Once again Mr Verb reminds me that the American Dialect Society, chaired by Ben Zimmer, will soon be plumping for its ‘Word of the Year 2012’. Last year it turned out to be ‘occupy’, a distinctly disappointing decision in my opinion, given the rich choice on offer. I preferred ‘bazinga’, from the ‘Big Bang Theory’.… Continue reading WOTY – Oxford Dictionary style
Readers might find interesting a rather neat posting from Mr Verb a couple of days ago on the subject of English and borrowing. The posting includes a picture of a T-shirt, inscribed with the words: The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that the English language is as pure as a crib-house whore.… Continue reading The English language and borrowing
It’s the time of the year once again for the WOTY! What’s this, you wonder? WOTY is the Word of the Year, each year decided on by the AmericanDialect Society. At the annual conference in Portland, Oregon, Ben Zimmer* is chairing the New Words Committee, which decides on the WOTY. This year’s nominations (from Zimmer’s VisualThesaurus)… Continue reading Jabberwoty
Ever considered a linguistics tattoo? Probably not! But Team Verb showed how me how amazingly committed some people are to their academic disciplines and the legs (you have to look at the slide show slide 10! ) to which they will go to display that commitment. Running teachers’ courses I’ve seen some interesting tattoos in my time. After reading… Continue reading Visual rhetorical reverberations, or linguistics tattoos to you and me
On Sunday, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reported that linguists from all over the world will be descending on Pittsburgh later this week to discuss, amongst other things, (naturally) Pittsburghese, endangered languages, and linguistic map-making. They’ll also be deciding on the word of the year.Previous favourites have been: ‘google’, the word of the decade last year; ‘plutoed’,… Continue reading From ‘Bushlips’ to ‘static kill’. OK?