Back in 1914, Shaw’s Pygmalion opened in England. There was an uproar, even before the opening, because the press knew that a certain word would be used by the main female character. I recently bought (for a dollar, thank you very much) the Cambridge Encyclopedia of English, which reprinted an article from an outraged newspaper […]
Archive | Language/Lit
Almost, but not quite, entirely unlike something I'll read
I guess that money can make anything happen. Douglas Adams is dead, but next October there’ll be another installment of the Hitchhiker’s Guide trilogy, this time written by a non-Douglas Adams person. The BBC brings us the story, without so much as a raised eyebrow. This doesn’t make me happy at all.
Welcome to Oz
I’m reading The Fatal Shore, by Robert Hughes, about the settling of Australia. It’s very good, and much more interesting than the blurbs make it sound. Hughes writes with humor and doesn’t leave out the juicy bits. I didn’t know much about the convicts in Australia, but I was completely wrong about how it all […]
A Kid is a Child
While titling my last post, I remembered a debate that seems to be important to some people about the word “kid.” Some people don’t like referring to human children as “kids.” They want “kid” only to refer to a goat (or possibly deer or antelope). For example, when someone asked a question on the kiplinger.com […]
Happiness
I’m finally getting around to reading The Best American Short Stories 2007, which I posted about earlier. Two things of note: 1. Stephen King, who picked the final 20 stories, wrote the introduction that made me want the book in the first place. Re-reading it, I see that he used a semicolon on the first […]
Adventures in Repetitive. (Saying the Same Thing Twice)
My edition of J.C. Masterman’s book, “The Double-Cross System,” has an introduction, followed by a preface, followed by a forward. The Introduction, written in this century, spends some time discussing a certain series of events that’s slightly related to the book. Then you get to the preface, written in 1973 or something, which discusses the […]
Wize Up
We say “fall” and the British say, “autumn.” But they changed it, not us. They used to say “fall” in England, too. I just found out that the same goes for spelling “organize” with an s instead of a z. From AskOxford.com: Q: Are spellings like ‘privatize’ and ‘organize’ Americanisms? A: No, not really. When […]
Business-Speak
I know that everyone jokes about the idiotic and purposely hyper-syllabic jargon in the business world. I’m on a conference call right now. RIGHT NOW. A colleague was asked, in nicer language than that below: “Did you do what you said you were going to do?” And she responded in exactly the following words: “To […]
Avast, ye scallywag!
I’m reading Under the Black Flag, by David Cordingly. It’s a nonfiction look at pirates in the 17th and 18th centuries. Pirates! I’d guess I’m on page 2 or something, and I’ve already learned the difference between buccaneers, corsairs, and privateers. I bet you don’t know the difference. But I do! Flipping through it a […]
Giddyup
Every once in a while, someone will mention “the teamsters,” and I’ll wonder… How did they come to be called “teamsters”? Tonight, as I read a bit of the early section of U.S. Grant’s memoirs, I get to a point where he says, “… it is not probable that any of the men who reported […]