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Good Stuff: 6/30/08
Nice-nice
In defense of the humble ecdysiast
Roughly equal to 50 brownie points
Good Stuff: 5/30/08
[sic]
A $25 difference
Everything now officially a blog
My favorite prescriptivist is a talking dinosaur
Housekeeping: Site name change
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Good Stuff: 6/30/08
Monday, June 30, 2008 10:12 PM
Nice-nice
Wednesday, June 25, 2008 12:45 PM
In defense of the humble ecdysiast
Monday, June 23, 2008 4:32 PM
Roughly equal to 50 brownie points
Wednesday, June 4, 2008 10:34 AM
Good Stuff: 5/30/08
Friday, May 30, 2008 8:49 AM
[sic]
Wednesday, May 28, 2008 10:49 AM
A $25 difference
Monday, May 19, 2008 2:43 PM
The American Heritage Dictionary defines crosswalk as
Minnesota statute 169.01.37 defines crosswalk as
These warring definitions wouldn't be a problem if not for Minnesota statute 169.34.a.6, which proscribes parking within 20 feet of a crosswalk — marked or unmarked — at an intersection.
Think reactive, not reactionary
Monday, June 30, 2008 10:12 PM
And here's my favorite language-related stuff for June:
Verbivore's Feast: A Banquet of Word & Phrase Origins - Ecdysiast
The origin of ecydsiast, H.L. Mencken's hifalutin alternative to stripper.
Business Writing - Show Me the Manual!
An authority on business writing dismisses unsourced prescriptivism.
(There were some other good anti-prescriptivist posts this month: Bradshaw of the Future called a snob a snob, and at Off the Wall, Bruce Byfield described some typical reactions to his descriptivism. See if you can spot any of those in the comments on that BotF post.)
World Wide Words - Brownie points
Another interesting word history. I like the idea that its tangled etymology helped promulgate this expression.
Nobody's Business - Language Matters
From one of the libertarian blogs I follow comes a usage quibble I haven't encountered before: threat vs. risk. Non-libertarians might not care.
Cryptomundo - The Short History of Blobsquatch
So awesome. Loren Coleman of Cryptomundo traces the origin of blobsquatch, perhaps the best word I've learned this year. Blogsquatching, mentioned in this same post, is a close second.
Verbivore's Feast: A Banquet of Word & Phrase Origins - Ecdysiast
The origin of ecydsiast, H.L. Mencken's hifalutin alternative to stripper.
Business Writing - Show Me the Manual!
An authority on business writing dismisses unsourced prescriptivism.
(There were some other good anti-prescriptivist posts this month: Bradshaw of the Future called a snob a snob, and at Off the Wall, Bruce Byfield described some typical reactions to his descriptivism. See if you can spot any of those in the comments on that BotF post.)
World Wide Words - Brownie points
Another interesting word history. I like the idea that its tangled etymology helped promulgate this expression.
Nobody's Business - Language Matters
From one of the libertarian blogs I follow comes a usage quibble I haven't encountered before: threat vs. risk. Non-libertarians might not care.
Cryptomundo - The Short History of Blobsquatch
So awesome. Loren Coleman of Cryptomundo traces the origin of blobsquatch, perhaps the best word I've learned this year. Blogsquatching, mentioned in this same post, is a close second.
Labels: links
Comments (2)
hmm, that distinction between "risk" and "threat" is not given in any of my dictionaries. Show me the manual!
No such luck, though maybe I can find someone who'll claim that risque is the original (and therefore only correct) spelling...
Nice-nice
Wednesday, June 25, 2008 12:45 PM
This morning on CNN I heard Dick Uliano say that Hillary and Obama are "making nice-nice after their bitter primary battle."
I love that making nice-nice. I'm a sucker for this sort of reduplication(?) in English, whether it's meant to clarify (as in "he drives a car-car") or — as is presumably the case here — merely there for emphasis (like my friend who says "multiple multiple times").
And then there's that famous Sidney Morgenbesser story:
(Also humorous but completely unrelated: I just learned that the heart of rock and roll is not Topeka, but rather still beatin'. Mondegreen ho!)
I love that making nice-nice. I'm a sucker for this sort of reduplication(?) in English, whether it's meant to clarify (as in "he drives a car-car") or — as is presumably the case here — merely there for emphasis (like my friend who says "multiple multiple times").
And then there's that famous Sidney Morgenbesser story:
In the 1950's, the British philosopher J.L. Austin came to Columbia to present a paper about the close analysis of language. He'd just explained that, although two negatives make a positive, nowhere is it the case that two positives make a negative, when from the audience a familiar nasal voice muttered a dismissive, "Yeah, yeah."
(Also humorous but completely unrelated: I just learned that the heart of rock and roll is not Topeka, but rather still beatin'. Mondegreen ho!)
Thanks for your comment on prescriptivism, Dan. As for this reduplication issue, I've considered this idea with friends after a phonology class we once had. English doesn't seem too keen on them, but there is one that we, at least, believed to be an example of reduplication:
"Do you like him, or do you like-like him?"
As I'm sure you know, many African languages use reduplication even as a derivational morpheme, so it's extreme in their use, unlike in ours.
In the South, where "Coke" can mean any type of soda, I often had to order a "Coke-Coke" to make it clear that what I wanted was a Coca-Cola in particular.
P.S.: I was in college before I realized "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus" wasn't about an affair. Really.
Maybe one person makes nice, and two people together make nice-nice.
Sounds a bit childish to me (but then so does 'makes nice').
An episode of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" offers this advice: You have to make the nice.
In defense of the humble ecdysiast
Monday, June 23, 2008 4:32 PM
From a defense of Grand Theft Auto IV in the latest Chronicle of Higher Education:
As someone who's finished GTA IV and who loved the game, I'll pause here to note that weapons no longer "hover" in this installment.
Nor do I recognize the mission scenario ("an epic shootout involving missile launchers and strippers") in the essay's lede.
Nor do I remember facing off against any of the "vigilante strippers" that the author alludes to elsewhere.
It would be nice if writers concerned with dispelling myths about GTA IV could refrain from creating their own misinformation; these distortions in particular are especially irritating because they make GTA look cartoonish, which it (mostly) isn't. This game has humor and satire, but it also has drama, verisimilitude, and (fantastic) characterization. It would help if its defenders could take it a bit more seriously.
So. As you may have guessed, I want to talk about the strippers. We all know what strippers are, right?
Certainly you'd expect Bill Blake, who, even if he hasn't played GTA IV, is nevertheless an adult and (this is what's known as the "kicker") a doctoral student in cultural studies, to be aware of this phenomenon.
Neither in real life nor in the game do strippers hang around on the street, waiting for people to pick them up. To put it simply:
Stripper ≠ prostitute
I don't understand how a copy editor — or any alert reader — could miss this. Say what you will about my dubious morals (or worse, my prescriptivism), but stripper is a fairly basic term, wrongly applied here, and I'm shocked that it made it to publication.
You need to be honest with yourself. Go outside and find a locked car — or go to the back alley where missile launchers hover in a glowing light waiting for you to pick them up, or go drive down that street in your town where all the strippers hang out waiting for you to pick them up — and see if you're tempted.
As someone who's finished GTA IV and who loved the game, I'll pause here to note that weapons no longer "hover" in this installment.
Nor do I recognize the mission scenario ("an epic shootout involving missile launchers and strippers") in the essay's lede.
Nor do I remember facing off against any of the "vigilante strippers" that the author alludes to elsewhere.
It would be nice if writers concerned with dispelling myths about GTA IV could refrain from creating their own misinformation; these distortions in particular are especially irritating because they make GTA look cartoonish, which it (mostly) isn't. This game has humor and satire, but it also has drama, verisimilitude, and (fantastic) characterization. It would help if its defenders could take it a bit more seriously.
So. As you may have guessed, I want to talk about the strippers. We all know what strippers are, right?
Certainly you'd expect Bill Blake, who, even if he hasn't played GTA IV, is nevertheless an adult and (this is what's known as the "kicker") a doctoral student in cultural studies, to be aware of this phenomenon.
[...] or go drive down that street in your town where all the strippers hang out waiting for you to pick them up [...]
Neither in real life nor in the game do strippers hang around on the street, waiting for people to pick them up. To put it simply:
Stripper ≠ prostitute
I don't understand how a copy editor — or any alert reader — could miss this. Say what you will about my dubious morals (or worse, my prescriptivism), but stripper is a fairly basic term, wrongly applied here, and I'm shocked that it made it to publication.
Roughly equal to 50 brownie points
Wednesday, June 4, 2008 10:34 AM
A friend of mine asked me for a "solid" last night, which I quickly brushed off as a rather small favor, easily done.
This slang sense of solid goes back at least to the '70s. However — perhaps this is just my own personal idiolect, but I'm somewhat surprised to find that almost no definition of solid mentions that it's necessarily a substantial favor.
You could say, "Would you do me a favor and pass the mustard," but you would never call that a solid. At least I wouldn't. It would cheapen the solid.
(Obligatory Simpsons linguistic tie-in: at the end of "Bonfire of the Manatees," Homer says he can take a few days off work because "I've got a friend who owes me a solid." The next scene — wherein a manatee poses as Homer — is priceless.)
This slang sense of solid goes back at least to the '70s. However — perhaps this is just my own personal idiolect, but I'm somewhat surprised to find that almost no definition of solid mentions that it's necessarily a substantial favor.
You could say, "Would you do me a favor and pass the mustard," but you would never call that a solid. At least I wouldn't. It would cheapen the solid.
(Obligatory Simpsons linguistic tie-in: at the end of "Bonfire of the Manatees," Homer says he can take a few days off work because "I've got a friend who owes me a solid." The next scene — wherein a manatee poses as Homer — is priceless.)
Probably of no great interest to you, but I've never heard 'solid' to mean 'favour' (of any description) in my life. Has it crossed the Atlantic? Dunno. But it hasn't reached me. Must have missed that Simpsons episode...
Good Stuff: 5/30/08
Friday, May 30, 2008 8:49 AM
Here's my favorite language-related stuff for May:
You Don't Say - Splittists
Some excellent thoughts on the "baseless prohibition against the split infinitive."
OUPblog - The Eternal Fascination of OK
A post on the origin of OK that comes down definitively in support of my favorite theory.
Wishydig - Have red pen. Will travel. (part I)
Apropos of this Typo Eradication Advancement League post, a defense of the "fronted appositive."
Language Hat - PSEUDO-WORD FEAST.
Ryan North (of Dinosaur Comics fame) has already proven that descriptivists make the best prescriptivists — but in case there was any doubt, check out this amusing "public keelhauling" of a sentence from the New Yorker.
Financial Times - One language fits all
In this review of The Fight for English: How Language Pundits Ate, Shot, and Left, Semantic Antics: How and Why Words Change Meaning, and the inexplicably subtitle-less English Next [PDF], Henry Hitchings considers the future of English.
You Don't Say - Splittists
Some excellent thoughts on the "baseless prohibition against the split infinitive."
OUPblog - The Eternal Fascination of OK
A post on the origin of OK that comes down definitively in support of my favorite theory.
Wishydig - Have red pen. Will travel. (part I)
Apropos of this Typo Eradication Advancement League post, a defense of the "fronted appositive."
Language Hat - PSEUDO-WORD FEAST.
Ryan North (of Dinosaur Comics fame) has already proven that descriptivists make the best prescriptivists — but in case there was any doubt, check out this amusing "public keelhauling" of a sentence from the New Yorker.
Financial Times - One language fits all
In this review of The Fight for English: How Language Pundits Ate, Shot, and Left, Semantic Antics: How and Why Words Change Meaning, and the inexplicably subtitle-less English Next [PDF], Henry Hitchings considers the future of English.
Labels: links
Hi Dan, This has nothing to do with the last post but I thought you'd be interested in the comments regarding today's Star Tribune article: http://www.startribune.com/lifestyle/family/20598114.html?page=1&c=y
[sic]
Wednesday, May 28, 2008 10:49 AM
From a coworker:
Chuck Norris noticed your correct spelling, made an error in it, and dared you to say some shit.
Oh.my.goodness. Funniest thing I've read all week.
A $25 difference
Monday, May 19, 2008 2:43 PM
The American Heritage Dictionary defines crosswalk as
A path marked off on a street to indicate where pedestrians should cross.
Minnesota statute 169.01.37 defines crosswalk as
(1) that portion of a roadway ordinarily included with the prolongation or connection of the lateral lines of sidewalks at intersections; (2) any portion of a roadway distinctly indicated for pedestrian crossing by lines or other markings on the surface.
These warring definitions wouldn't be a problem if not for Minnesota statute 169.34.a.6, which proscribes parking within 20 feet of a crosswalk — marked or unmarked — at an intersection.
Labels: semantics
Think reactive, not reactionary