Slang from Operation Iraqi Freedom
Death Blossom : The tendency of Iraqi security forces, in response to receiving a little fire from the enemy, to either run away or do the "death blossom" spraying fire indisciminately in all directions. The term originated in the 1984 movie "The Last Starfighter" as a maneuver in which a single starfighter can single handedly wipe out an entire armada.
A grimly interesting glossary.
FT.com / Who left the Wags out?
... Is it true that a word needs to have been in use for 10 years before it can make it into the OED? It is only a rule of thumb, Diamond says; the editors exercise their judgment. “But underlying the 10-year rule of thumb is something that points to how philosophically different the OED is from other dictionaries, and that is our responsibility not just to tell you what a word means but to give you a historical perspective on it. That’s the reason we won’t be publishing ‘Wag’ any time soon, because we want to see what happens to it.”Still, says Diamond, if a new word does become commonly used and understood in a wide enough context, if its meaning has stabilised and if the word shows no signs of fading away, the 10-year rule may be bent - as it was for “chav”, which was published in the online OED in 2006, only eight years after its first verifiable use in 1998.
Surely, though, people were using “chav” colloquially before 1998? Very likely they were, Diamond says, but unless someone can provide hard, documentary evidence, “we can’t do anything about it, because one of our principles is that everything we cite must be verifiable. We can’t just have someone saying: ‘I was using this in 1992.’” The spoken word is no use if it goes unrecorded - although, interestingly, an internet quotation may be usable if it can be printed out and kept in the archives.
From an interesting and engagingly-written article on the current state of the Oxford English Dictionary.
Lake Superior State University :: Banished Words List :: 2007
I suppose if I were trapped at some godawful cow college in Outer Michigan I'd want attention too, but please stop.
What has happened to simply stating your piece? Has it become impolite to speak assertively in Canadian society? Every day, I hear the simplest statements turned into interrogatives. My name is Jennifer? I live in Guelph? I'm here to fix your washer?
from a BBC News story on encrypted torrent file sharing:
"This proposition brought us so much sh*t that it had to be continued on the next fan."
The bestest thing I got for Christmas was The Complete New Yorker
Unfortunately, I don't happen to own a computer with a DVD drive. Seriously. And it will be at least a couple of months before I'm able to buy a DVD drive for this old clunker.
But then I will get absolutely no work done.
Posted at the usual place. Includes the solution to your Valentine's Day shopping conundrum, plus a touching story of publishing incompetence.
We have a new shipment of The Word Detective in hardback, and have extended (until January 15) our special offer of two free subscriptions to TWD-by-Email with every autographed book ordered.
Globetechnology: Joe Jerk's amazing offer
What amazes me is that people will give their money to patently fictional people with outrageous names. Even the body of the messages is often silly: By the time spammers finish adjusting their strategies to fool the spam filters, their messages are so bent out of shape it's a wonder anyone can possibly take them seriously.I collect these names (it's an eccentricity — leave me alone), and I like to select the best for a year-end wrap-up, with a top-10-names list chosen by one of my (very real) favourite names, Tahirah Shadforth.
For instance, among those offering me Viagra this year were Lengthen Excerpting, Avrom Alias, Eula Shook, Racketeering Motors, Presumably Cahoots, Bunkum Splotched, Scurf Pathogen, Barbered Chapt, Ambrosia Triplett, Pole Suspiciously, Phosphorous Thundercloud and (wow) Joe Jerk. Trustworthy-sounding bunch, no?
This year, the U.S. warned citizens not to buy drugs from on-line Canadian pharmacies because the drugs might not be safe. Spammers leapt into the fray, suggesting people should instead put their trust in names such as Ovaries Secreter, Emm Zcacsog, Bella Pxolc, Candida Outlaw, Capote Dogie, Macon Expel, Exhibitionism Phoneys, Tillman Unscrew, Nuptials Overgenerous, Letdowns Gastritis, Dionysius Swindall, Slugged Shindig, Concessions Burgles, Fikriyya Gurney and Shea Snay.
Language Log: No ideas, please, we're the Plain English Campaign
Well, the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock, and you hear the kyouck and gobble of the Plain English Campaign's annual award for gobbledegook.
MP disgust at online slur of Worksop folk
BASSETLAW MP John Mann has expressed outrage at entries on an internet dictionary site which defines Worksop as "a horrid town populated by pikeys and losers."Billed as an explanation of slang and urban language, the dictionary goes on to describe the town's centre as "unutterably horrid. Teenage parents abound. If Notts were to be given an enema, guess where the pipe would be put?"
The December (November being best forgotten) issue of The Word Detective has been posted at www.word-detective.com.
As usual at this time of year, signed copies of the hardback The Word Detective book are available, each with TWO free one-year subscriptions to TWD-by-Email, here. Offer good only until January 1, 2006.
A large portion of all proceeds from sales will be devoured by cats.
languagehat.com: OMBUDSMAN, SPARE THAT APOSTROPHE!NPR ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin recently responded to what he describes as "a regular flow of comments and observations about language" from listeners; my response after reading it is to wish he'd stick to journalism and ethics and leave language alone.
Punctuation cop turns ire on bad manners
NEW YORK (Reuters) - When it comes to bad manners, today's society is pretty much a hopeless case, author Lynn Truss says.That didn't stop her front ranting about it in her latest book, "Talk to the Hand," a self-described "moral homily" that attacks rudeness the same way she critiqued bad punctuation in her 2003 best-seller "Eats, Shoots & Leaves."
"Please" and "thank you" are endangered in the public discourse, she writes in her new work, increasingly drowned out by inane mobile phone chatter, dismal customer service and the vulgar epithet she writes as "Eff Off."
"I say in the book that I have a flame of hope (that manners will improve) but it's very, very, very small," she told Reuters in an interview Wednesday, the day after her book came out.
"Eats, Shoots & Leaves" sold 3 million copies worldwide, its publisher said. Seizing on that success, Gotham Books has rushed out "Talk to the Hand," which Truss calls "a big, systematic moan about modern life."
The New York Times called it "a thin and crabby diatribe" in a book review, adding, "The author may have been good for only one book-length conniption."
In any case Truss said writing her 206-page rant was therapeutic.
"It really, really made me feel better," she said. "I don't know whether I've just dumped it all onto my readers, which could be the case. I may have made everybody else feel bad in the process but I've made myself feel much better."
The Word We Love To Hate - Literally. By Jesse Sheidlower
When I introduce myself as a dictionary editor to a stranger, I can usually count on a few things. The stranger will say, "Oh, I'll have to watch how I talk in front of you." The stranger will ask me about why some word like bling was put into The Dictionary (as though there's only one). And then the stranger will complain about a pet usage peeve, some error perpetrated by members of a disliked group—sportscasters, say, or teenagers, or Americans.Recently, strangers I meet seem particularly peeved by people who use literally to mean figuratively (the ones who say things like "he literally exploded with rage"). Even strangers I don't meet are fixated—two of them run a reasonably informed blog devoted to "tracking abuse of the word 'literally.' "
As is often the case, though, such "abuses" have a long and esteemed history in English.
Language Log: The longue duree is not our forte
An article about English usage by Candace Murphy in the Oct. 25 edition of "Inside Bay Area" (a publication of the Oakland Tribune) underscores the pitfalls of the "Recency Illusion" that Arnold Zwicky has eloquently blogged about in this space.... The article, entitled "Good Words Gone Bad," takes the typical hell-in-a-handbasket approach to "language abuse," despite objections from the very experts that Murphy quotes.
Posted here
Frankenstrunk - The Boston Globe
JUST IN TIME for Halloween, it's back: Yet another edition of ''The Elements of Style," William Strunk and E.B. White's persistently popular guidebook for writers. And this time it's in costume, decked out with dozens of gay, whimsical illustrations by Maira Kalman (interviewed in this week's Examined Life column).But ''The Elements"'s new clothes can't hide the worsening limp and spackled complexion that plague this aging zombie of a book.