March 12, 2026
The philosopher Bill Lycan (an old friend, once my colleague at Ohio State, a prolific writer, and an enormously entertaining person) came to my mind when a friend was amazed that I managed to write at least one essay a day — every day of the year — as a posting on this blog (this posting is the second for today, and it’s not yet 9 am; I’m on a roll). At least once at Ohio State, a student asked Bill how he managed to publish so much (perhaps, like Vishnu, he could write with four arms at once). Bill’s wonderful reply:
I have a very high tolerance for error.
This was, in fact, a deeply serious reply, worth some reflection.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Academic life, Errors, People, Philosophy | Leave a Comment »
March 12, 2026
adj. flamboyant: (of a person or their behavior) tending to attract attention because of their exuberance, confidence, and stylishness … [from NOAD]
Last Saturday I made the acquaintance (in the first Crooked Media show on MS NOW) of this exemplar of masculine flamboyance, presenting himself in this IMDb photo as an impish hunk:
Jon Favreau (advertising Crooked Media’s Pod Save America show)
Inexplicably, I seem not to have noticed JF before, though he’s someone of great substance. Meanwhile, his performance on the show was hugely entertaining — cutting criticism of our overlord Grabpussy and his administration, flamboyantly delivered. The deep moral commitment of Stephen Colbert performed in a wildly expressive style.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Effeminacy, Facial expression and gesture, Gender and sexuality, Homosexuality, Language and politics, Language of sex, Morality, Movies and tv, Performance, Personas | Leave a Comment »
March 11, 2026
The Zippy strip for today, 3/11, all about sharing a personal name (with some intrusions of the name Melvin):
The large generalization is that mentioning two people together implicates some special relationship, even more so if they share a name (personal name or family name)
In the first panel we start with two authors, from widely separated times, in different genres (plays vs. fiction), and with hugely different styles — but both with the personal name William.
The personal-name sharing goes on with wildly different characters, oddly yoked to one another: Oscar Wilde the writer and Oscar the Grouch the Muppet; Jackson Pollock the painter and Jackson Browne the rock musician (whose career started with the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band); Mona Freeman the actress (and painter) and the Mona Lisa (the subject of Leonardo da Vinci’s famous painting).
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Coordination, Iconicity, Linguistics in the comics, Names | 4 Comments »
March 10, 2026
My main helper these days has lived and worked in the US for many years, but he’s a native of Fiji. I call him Isaac in my postings, but his actual personal name is the Fijian version of the name, Aisake, and the syntax of his native language Fijian turns out to have lots of characteristics that are a surprise to, say, speakers of English. So I offer you some notes on the language, building on the material in the Wikipedia article on the language.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Categorization, Fijian, Possession, Pronouns, Word order | 1 Comment »
March 9, 2026
On 3/7 (on this blog) I posted “The travails of etymology”, about the sources of some phrasal verbs meaning ‘to die’. Which elicited from Troy Anderson friendly but anxious e-mail on 3/8:
dai s’la (hello friend/cousin, in Miluk),
Your last post on Facebook makes me think you’re thinking you’re about done? I’m sad we haven’t kept the conversation going.
Know I’m here rooting for you.
(The reference to the language Miluk will get clarified eventually, when I tell you more about TA.)
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Death and dying, Etymology, Etymythology, Humor, Language and religion, Lexicography, Music, My life, Poetry | Leave a Comment »
March 7, 2026
Thoughts inspired by a comment by Robert Coren on my 3/6 posting “Checking out”, in which I responded darkly to the information from a grocery-delivery service that you can:
Add items until your shopper checks out
by understanding the intransitive phrasal verb check out in it not as the intended sense
To complete the procedure required in order to register one’s departure from a location or venue, esp. a hotel, at the end of a stay or visit. Also more generally: to leave, to depart. [OED‘s 1b for check out]
but as OED‘s 4a ‘to die’. RC offered a speculation on the etymology of the mortal sense of a different intransitive phrasal verb with out, peg out:
4a reminds me of a phrase that I encountered in Dorothy Sayers’ The Nine Tailors, where “peg out” is used as a colloquialism for “die”; I assume that (1) it comes from the process of being victorious in a cribbage game (which makes it a rather odd metaphor, actually), and (2) it was standard usage among some portion of the British population in the early 20th century.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Ambiguity, Etymology, Etymythology, Humor, Movies and tv, Toys and games | 7 Comments »
March 6, 2026
The Wayno / Piraro Bizarro of 3/5, in which the effusive Cat in the Hat of Dr. Seuss / Theodor Geisel meets the elusive Waldo of Martin Handford’s Where’s Waldo? Under the sign of red stripes, in two styles (Wayno’s title: “Stylistic Differences”):
The Cat stands out, Waldo blends in (if you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Wayno says there are 3 in this strip — see this Page)
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Clothing, Comic conventions, Costumes, Linguistics in the comics | Leave a Comment »
March 6, 2026
About the night of 3/4-5, last night, different from all other nights in my experience, in its schedule and in the content of my dreams, suggesting that I spent the night in the grip of feel-good hormones rather than stress hormones. And awoke in calm delight.
First, some background, about earlier nights. Then about the schedule of last night’s sleep; about the content of last night’s dreams; and an appended note about feel-good hormones and stress hormones.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Dreams, Language and medicine, Language and the body, My life, Sleep | Leave a Comment »
March 6, 2026
A standard notice from the Instacart home-delivery service about a grocery order in progress from the Safeway supermarket:
You’ve still got time to shop
Add items until your shopper checks out
The intent is to convey the oldest intransitive phrasal verb check out: you can add items until your shopper has completed their search for items, informed the service of this, and left the store — 1b in the OED list below. But there are three other readings for check out, and the one that came to my twisted mind first was 4c ‘to die’. Evoking images of the fatal grocery order, which will never get delivered because the shopper dropped dead. (Presumably, the 4c reading had recently come by me in some other context, so it was somehow salient to me; my imagination is not normally so dark.)
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Ambiguity, Context, Intention, Lexical semantics, Pragmatics, Salience | 4 Comments »
March 6, 2026
From NOAD:
noun sinecure: a position requiring little or no work but giving the holder status or financial benefit: political sinecures for the supporters of ministers. ORIGIN mid 17th century: from Latin sine cura ‘without care’.
And now a juicy bit of political news as it appeared on Facebook today (4/6):
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Academic life, Administration, Language and politics, Naming | 5 Comments »
