The Wisconsin Town That Didn't Learn English for Five Generations
The story of Hustisford looks very much like the story people usually tell about their immigrant ancestors. But in this story, there's a twist.
The story of Hustisford looks very much like the story people usually tell about their immigrant ancestors. But in this story, there's a twist.
As New York City Mayor Bloomberg gave numerous televised addresses about the preparations the city was making for Hurricane Sandy, and then the storm’s aftermath, he was joined at the podium by a sign language interpreter, who immediately became a twitter
10 Places and the Words They Inspired
The Oxford Dictionary Online is a warehouse of over 600,000 words. Despite this large arsenal, we continue to coin, clip, and blend new words into existence.
There are two popularly cited origins for the phrase "let the cat out of the bag," but neither is very clearly recorded as leading to it.
The adjective "moot" means "open to debate." Yes, really. This is a dramatic difference from its common usage (at least in America), which basically means "not worth debating." A famous example comes from Rick Springfield's lyrics in "Jessie's Girl":
Don’t be down about your next panel of consonants. Instead, take the challenge as an opportunity to show off your newly acquired vowel-free vocabulary. Three-Letter
Many of the items we use every day, like zippers and escalators, were once brand names. Even heroin (which no one should use any day) was a brand name. Here are some trademarked names that are often used as generic terms.
You probably know that numismatists study and collect coins and currency, and you may even know that philatelists study and collect stamps. But other groups of collectors have their own less-heralded nouns, too.
Despite its status as a "dead" language, pretty much anything can be translated into Latin. Here are a few modern classics that might make Latin class more fun.
There are many, many blogs dedicated to the use of the English language. Some are fairly comprehensive; others are tightly focused on one aspect of language usage that should be corrected, protected, or mocked. Here is a sampling of those blogs for your e
Out with the old, in with the new (literally). Jersey isn't part of the U.K., nor is it a full-member state of the EU, but is a separate possession of The Crown in Right of the United Kingdom.
In 1946, George Orwell published an essay in the British literary magazine Horizon, arguing against poor usage of English by modern writers. In the essay, Orwell cited five examples of "the English language as it is now habitually written." The examples
The short process is: meet someone who works at the OED evaluating new words for inclusion. The slightly longer process involves plying him or her with drink. The most complete answer is contained in Lyza Danger Gardner's blog entry How I Got a Word in
Last week we talked about KittenAuth, a novel CAPTCHA system used to differentiate between humans and spambots -- by using pictures of kittens. Today let's take a look at reCAPTCHA, the system in use by this very blog. What does it do, and why is it goo
Yesterday I pointed to a list of IKEA Naming Conventions, revealing the logic behind how they've named their products. In my life, the main families of items I see named are computers (generally, servers). At my office, we name the servers after sushi -
IKEA Naming
One of the best things about calling LA home is the opportunity to live unabashedly through your actor friends. If I think I've had a bad day, say, maybe received a couple rejection slips in the mail or some line producer isn't calling me back, my actor f
Growing up, a trip to the library was usually doomed to be frustrating because I could never decide which books to check out; hence (and with Sunday School visions of King Solomon's, er, radical problem-solving techniques still in my head), I removed any
Today's John Tierney-authored Findings column discusses the evolution and significance of the upturned palm and its variants--the shrug, the downturned palm, etc: That simple gesture, the upturned palm, is one of the oldest and most widely understood sign
The only time a nickname has ever offended me was in kindergarten, when my teacher started calling me Jason the Mason. See, Jason the Mason was a brick-working pig from a book we were reading. I didn't take kindly to being called a pig, so I broke down in
As you've probably been following over the last years, there have been a lot of complaints in Singapore over the youngins' excessive use of Singlish. Likewise, Manglish is now under attack in Malaysia, only the Malaysian government is a lot more serious
Today's edition of the Weekend Word Wrap is on mondegreens. Long before I ever knew what a mondegreen was, I used to think the lyrics of David Bowie's "Suffragette City" went like this: Hey man, oh leave me alone, you know Hey man, oh Henry, get off the
We know it's Friday, and you're gearing up for a fun weekend. What better way to get you ready than having some fun, right here, right now: some mental_fun. Lynne Truss has a great punctuation game over at her Eats, Shoots & Leaves site, which rates ever