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Archive for May, 2012

sum / summon

May 31, 2012

In a Facebook comment on my latest mishearing posting, Billy Green offered an example that is surely not a mishearing, but might be an eggcorn or a lexical confusion: sum up for summon up. Billy’s example:

Today, I finally summed up the courage to break up with my abusively controlling girlfriend. I don’t know what I was thinking, but instead of leaving as a free man, I left as an engaged one. (link)

Not in the ecdb, but it came up on the Eggcorn Forum in 2007. And the reverse subtitution, summon up for sum up, came up there in 2010. Commenters characterized the first as an eggcorn, but the semantic relationship is unclear.

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Posted in Eggcorns, Errors | 2 Comments »

allow to be taxed

May 31, 2012

Tina Brown this morning on NPR’s Morning Edition, on Queen Elizabeth II:

“It was just a terrible year,” Brown says, “that ended with Windsor Castle going up in flames and her having to really decide for the first time that the royal family would allow to be taxed.

That’s intransitive allow, understood as a reflexive transitive (‘allow themselves to be taxed’). New to me, but not (as it turns out) very rare.

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Posted in Argument structure, Syntax | 5 Comments »

Picksboiger cartoons

May 31, 2012

Just scanned in an editorial cartoon (by Rob Rogers of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette) on the plight of the US Postal Service — no particular linguistic relevance — and in checking up on Rogers, I came across a recent cartoon featuring Pittsburgher English (or at least the local stereotype of it).

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Posted in Linguistics in the comics, Variation | 1 Comment »

Annals of mishearing

May 30, 2012

No sooner did I post on a word-division mishearing — black eye heard as black guy, here — than Jeff Runner posted on Facebook with a cartoon variant of a famous mishearing, from the site ShoeboxBlog.com:

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Posted in Linguistics in the comics, Mishearings | 3 Comments »

Wooden Hebrew magnets

May 30, 2012

My friend Max Vasilatos has been creating wooden fridge magnets for various alphabets. She’s a woodworker, and the project is an exercise in art and craft. Yes, you can get plastic fridge magnets for a number of alphabets, but that’s not the point.

From last month, the Hebrew alefbet as carved by Max:

The medium determined many of her choices, so her letters are more stylized than, say, the plastic Megcos Magnetic Hebrew Letters.

Note: The Hebrew alefbet has 22 letters, but five of them are written differently when they appear at the end of a word (rather than at the beginning or in the middle), so that there are 27 different forms. Here’s the full alefbet as printed by hand:

Posted in Writing systems | Leave a Comment »

Annals of masculinity: scent department

May 30, 2012

Just on the tail of my posting about masculine presents for Father’s Day (here) comes a link from Gwendolyn Dean on Facebook to the Yankee Candle site, offering “Man Candles”. Four manly scents:

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Posted in Gender and sexuality | Leave a Comment »

Annals of masculinity

May 30, 2012

Father’s Day approaches, so we’re getting ads featuring things conventionally associated with masculinity: ties, shaving, hunting, fishing, golf, sports fandom, auto racing, tools, and so on. Today, from the New York Times store:

Special Father’s Day Savings From The Times

Infield Dirt From 30 Ballparks in Collector’s Box

Give Dad a piece of every ballpark in the big leagues! Each handcrafted wood box contains 30 game-used dirt capsules — one from each MLB stadium.

Ah, game-used dirt. Admire it, sniff it, run it through your fingers. Feel the manliness!

Posted in Gender and sexuality | 1 Comment »

Lexical gap filled!

May 30, 2012

Question: Given that an event that is depicted in a movie (or television show) is said to have happened on-screen, how do you refer to an event that is depicted in a comic strip?

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Posted in Gender and sexuality, Innovations, Lexicography, Verbing | 6 Comments »

Raymond Briggs

May 29, 2012

More on “graphic novels”, now in the person of Raymond Briggs, who straddles illustrated comic books for children and graphic novels (in the broad sense) for adults:

Raymond Redvers Briggs (born 18 January 1934) is an English illustrator, cartoonist, graphic novelist and author, who has achieved critical and popular success among adults and children. He is best known for his story The Snowman, which is shown every Christmas on British television in cartoon form and on the stage as a musical. (link)

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Posted in Art/lit/music/film, Linguistics in the comics | 3 Comments »