(Not about language, but family life.)
A photo from a family dinner on March 19th, showing an animated conversation (at the Three Seasons in Palo Alto) between Steven Levine (visiting from Minneapolis) and my grand-daughter Opal:
(Photo by Ned Deily.)
Much Vietnamese food and sushi was consumed.
Posted in My life, Not about language | Leave a Comment »
Two recent items: misdemeanant and moreish — both new to me, but very much not new.
Posted in Words | 4 Comments »
The NYT continues its program of taboo avoidance by indirection — see “The tone but not the words”, here — this time in Margalit Fox’s obituary for writer Harry Crews:
To critics who taxed him with sensationalism, Mr. Crews — a plainspoken ex-Marine, ex-boxer, ex-bouncer and ex-barker — replied, in effect, that it took decadence to lampoon decadence. His actual replies are largely unprintable.
In effect is especially nice; largely unprintable strikes me as unnecessary, especially given plainspoken.
As a bonus: Crews’s
novels out-Gothic Southern Gothic by conjuring a world of hard-drinking, punch-throwing, snake-oil-selling characters whose physical, mental, social and sexual deviations render them somehow entirely normal and eminently sympathetic
I wonder if there’s a name for the piling up of synthetic compounds in -ing as modifiers, as here, and in the title of Geoff Nunberg’s 2006 book:
Talking right: How conservatives turned liberalism into a tax-raising, latte-drinking, sushi-eating, New York Times-reading, body-piercing, Hollywood-loving, left-wing freak show.
(Then there’s the out-X X construction.)
Posted in Derivation, Synthetic compounds, Taboo language and slurs | 3 Comments »
In the NYT on the 27th, an obituary by Paul Vitello:
Anita Steckel, Artist Who Created Erotic Works, Dies at 82
Anita Steckel, whose playful and sometimes unsettling erotic works were little known outside the mostly underground world of feminist art until she was discovered in her 70s and her creations acclaimed as masterly and groundbreaking, died on March 16 in Manhattan.
Posted in Art/lit/music/film, Death notices, Gender and sexuality | Leave a Comment »
In the NYT on the 29th, an obituary by Christopher Lehmann-Haupt:
Earl Scruggs, Bluegrass Pioneer, Dies at 88
Earl Scruggs, the bluegrass banjo player whose hard-driving picking style influenced generations of musicians and helped shape the sound of 20th-century country music with his guitar-strumming partner, Lester Flatt, died on Wednesday in a Nashville hospital.
Posted in Death notices, Music | 1 Comment »
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