Posts Tagged ‘British National Corpus’

  • You say “lovely”, I say “great”

    Posted by on November 11, 2010

    Stan Carey’s post yesterday was a nice reminder of how a word or phrase can suddenly gain widespread currency simply as a result of fashion. And as with any trend, the kudos gained by the user declines in inverse proportion to the number of users – so that in the end the phrase becomes an [...]

    Read the full article

  • Bored of life? What Dr. Johnson didn’t say

    Posted by on March 26, 2009

    Samuel Johnson famously said that “when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life”. This is sometimes misquoted as “when a man is bored with London, he is bored with life” (and sometimes wrongly attributed to Oscar Wilde, but that’s another story). But what the great lexicographer definitely didn’t say was “when [...]

    Read the full article