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Blog Excerpts
Dictionaries in the Age of Google
Tue Sep 08 00:00:00 EDT 2009
Do we still need dictionaries in the age of Google? That's the question posed by Julia Angwin in the Wall Street Journal's "Decoder" blog. Read her investigation here.
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Word Routes
Why Americans Celebrate Labor (and not Labour) Day
Mon Sep 07 00:00:00 EDT 2009
It's the first Monday in September, when the United States observes Labor Day by avoiding labor. Today is a holiday north of the border too, but in Canada it's called Labour Day. Labour, of course, is the accepted spelling in the United Kingdom and Commonwealth countries like Canada. Americans prefer labor to labour, just as they prefer color, favor, honor, humor, neighbor, and a few dozen other words ending in -o(u)r. How did the spellings diverge?
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Word Routes
Mailbag Friday: "Regime" or "Regimen"?
Fri Sep 04 00:00:00 EDT 2009
Today's Mailbag Friday question comes from Bob D., a doctor from Newton, Massachusetts. Bob asks: "What is up with the constant misuse of the word regime? It drives me crazy. It is like regimen never existed."
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Blog Excerpts
How Did People Sound in 1963?
Fri Sep 04 00:00:00 EDT 2009
The anachronistic dictionary that showed up recently on "Mad Men" was just the tip of the iceberg. Linguist John McWhorter argues that the supposedly authentic TV drama doesn't really capture how Americans spoke in the early '60s. Read all about it on his New Republic blog.
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Behind the Dictionary
The Nouning of "Back to School"
Thu Sep 03 00:00:00 EDT 2009
Just in time for the beginning of the school year, linguist Neal Whitman investigates how "back to school" got transformed from a prepositional phrase to a noun phrase.
It's time for back to school! With Labor Day just around the corner, back to school is days away for many students across the nation, and for many others it has already come.
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Evasive Maneuvers
Disposable Doomsday Daisies and Other Freaky Phrases
Wed Sep 02 00:00:00 EDT 2009
Recently, at the vibrant dog community in Chicago's Lincoln Park, a two-pound, three-month-old malti-poo puppy was engaged in a rigorous, Pepe le Pew-like program of incessantly humping every dog in his path. Well, not every dog. He did stick to pooches that were somewhat in his "league," such as my own 12-pound rat terrier, who thankfully didn't bite the preposterous puppy's head off for taking such liberties.
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Blog Excerpts
Age of the Aughts
Wed Sep 02 00:00:00 EDT 2009
"Double zeroes"? "Goose eggs"? "Diddly-squats"? Visual Thesaurus contributor Mark Peters considers the tricky question of what we should call the current decade in his latest column for Good Magazine.
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Language Lounge
Going Dutch
Tue Sep 01 00:00:00 EDT 2009
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Teachers at Work
Bringing Lively Similes Into Student Writing
Mon Aug 31 00:00:00 EDT 2009
By the time they enter high school, most students know that a simile is a literary device used to show a similarity between two dissimilar things, and that the words "like" or "as" link the dissimilar things, as in "busy as a bee," "like a fish out of water," "as big as a house," and "fits like a glove." They know, too, that similes differ from metaphors in that metaphors dispense with "like" or "as" and get right to the point: "He's a rat." "Life is but a walking shadow." (Not all similes employ "as" or "like," as here: "On a normal day, Jennifer Capriati tends to rush through games with the haste of a short-order cook, moving from point to point without a pause.")
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Wordshop
Dissecting a Simile with VocabGrabber
Mon Aug 31 00:00:00 EDT 2009
In Bob Greenman's "Teachers at Work" column about the value of having students appreciate and create similes, he astutely points out that while writers should avoid using a simile that is a cliche ("smart as a whip," etc.), they should also establish "a comparison with something almost any reader can picture or identify with."
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