Archive for August, 2011
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Posted by Laine Redpath Cole on August 31, 2011
pegacorn (noun) a creature that is half pegasus (a horse with wings) and half unicorn Submitted by: Lana from United States I’m only choosing this word because I am hoping (for my sake, certainly not for yours) that your mind might work in the same way as mine, might follow the same pathways and fire [...]
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Posted by Stan Carey on August 30, 2011
The Virtual Linguist wrote an interesting post recently about Pygmalion, focusing on the controversial language in George Bernard Shaw’s much-loved play. The expressions that provoked such consternation almost a century ago seem unremarkable to most modern readers and theatre-goers, yet one of them remains oddly controversial, as we will see. First there is the relatively [...]
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Posted by Stephen Bullon on August 29, 2011
Last week, we looked at which towns or cities sent the most visitors to macmillandictionary.com. We’ve had a few guesses at which city is 10th in the list, some on the Facebook page and just one (!) in the comments section here. And no one guessed right. The answer is … Thanh Pho Ho Chi [...]
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Posted by Tony Voss on August 29, 2011
Stan Carey’s post – Problems with pronouns – reminded us language is sometimes a blunt instrument, as in the use of they as an ungendered personal pronoun. We find it hard to think of a person without thinking of the group to which they/she/he belongs. The possessive of the neuter pronoun, its, seems to have [...]
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Posted by Caroline Short on August 26, 2011
This week’s language in the news post looks at the origins of music genre categories. Whether invented by a musician or named for their band, derived from an album title or evolved from a record label, musical categories are always a point of contention. This feature from The Guardian looks at the roots of some [...]
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Posted by Laine Redpath Cole on August 26, 2011
This post contains a weekly selection of links related to language and words in the news. These can be items from the latest news, blog posts or interesting websites related to global English and language change. Please contact us if you would like to submit a link for us to include. Global English Iraqi aircraft [...]
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Posted by Laine Redpath Cole on August 24, 2011
lazy Susan (noun) a rotating tray placed on a table; as it goes round, the food passes by each seat at the table, so that convenient self-service is possible They served their food on a lazy Susan. (Submitted by: Bubble from Germany on 08/05/2011) OK, so this is not a new word. But it’s weird, [...]
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Posted by Michael Rundell on August 24, 2011
Though coined in the 1930s, the expression political correctness came of age during the Eighties, initially – as we saw in Part 1 – as a neutral or even positive term. Nowadays, it is an all-purpose term of disparagement, and its application goes far beyond the realm of language, which was its original focus. For some [...]
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Posted by Stan Carey on August 22, 2011
In a recent post about the role of dictionaries in matters of language and gender, Michael Rundell wrote that they “shouldn’t take sides in any area of language use” but that “in some cases this is unavoidable”. Dictionaries record how language is used, so they can’t simply ignore sexist and discriminatory usages – or new [...]
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Posted by Stephen Bullon on August 22, 2011
Just for a change, I thought that instead of reporting on what words people have been looking up, I’d see where visitors to the site are coming from. August is usually a quiet time of year, with educational holidays in many countries across the globe, but traffic is still buoyant, and the visitor data show [...]
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