Firstly, for the benefit of Jon and other non-English readers, here‘s a definition of “oik” oik n. member of the lower classes of the UK—especially anyone not English—e.g. one who tends to pronounce an (i) sound as (oi) UK Secondly, Norm is both a professor of political thought and a very clear thinker—a dying breed. Today he demonstrates […]
Read MoreLA Scrabble™ champion adopts Aussie rules.
Read MoreCourtesy of my dad and this agency piece in the Guardian, the latest gem from George W: “Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we,” George Bush told an audience of military brass and Pentagon chiefs. “They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do […]
Read MoreNorm is too polite. Scotland’s “Poet Laureate” combines a tin ear, bathos, and fashionable stupidity to give us a poem about Saddam that William McGonagall would have been proud of. Please, someone, tell me it was a spoof, written to draw in people like us.
Read MoreYesterday I stumbled upon a 'Blog that was news to me, but I think I'll be watching from now on. According to its URL, “Language Log” is broadcasting from the University of Pennsylvania and seems to be staffed by linguistics profs from other top US universities. Stories that caught my eye include one on the […]
Read MoreApparently, when I got back from a curry in London and wrote that “One Last Mission” spoof at one a.m., I misspelled “enrolment”. Thanks, Dad.
Read MoreThis one is mainly aimed at my American posse. Shouts out to you all, brothers and sisters. This piece in The Telegraph [probably requires free registration] begins as typical Sunday supplement filler, with some random musings on the significance of Harrison Ford and Calista Flockhart's choosing to taking a “vacation” in the English countryside. Later, […]
Read MoreWhile asking after my baby pics yesterday evening, my token Palestinian friend* Hind commented in her unique style, “We all think you love children, really. Why don't you have some?” I mumbled something about how ordering a baby from the Internet in the absence of at least adding a wife to my Amazon wishlist might […]
Read More“During certain treaty negotiations with the United States, the British government went so far as to issue instructions to its representatives allowing them to make concessions on fishing rights and reparations, but forbidding them to accept a treaty in which an adverb separated ‘to’ from an infinitive.” —“Split infinitive“, Wikipedia
Read MoreAndrew is an American who lives in Japan and teaches English. He invites his new students to introduce themselves in writing. Here are one or two of the responses.
Read MoreJudith‘s sharp editrix eye was caught by a couple of mixed metaphors in the media this week. Rob Lowe, a star of NBC TV’s West Wing said of one of his fellow actors in the show, Allison Janney: “She just tees the ball up and hits it out of the park every single time.” . […]
Read MorePamela Wade of the New Zealand Herald compares Peter Jackson’s winning 11 Oscars to her buying the perfect teapot. Perhaps there are special kinds of irony in New Zealand, rhetorical variants that could only have emerged and developed in such extreme isolation from major landmasses of culture—linguistic marsupials, if you will. Or perhaps she’s crap.
Read MoreHad a quick browse round The Word Spy today. My current two favourite neologisms there are “mucus trooper” and “resistentialism“.
Read MoreYesterday Jackie D photographed a garment that my parents will never, ever buy for Maisie.
Read MoreLynne Truss gets an English lesson.
Read MoreThe otherwise superb Chambers Dictionary that my parents bought me for Christmas lists the word “affluenza“, but not the word “afflatus“—checked in my Shorter Oxford before I deployed it yesterday. My edition of the Shorter doesn’t list “affluenza” of course. PooterGeek is on the first page of Google hits for the misspelling of “autism” as […]
Read MoreOver at the London News Review there is an aggressively insightful series of articles about Urban English (UE) and popular music. I liked this bit about date rape advocate and chart-topping dancehall DJ Sean Paul Henriques—“a middle class, mixed-race Jamaican”—toning down his nastiness to appeal to white fashion victims: It would seem that Sean Paul […]
Read MoreSpookily, after my entry yesterday, Oliver Kamm has been ‘Blogging about the misuse of English today too.
Read MoreThis morning I listened to the increasingly hysterical John Humphrys do his increasingly silly anti-Iraq war thing on the Today programme on Radio 4. After two Iraqi academics had repeatedly told us that the Americans had done “Nothing. Nothing!” for the Iraqi people, John had a rant at the UK diplomatic representative in Baghdad, Jeremy […]
Read MoreAfter laughing at my crap driving today, Leasy (pictured here*, not being a slapper with Adam) and her friend tried to explain to me the difference between “slag” and “slapper”. The English to American Dictionary agrees with them. [Scroll down to the relevant words on this page—they’re next to each other there.] *I’d credit the […]
Read More
Recent Comments