As news from the financial world gets bleaker and bleaker, two scapegoats have emerged in the ongoing credit crunch: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Here's a sampling of headlines from the Wall Street Journal opinion page: "Fannie Mayhem," "Fannie and Freddie's Enablers," "Frantic Fannie," "Fannie Mae Ugly," "Freddie Krueger Mac." Someone unfamiliar with the American economic system might think that Fannie and Freddie are the new Bonnie and Clyde, shooting up banks with reckless abandon. How did the crisis in the banking sector get so personal?  Continue reading...

The latest political kerfuffle revolves around an expression Barack Obama used at a campaign event on Tuesday: "You can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig." Putting aside the accusation from John McCain's camp that this had something to do with vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin, the saying has a fascinating historical background, and I had a chance to delve into this history for Slate's "Explainer".  Continue reading...

The 11th edition of the venerable yet idiosyncratic Chambers Dictionary has just been published. Unlike the 11th editions of its lexicographical rivals Merriam-Webster's Collegiate and the Concise Oxford (everybody's going to 11 these days), the big news surrounding the latest Chambers is not about its new words. Rather, the British press has focused on some remarks made in the introduction to the dictionary, written by Newsnight presenter Jeremy Paxman. Paxman evidently likes to poke fun at all things Scottish, but he stepped over the line when he referred to the work of Robert Burns, Scotland's national poet, as nothing more than "sentimental doggerel."

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For today's Mailbag Friday, we hear from Barbara Z. of Norfolk, VA. She writes: "On the radio I was listening to the beginning of "The Thomas Jefferson Hour" in which Clay Jenkinson speaks as if he were Jefferson. I heard him say the following:

'I happen to live in the first great era when books were widespreadly available...'

"Widespreadly? That one is new to me!"  Continue reading...

Summer's not officially over, but now that Labor Day is past and the kids are off to school, it's a good time to look back at the latest batch of estival vocabulary. Back in June I made a case for skadoosh, a fanciful word from the movie Kung Fu Panda, as a candidate for Word of the Summer. And in an interview in July on Wisconsin Public Radio, I discussed some other summery words, from skinterns (scantily dressed Washington D.C. interns) to lawnmower beer (light refreshing beer brewed for easy consumption after a day of yardwork). But like it or not, the one new word that has trumped all others in the Summer of 2008 is staycation, the media-driven coinage for a stay-at-home vacation.  Continue reading...

Last time on Word Routes, we looked at a spelling error that's common enough to show up frequently in edited text: using acclimation when you mean acclamation. That's a case of battling homophones: the two words sound the same, but they have different meanings. The problem crops up with other sound-alikes, such as imminent vs. immanent, compliment vs. complement, principle vs. principal, and of course affect vs. effect. (We talked about that last pair recently in our interview with Jesse Sheidlower of the Oxford English Dictionary.) These mix-ups are particularly insidious because your spellchecker won't bail you out — unless, perhaps, you are using a contextual spellchecker like the one that has been developed for Microsoft Office.

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Yesterday's Visual Thesaurus Word of the Day was acclamation, a timely word now that the Democratic National Convention has begun. Of course, the news out of Denver is that Barack Obama will not be nominated by acclamation ("a voting method in which shouts or applause, rather than ballots, determine the winner"). Instead, there will be a state-by-state roll call for the nomination on Wednesday night, with some votes going to Obama's erstwhile rival Hillary Clinton, followed by some sort of a unanimous consent for Obama after the first ballot. Columnists Dick Morris and Eileen McGann wrote last week that Obama should have "blocked a roll call by allowing a voice vote to nominate by acclimation." Whoops!  Continue reading...