, incantation, curse, or prayer can change the world, writes linguist Steven Pinker in The Atlantic, in an essay peppered with the words he's writing about. Heavens! Be warned!
37 words for snow but avoid mingqutnguaq
October 19, 2008: The number of Eskimo words for snow has long been a point of debate, writes Stephen Chittenden at the BBC. Hmmm. I notice he uses Eskimo, not Inuit . . . PC days may be over at the Beeb.
Can 'That's so gay' ever be stopped?
October 18, 2008: A gay advocacy group (ThinkBeforeYouSpeak) is hoping their humorous videos will stop people saying ''That's so gay'' when they think that something is stupid or worth ridicule. It's not that simple. Take a look at a brief history of gay that I wrote about 1995.
Literally pummelling a point home
October 12, 2008: When a CNN reporter said the media had "literally pummeled Sarah Palin," Richard Creed's ears perked up. Why hadn't Palin called the police? Sticklers would insist that the word needed was figuratively, not literally, Creed wrote in the Winston-Salem Journal.
Dictionary to translate web-wise teenagers' jargon
October 12, 2008: A dictionary that will help unlock the jargon used by Generation Y and Z children is about to hit book shops, writes Eleni Hale at couriermail.com.au and may provide a communication lifeline to parents, who may be called "rents" by their teenagers ("bluds").
Book review: Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue
October 11, 2008: How best to enjoy a book written by a linguist on the bastard origins of a language? Just read it, writes Heloise at BlogCritics. According to the author, she says, it’s about the linguistically incorrect and letting the speaker speak and the writer write. Hmmm. Cryptic - but interesting also.
Press sacks staff at Canuck-written dictionary
October 7, 2008: THE small team that put the Canuck into the Canadian Oxford Dictionary, along with thousands of other Canadianisms, has been sacked, writes Les Perreaux in the Globe and Mail, in a cost-cutting measure after sales plummeted in the face of free online dictionaries.
The evolution of naughty – er, nautical – slang
October 2, 2008: THERE is a location on every seafaring vessel dubbed the “poop deck,” writes Sam Allard in North by Northwestern. Sam says he encountered the term while stumbling through Mutiny on the Bounty in seventh grade and imagined, quite vividly, an open area composed entirely of human faeces. Thankfully he was wrong.
When spell-check can’t help: A quiz
September 25, 2008: Even in the rush to publish, writers and editors at The New York Times strive for polish and precision in their prose, and sometimes they succeed, writes Philip B. Corbett, who invites you to take a wee quiz about the latest lapses. Would YOU pick them up?
Don't hold back, Michael: Power to the people
September 23, 2008: Philip Howard’s snobbish and Luddite reaction to the launch of the "people's" dictionary wordia.com is typical of those wordsmiths who say English should be controlled by a small number of experts, writes Michael Birch. And it all happens in The Times (UK).
Your chance to rescue outdated words
September 22, 2008: Collins dictionary has given the public the chance to save some of the English language's more obscure and antiquated words such as fusby, vilipend and embrangle, says The Telegraph (UK).
The Last Word: Word Wonk
September 19, 2008: Susan Wilson and husband got into an intense conversation on subject verb agreement (as you do) and she wondered in The Martha's Vineyard Times what anyone sitting nearby would think of a seemingly normal middle-aged couple having such a discussion.
Phwoar, look at that stud muffin, says Oxford
September 18, 2008: The word phwoar - an "expression of enthusiastic or lubricious approval" - has gained official entry to the English language in the pages of the latest Oxford English Dictionary of Modern Slang, writes Jon Swaine in the Telegraph (UK).
OK smartypants, try this English test
September 15, 2008: So many of us adults whinge about the dreadful English language skills of so many younger people that we should be able to demonstrate our own prowess. So go ahead - try this online test at The Times (UK). It's aimed at 16-year-olds.
Optimistic attempt at a teen jargon buster
September 12, 2008: The organisers of Got A Teenager have built a "teen-speak jargon buster". Interesting? Yes. Useful? Maybe, but by the time a term gets listed the kids are likely to have dropped it.
Quick! Grab this slanguage before it dies
September 4, 2008: If "guyatus" or "brodeo" sound foreign to you, you might be a "Priustoric" and your vocabulary is stuck in time — as in the days before the Prius went on the market, writes Corilyn Shropshire in the Houston Chronicle.
Grammar isn't everything
September 4, 2008: Copy editor John McIntyre gives an example of a completely grammatical sentence that makes hardly any sense at first reading. Clarity, he says in his Baltimore Sun blog, requires a lot more than just good grammar.
Hope yet for the greengrocer's apostrophe
September 3, 2008: If you're like me and cringe at execrable grammar in public places, take heart: the UK supermarket chain Tesco has listened to pedants - err, critics - and fixed its "10 items or less" signs, says the Daily Mail. What a pity it introduced a new error.
Feminists: get used to ‘biden’ your tongues
August 28, 2008: "Some day I am going to publish my own dictionary," writes Pat LaMarche in the Bangor Daily News. "It’s going to have words that real people use and the real meaning of words that folks often misuse." Oh, and a whole new word. Origin? Senator Joe Biden.
Razor-blading every last man in the book
August 27, 2008: The 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary has spent the past two decades revising its entry for man, now at 34,000 words, writes Christopher Howse in the Telegraph. No mannish aspect has been left unturned: axe-man, porkman, jazzman, beadsman, woodsman.
Ahh McCain, you've done it again
August 27, 2008: Who can blame John McCain for trying to broaden his appeal to Obama-aged voters by touting the endorsement of reggaeton star Daddy Yankee, asks Stephen Lemons at the Phoenix New Times. Who indeed, given the hidden message in Yankee's song Gasolina.
Bare or bear, or the story of berserk
August 21, 2008: Everybody must have heard the phrase to go berserk, writes Anatoly Liberman in his OUP Blog, but not everybody is aware of how little is known about berserks and how obscure the word berserk is.
Travels in etymology: nonplussed by nonplussed
August 20, 2008: "The word nonplussed does not mean unfazed," writes Meghan Daum in the North Jersey Record. "I know just about everyone uses it that way, but I really wish they'd stop." Me too, even though Daum finds a linguist who cares rather less.
Sex and the semicolon
August 20, 2008: Kurt Vonnegut, writes Jan Freeman in Boston.com, called semicolons "transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing". Real men, goes the unwritten rule of American punctuation, don't use semicolons. Maybe they should.
Software brings power to the 'postrophe
August 20, 2008: Forget spell checkers and style checkers: Silicon Valley has come up with "Apostrophree", a program that automatically corrects grammar errors in blog posts and comments. At last, publishers can get rid of us pesky editors. Or maybe not . . .
Literary journal has the last word
August 19, 2008: Nuclear non-proliferation was the catalyst, sort of, for the founding of the litmag Zyzzyva, writes Randi Lynn Beach in the LA Times.
Lexicographer a harmless but scruffy drudge
August 18, 2008: Luckily for those of us interesed in words, beauty is not an essential quality. Especially for Sam Johnson, writes James Fergusson in a The Sunday Times book review, because he looked grotesque and behaved badly.
Never mind the N-word – try the R-word
August 15, 2008: The flippant use of "retarded" in the movie Tropic Thunder is fine because it's a joke. It's satire, man. Or is it? asks Rex W. Huppke in the Chicago Tribune. "No," says a disabilities group in Daytona Beach as it calls for a ban on the movie
Build your own lists of neologisms
August 14, 2008: Newspapers love new and updated dictionaries, for good reason: they can raid them to build lists of new words. Check reports by the Scotsman, the Daily Mail and the Guardian on the latest Chambers Dictionary
ITV cleared over 'pikey' comment
August 13, 2008: Here in Australia we talk of piker, meaning one who reneges on a deal but in the UK pikey is slang for "gypsy", the origin seeming to be "turnpike traveller". It is now a non-PC term, as the TV channel ITV discovered. The BBC looks at both the row and the word.
Here's to truthful discourse
August 11, 2008: The next time someone tells you to get your ducks in a row, going forward, or how to inform the discussion, Laura Rosen Cohen writes in the Globe and Mail, take a deep breath, take a bold step forward and demand clarity. You could be surprised at the result.
English-speakers abroad: Speaking in tongues
August 11, 2008: Will English-speakers ever manage anything other than "Dos cervezas, por favor"? Michael Church in The Independent explores the world of Russian verbs, French phrases and Spanish grammar – and says we don't know what we're missing
Avoid cliché like the plague? Never
August 10, 2008: The army took power in Mauretania, so would tanks "roll" into the capital, Robert Fisk asked himself in The Independent. "I have never seen a tank perform this extraordinary act but there it was. The president, said the agency report, 'was arrested after military convoys rolled through the capital'."
'Gotcha' mob care only about language
August 9, 2008: It turns out, says columnist Maria Burnham in the Poughkeepsie Journal, that if you really want people to respond to you, all you have to do is insert one grammatical error in it. Then watch the e-mails, calls, letters pour in.
Does students' spelling matter?
August 9, 2008: Shud universty lecturers ignor students' speling misstakes? Anthea Lipsett says "I know I'm on dodgy ground picking up on anything to do with spelling working for the Grauniad, but ... Dr Ken Smith of Bucks New University, makes the "arguement" that most misspelled words make more sense".
Word's origin still cloaked in mystery
August 7, 2008: Etymologist Anatoly Liberman runs up against haberdashers in his excellent weekly Oxford University Press blog – and confesses that no one can tell for sure how they got their name.
'Fixing' quotes: Should we undangle that modifier?
August 6, 2008: An unnamed Revelstoke Times Review reporter addresses the knotty problem of people's ungrammatical spoken English and whether it should be "fixed" in print. I say not. So does (s)he.
Bugbears of the grammatical kind
August 3, 2008: OK, so one of Geoff Willmetts's bugbears, he writes in SF Crowsnest, is slack grammar and punctuation, an occupational hazard because he's an editor. Ehhh, maybe he should be grateful - after all it keeps him in a job.
The cure for the common 'woe is I'
August 3, 2008: "People have been slapped upside the head so many times for saying 'Me and Joe are going to the store' that they are afraid to use the word me at all," according to an e-mail to Sarah Jenkins that she writes about in the Yakima Herald-Republic.
First Olympic event: the Chinglish challenge
August 2, 2008: The grammar police have taken to the streets of Beijing, writes Anya Sostek in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, trying to rid the city of Chinglish before the Olympics start next week.
Pick your reference preference, folks
August 2, 2008: Specialist "dictionaries" seem to be all the rage, so Dan Meade has created a Coffee Drinker’s Dictionary and John Lee a Devil's Dictionary of Finance. Hmmm. Maybe they'll help you find your favourite java while mulling over your sub-prime losses.
Take note of this: Reading the OED
August 1, 2008: Ammon Shea recently spent a year of his life reading the Oxford English Dictionary. He has written a book (see review) about this odyssey and has started a weekly blog at Oxford University Press, where you can share his obsession . . .
Roscoes with hammers patrol in whips
July 31, 2008: “Ooh-ooh” and “mugga” are specific to Brooklyn. “Roscoe” is East Harlem, "88" is the Bronx. Matthew Lynch interprets 355 terms in the New York Press for the police, guns and drugs, compiled in a slang dictionary from the city’s streets.
What's in a name? Better not ask Cuil
July 31, 2008: Seeing as how new search engine Cuil.com is a search engine, writes Nancy Gohring in PC World, its founders might have known that people could easily check online the company's claim that the word "cuil" means "knowledge" in Irish. Because it doesn't.
Let's do it, let's forge in love
July 29, 2008: Armed with Noël Coward's diaries and a British dictionary, a New York author turned out some 150 forged letters attributed to one of England's most gifted and flamboyant writers, says the UK Telegraph.
Elitism is not a dirty word
July 29, 2008: Journalists are regularly advised to drop regularly misused words from their lexicons. Mark Swed of the LA Times says the adjectival criminal he'd like to see handed over to the word police is elitist, especially in its relationship to the arts and popular culture.
Getting bored of disinterestedness?
July 28, 2008: If you are bored of columns about language it's possible you will be disinterested in this one, writes Siobhain Butterworth in The Guardian. But if reading that sentence made you livid, take a deep breath and read on.
Why Islam is unfunny for a cartoonist
July 24, 2008: The arrest of a Dutch cartoonist has set off a wave of protests, raising questions for a changing Europe about free speech, religion and art, writes Andrew Higgins in the Wall Street Journal.
Advice to the etymologist: Never lose heart
July 24, 2008: Several times a year etymologist Anatoly Liberman takes questions live on radio, he tells an Oxford University Press blog, and usually can dig out the answer he needs from his database. But then someone asked him about the origin of galoot . . .
Partridge – eventually – to the rescue
July 23, 2008: Journalist Frank McNally, defending himself in the Irish Times against a charge of grammar misuse, calls linguist the late Eric Partridge as an expert witness. They didn't come much more expert than Partridge but even he got it wrong at first.
Global lexis gets a green tinge
July 23, 2008: A domain which has recently made and continues to make a significant contribution to global English lexis is the environmental one, writes Kiwi lexicographer Dianne Bardsley in NZ's Dominion Post.
Top 5 signs you'll take a staycation
July 22, 2008: Motley Fool business writers Tim Beyers and Dayana Yochim turn to the Urban Dictionary, and a made-up word that's perfect for troubled economic times: staycation, or "a vacation that is spent at one's home".
TV talkshows, history and the 'N' word
July 21, 2008: So, on the one hand, we have those black people who have educated themselves about the word's etymology and the history of black oppression in America, writes Marques Camp at The Celebrity Cafe, and on the other . . .
School bans slang – exam results soar
July 20, 2008: A school has banned its pupils from using "street slang" as part of a strict behaviour policy which is transforming its exam results, says a report in the UK Daily Telegraph.