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The sense of things improper 20 May 2013 | 01:12 pm
Alison Dye’s novel The Sense of Things (1994) has a conversation between the narrator, Joanie, and her friend-to-be, Jesus, in which Jesus nervously corrects himself twice in an effort to speak more p...
Mick Jagger, amateur linguist 16 May 2013 | 09:34 am
Mick Jagger has appeared on Sentence first before, in my post about “bad” grammar in song lyrics. But I was surprised to learn that the Rolling Stones singer and occasional actor is something of an am...
Bookmash: Cat and Mouse Semantics 14 May 2013 | 09:36 am
It’s a couple of months since I made a bookmash, so here’s a new one. Click to enlarge: * * Cat and Mouse Semantics Fledgling sense And sensibility, Cat and mouse semantics, Nomad codes, Walkabout to ...
New language blog: Caxton 10 May 2013 | 10:45 am
Caxton is a new blog about language from Barrie England, an Oxford graduate who has studied English literature, foreign languages, and older varieties of English. It is named after printing pioneer Wi...
Story Bud? Funding the feature film 8 May 2013 | 08:47 pm
Remember Story Bud?, the video of Irish slang and colloquialisms I shared here in February? Director Jenny Keogh has filmed a second clip, How’s About Ye?, in the same style, and it’s great fun altoge...
Link love: language (53) 7 May 2013 | 08:06 pm
To keep at bay the ever-present danger of running out of things to read on the internet, here’s a selection of language-related links I’ve enjoyed in recent weeks. For hardboiled hacks and editors: Gr...
Reductio ad Godwinum 7 May 2013 | 12:47 pm
Anyone who has spent some time online, especially in forums or social media where chat and debate predominate, is likely to have come across references to Godwin’s Law, created by Mike Godwin in 1990:...
The trouble with ‘fulsome’ 4 May 2013 | 11:11 am
The word fulsome is used quite regularly by public figures in Ireland, often politicians promising or demanding apologies. Whenever this happens, it is criticised as an “incorrect” usage: see for exam...
Inspiring etymology, and ‘stakeholder’ 1 May 2013 | 08:56 am
I have two new posts up at Macmillan Dictionary Blog. Inspiring etymology is a brief survey of breath-related words and phrases, anatomical and metaphorical, including the familiar constellation of te...
“Fortune is bald behind” 28 Apr 2013 | 12:10 pm
The Chicago Tribune had a brief article in January on baby naming trends, specifically the practice of naming children after places. It mentions the importance of timing: “Fashionable names risk a kai...
