פוסטים שתוייגו ’language

Embrace and Extend

בקטגוריות: Uncategorized

21 Jan 2007

Do you know when to google will be a fully established verb in the language? When you can use it for other things except for the Google(tm) search engine. “I googled it on MSN Search and found the page I wanted”. “I googled it by author name on Amazon – turns out the title wasn’t […]

As original as apple pie

בקטגוריות: Uncategorized

10 Dec 2006

From a review of Tom Waits’s music in The Guardian, the writer seems insistent on contradicting himself.After a paragraph detailing Waits’s basis in Kurt Weill’s music, he goes on to say this: But the comparison [to Weill] undersells Waits’s originality, for there’s something almost Shakespearean about the breadth of Tom Waits’s take on modern American […]

Random Etymologies of the Day – M

בקטגוריות: Uncategorized

3 Dec 2006

1. Macabre – derived from “Maccabees”. The common meaning is derived from their gruesome martyrdom at the hands of the greeks. 2. Mesmersize – from Franz Anton Mesmer, Austrian physician and hypnotist 3. Matrix – from Latin. matrix (gen. matricis) “pregnant animal”. (via the Online Etymology Dictionary – and I was just trying to verify […]

Paperless Dragons

בקטגוריות: Uncategorized

21 Nov 2006

Drakewurst It seems the Trading Standards body in the UK have ordered Welsh sausagiers Black Mountain Smokery to change the name of their Welsh Dragon Sausages. It seems that despite my immediate understanding they are NOT, in fact, made with dragon meat. Dragon meat is rare in Wales, it seems, despite it being their official […]

עברית, הרגילה לכתיבה בכתב חסר, מתאימה הרבה יותר לסגנון הכתיבה ה-SMSי המתוקצר. אפשר להביע יותר בפחות אותיות. קיצוץ התנועות באנגלית צורם הרבה יותר. מצד שני, האם השימוש הנרחב ב-vowels באנגלית משפר את יכולת הכיווץ ע”י אלגוריתמי כיווץ כאלה ואחרים?

Buffalo!

בקטגוריות: Uncategorized

18 Sep 2006

Via my brother comes this delightful, impossible and completely grammatical English sentence: Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo Try to figure out what it means. I’ll just give a quick hint and say that there are three different lexical values of ‘buffalo’ here. If you think you’ve got it, got too frustrated or […]

בקטגוריות: Uncategorized

5 Aug 2006

Cockney rhyming slang is one of the more fascinating forms of slang I’m familiar with, because there’s a total disconnection between the word used and the word meant, and you have to know the original phrase that made the connection. There’s really very little way to divine the meaning without prior knowledge. It’s all so… […]


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