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  1. Word Routes

     Don't Eighty-Six That Etymology!
    Tue Dec 15 00:00:00 EST 2015
    For the latest installment of Slate's podcast Lexicon Valley, I look at how the seemingly random number eighty-six became a verb meaning to get rid of something, thanks to a long-forgotten code of hash houses and soda-fountain lunch counters.

  2. Evasive Maneuvers

     Justice-Involved Bullshine and Other Content Marketing Opportunities
    Wed Dec 09 00:00:00 EST 2015

    It's almost the end of 2015, and a new frontrunner for Euphemism of the Year has emerged. In a Department of Justice press release, Attorney General Loretta Lynch wrote, "The Department of Justice is committed to giving justice-involved youth the tools they need to become productive members of society."

    As Shakespeare put it, "Wow."

  3. Candlepower

     Television, in Other Words
    Fri Dec 04 00:00:00 EST 2015
    In 1948, the American journalist and language chronicler H.L. Mencken wrote an essay for The New Yorker, "Video Verbiage," in which he analyzed the lingo of the fledgling medium of television. Several of the words he gathered are now obsolete: vaudeo ("televised vaudeville"), televiewers (now just "viewers"), blizzard head (an actress so blonde that the lighting has to be toned down). Others are with us still, including telegenic and telecast. Nearly 70 years after Mencken published his essay, television itself is undergoing a massive redefinition, and so is our TV lexicon.

  4. Language Lounge

     How Do Phrasal Verbs "Pencil Out"?
    Tue Dec 01 00:00:00 EST 2015
    I heard an interview on the radio the other day with Dan Price, CEO of Seattle-based credit card processing firm Gravity Payments. He's been in the news because of his decision to set the minimum salary for his employees at $70,000. What interested me in the interview was his use of pencil out, a phrasal verb that was new to me. Lexicographers are to words like birders are to birds: when we spot one that's not on our life list we get very excited, even as others' eyes may glaze over.

  5. Word Count

     Writing's Abstract Expressionism: Yhw Ton Evah Emos Nuf Htiw Sdrow?
    Mon Nov 30 00:00:00 EST 2015
    Recently I spent an afternoon with friends wandering through Manhattan's Whitney Museum, gazing at a wide variety of canvases by Frank Stella, Jackson Pollack, Joseph Albers, Mark Rothko, and many more. As we wandered, my skepticism (you call this art?) gave way to admiration (wow, abandoning pictures could be fun!), and to thinking: hey, we writers could do the same thing with words, not using them to paint pictures but scattering them willy-nilly like Jackson Pollack's dribbles.

  6. Word Count

     Seven Strategies for Banishing Your Perfectionism
    Fri Nov 27 00:00:00 EST 2015
    Perfectionism should have been the furthest thing from my mind after getting — and recovering from — a repetitive strain injury. But I was reluctant to resume working on my book. It wasn't so much the pain in my arm. It was more my concern that my writing wasn't any good. Could that have been perfectionism speaking?

  7. Evasive Maneuvers

     Bullbirds, Bullfeathers, and Other Euphemistic Malarkey
    Wed Nov 25 00:00:00 EST 2015
    Hey guys, I wrote a book. Fittingly, I can only state its title euphemistically in this column about euphemisms. It's sorta called Bull*#@$: A Lexicon. Not being able to name my book could be construed as an obstacle in my quest to use this column for shameless self-promotion. Or is it?

  8. Word Routes

     The Hootin'-Hollerin' Origins of "Hootenanny"
    Tue Nov 17 00:00:00 EST 2015
    The latest episode of Slate's podcast Lexicon Valley is a hoot and a half, as I take a look at the origins of hootenanny, a word that emerged from rural America with many meanings before finding fame as a name for folk-music gatherings.

  9. Word Count

     When the Wrong Word Just Sounds Better
    Mon Nov 09 00:00:00 EST 2015
    Intensive purposes? Slight of hand? Linguist Adam Cooper contemplates phrases whose meanings are in transition as we replace unfamiliar words fossilized with language that sounds more reasonable to our modern ears.

  10. Language Lounge

     Written in Blood
    Mon Nov 02 00:00:00 EST 2015
    During the short-lived media celebrity of the recent "blood moon," I spent some Internet time bringing myself up to speed on the phenomenon—as I suspect many others did. My interest as a lexicographer was to investigate why this celestial event is called a blood moon; thinking in the literal way that I do, and knowing the color of blood, I was perplexed at the disconnect. Blood, of course, is red—deep, vivid, saturated red—and the moon was not. It achieved a kind of Marsy orange, but it was not red.
34 35 36 37 38 Displaying 351-360 of 3488 Results