contributorOrin Hargraves Language LoungeA Monthly Column for Word LoversHotter Than the Doones' Bonfire in July  July 1, 2019
If you ask me to complete the phrase "hotter than ________", "July" is what comes to my mind first. The calendar inspires the subject of this month's column, which I might characterize as "uses and abuses of the comparative".
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Peter Martin's new book, The Dictionary Wars, is an account of the beginnings, twists, and turns in American lexicography that have led to the unique place of the name "Webster" in the minds of Americans today. If you're a lover of words and dictionaries, you'll want to put this excellent book on your reading list.
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Article Topics:Language LoungeA Monthly Column for Word LoversThe Most Influential Lexicographer You've Never Heard Of June 3, 2019
Lexicography has been and continues to be a gig occupation for many who do it, and that is the case for Charles Sanders Peirce. One place he found work was in writing definitions for the Century Dictionary, which may be the greatest dictionary you've never heard of.
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Regardless of where your views fall on the political spectrum, there's a pretty good chance that you subscribe to the idea that we are in a new age of inauthenticity. The modern world makes it even more of a challenge to "get real" when we are communicating with language.
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The relations among words are not so different from those among people. It's not unusual for, say, first cousins to bear no obvious resemblance to each other, but if we examine their DNA we find that they have a grandparent in common.
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Article Topics:Language LoungeA Monthly Column for Word LoversThat Only Happens in the Movies March 4, 2019 By Orin Hargraves
Linguistics and Big Data have been a fruitful partnership since they first found each other, and new hookups with promising results are happening all the time. Here's a small sampling of the riches to be found in two new corpora — the TV Corpus and the Movie Corpus.
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Article Topics:Language LoungeA Monthly Column for Word LoversTeach Your Children Well February 1, 2019 By Orin Hargraves
What happened (and is apparently still happening) in English-speaking societies that results in so much discourse about the problems in education? Here is some fodder for the discussion.
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