Topic : PoliticsLanguage LoungeA Monthly Column for Word LoversFact Checking in an Evidence-Free Environment March 8, 2017 By Orin Hargraves
A new uncertainty besets people about the quality of information presented to them, and if there was any expectation that the prevalence of prevarication from authorities would end when the 2016 presidential election season concluded, that expectation has not survived.
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Evasive ManeuversEuphemisms old and new"Alternative" is the Ultimate Euphemism Maker March 1, 2017 By Mark Peters
Just as enhanced is a term that attracts euphemisms like catnip attracts cats and cats attract YouTube views, alternative is no newcomer to the euphemism game.
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Article Topics:Evasive ManeuversEuphemisms old and newRights for Robots and Other Alternative, Orderly, Restrictive Rubbish February 7, 2017 By Mark Peters
Though I made a case for alt-right as 2016's Euphemism of the Year, the American Dialect Society went in another direction, those rascals! They selected locker-room talk, which is a pretty solid euphemism, though I'm not sure it made the top ten twaddlesome terms of 2016. This year is young, but there's already a candidate I suspect everyone and their uncle is going to support or at least suggest for 2017's euphemism of the year: alternative facts.
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By most reliable measures, 2016 has been a very good year for fiction lovers. I'm not talking here about literature; I'm talking about the opposite of fact. In mid-November, Oxford Dictionaries declared post-truth to be its word of the year. Indeed, it's been a banner year for all the words we have at our disposal to say, "Nope, it just ain't so."
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Dog EaredBooks we love"Enough Said" is a Powerful Look at the Sewer of Political Language November 21, 2016 By Mark Peters
As we look back at the language of the recent election, it's hard not to feel like political language has fallen into the sewer, and plummeted from there into a lower sewer, and might be still falling.
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Language LoungeA Monthly Column for Word Lovers(Sub)tweeting for Success November 8, 2016 By Orin Hargraves
While millions of people are tweeting and retweeting every day, a small fraction of them are also subtweeting, and if news stories are to be believed, they are not doing so very successfully. Recent news stories alerted me to the idea of subtweeting and got me thinking about the conversational aspects of Tweets and their sub-cousins.
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Evasive ManeuversEuphemisms old and newSustained, Mislived Difficulties and Other Drivel-ish Dreams September 7, 2016 By Mark Peters
Are you a dreamer? I've had a few myself. That one where my pet lizard Ronnie convinced me to betray humanity to the alien lizards who control all governments was a doozy. Betraying Earth is one thing, but I would never have a pet lizard! But that's not the kind of dreamer that made a few recent headlines. Rather, a dreamer is an undocumented immigrant, usually a young person, who may have been brought to the U.S. as a child.
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