Word of the day: sketchy
“Creepy, iffy,” &c.
Live-blogging the debate
“Sketchy.”
Britishisms
The New York Times reports on America’s slippery slope into Britishisms.
Word of the day: malarkey
“One might say that malarkey is Irish for bullshit, but that would be malarkey.”
Word of the day: apotropaic
A wonderful word from the Greek.
Sniffing out word origins
Daughter Number Three investigates the origins of words that name smells and finds a clear pattern.
Sharking up
Clearly, the time has come to revive this phrasal verb.
Poem v. story, sidewalk v. floor
A poem is not a story. A sidewalk is not a floor.
Word of the day: phony
Could “phonein” explain “phony” — something that sounds plausible, but isn’t?
It’s called lifelong learning
Hay ≠ straw
A vowel shift in the wild
“Pehk rehts! ”
Okay, swell, lousy
Slang and I Love Lucy.
Michiko Kakutani, messy watch
“New York Times book-reviewer Michiko Kakutani is known for her frequent (some might say too frequent) use of the verb ‘limn.’ Nearly as frequent is her use of the adjective ‘messy.’”
Word of the day: nemophilous
“To my joy and sheer wonder, your son Buddy has turned out to be utterly and thrillingly nemophilous!”
Forward.
An elliptical form of the hortatory subjunctive.
Motuweth frisas
The last time I read Pnin all the way through, there was no Internet, at least not for me. Now there is, and motuweth frisas no longer baffles me.
The Cummerbund Response
From a dream: “a gesture, utterance, or choice of apparel whose degree of formality exceeds what is appropriate to an occasion, typically a result of social uncertainty.”
Geoffrey Pullum on nouns
Linguist Geoffrey Pullum on the inadequacy of traditional definitions of a noun.
Words I can live without
“Delve, -flecked, get (as in ‘So-and-so gets it,’ meaning that So-and-so sees things as you do), helm (as a noun or verb, unless you’re at sea, literally), limn, the planet (as in ‘on the planet’), tome.”
Neologism finale
And the winner is “bypasstrophe.”
Neologism contest ends today
Like it says.
Recently updated
“Nonplussed,” correctly used, in Infinite Jest
Neologism contest continues unabated, expected to last several more days, but experts predict an end “soon”
Like it says.
Neologism contest continues to keep going, expected to continue “for days”
Like it says.
Neologism contest keeps on going, shows no sign of stopping
Like it says.
Neologism contest keeps continuing
On and on.
Neologism contest continues
The contest that keeps on continuing.
David Foster Wallace, nonplussed
Several years ago I came to realize that I misunderstood the meaning of the word nonplussed. So I am amused to see David Foster Wallace using the word correctly in his first novel, The Broom of the System.
Neologism contest
My friend Stefan Hagemann is seeking a word and is willing to sponsor a contest to find it.
Coming Monday
A neologism contest.