Newly published letters from longtime New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan reveal his efforts to popularize the word floccinaucinihili­pilificationism ("the futility of making estimates on the accuracy of public data"). Read about it on The New York Times City Room blog here.

Last Sunday I wrote an On Language column for The New York Times Magazine about the editorial we, and all the sarcastic jokes that have been made about the presumptuous pronoun. "Nameless authors of editorials may find the pronoun we handy for representing the voice of collective wisdom," I wrote, "but their word choice opens them up to charges of gutlessness and self-importance." Since the column appeared, some of those voices of collective wisdom have risen to defend themselves.  Continue reading...

Linguist Neal Whitman draws a bead on the expression young guns (not to be confused with younguns), and finds that sometimes the so-called "Recency Illusion" isn't an illusion after all.  Continue reading...

I've been embracing my adopted city of Chicago by reading a collection of Chicago Tribune legend Mike Royko's writing — namely, Sez Who? Sez Me. I haven't read Royko since I was a mere tyke (or at least a small dweeb) who was too young to fully grasp the awesomeness of Royko's hilarious, sharp, wide-ranging columns. They hold up great, and one piece on the end of the Vietnam war could pretty much be reprinted verbatim right now, at the (sorta) end of the Iraq war.  Continue reading...

Remember when marketers exhorted us to trade up, spend freely, and buy more? When grand, luxe, and premier were sprinkled like shaved truffles over ad copy? That was before the recession took a bite out of our wallets and our aspirations. Nowadays, it's fashionable (not to mention necessary) to live within one's means — or to just live without.  Continue reading...

The great secret of success in anything is to get a hearing. Half the object is gained when the audience is assembled.
—Phineas T. Barnum

Now that you're all here: it seems a suitable time to mark the 200th anniversary of the birth of P. T. Barnum — a name that you probably don't associate with language in a particular way.  Continue reading...