Posts Tagged ‘wordplay’

  • You turning?

    Posted by on November 14, 2011

    Last week’s favourite entry on the Open Dictionary, reverse ferret, is a colourful way of talking about a complete change of policy, a change that is all the more startling because the person or organisation who changes their mind was so strongly in favour of the original policy. There are other ways of describing such [...]

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  • Winning wordplay

    Posted by on February 15, 2011

    Many people around the world have enjoyed watching the triumphant scenes in Tahrir Square these last few days, as the Egyptian people celebrated the removal of their unpopular leader, Hosni Mubarak. Check out this great article from Ben Zimmer, all about how the Egyptians used wordplay on their protest signs to help get the message [...]

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  • Two short legs and a silly point: learn (about) English through cricket

    Posted by on March 24, 2009

    Cricket is the most quintessentially English game, but is famously incomprehensible to anyone who hasn’t been brought up with it. (The phrase in the title here makes perfect sense to an aficionado of the game but could easily be misinterpreted by anyone else.) George W. Bush – not the sharpest knife in the drawer – [...]

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