Four cartoons today: a Dilbert, a Bizarro, a Mother Goose and Grimm, and a Scenes from the Multiverse:
Archive for the ‘Words’ Category
Monday quartet
March 31, 2014Triple play
March 30, 2014Three varied cartoons fot the day: Rhymes With Orange, Pearls Before Swine, Dilbert.
Two Sunday cartoons
February 16, 2014Two cartoons for today: a Pearls Before Swine on some visual conventions in the comics, and a Dilbert on telling stories, through images and words.
Word counts
January 25, 2014Over on Language Log, Mark Liberman has repeatedly scathed writers who criticize public figures over their word use, especially 1st person singular pronouns, which they take to be a sign of self-involvement or grandiosity. Mark notes, again and again, that these writers never do actual counts, but instead report their impressions — but Mark does the stats, and again and again finds the impressions flat wrong. Now a report in which someone actually cites the counts.
Via Gregory Ward, this Salon piece of the 24th by Katie McDonough, “President Obama has used the word “gay” in official remarks 272 times since taking office: His predecessor George W. Bush said “gay” twice, once in a speech denouncing marriage equality”.
Who Made That?
January 20, 2014Very brief mention: exomoon
January 10, 2014Exoplanets are planets in solar systems outside our own. So I guess it was inevitable that when it was discovered that exoplanets had moons, they would be called exomoons. I discovered this delicious word in the January 2014 issue of Scientific American (p. 40), but no doubt it’s been around for some time.
The word for the day
November 7, 2013On ADS-L: on Nov 7, 2013, at 7:58 AM, Bill Mullins wrote:
Subject: Re: hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia
Pardon a direct question. Is this fear of “666”?
Hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia (derived from Ancient Greek roots ἑξακόσιοι [hexakósioi, “six hundred”], ἑξήκοντα [hexékonta, “sixty”], and ἕξ [héx, “six”]; literally meaning “fear of [the number] six hundred sixty-six”) is the fear that originated from the Biblical verse Revelation 13:18, which indicates that the number 666 is the Number of the Beast, linked to Satan or the Anti-Christ.
screwage
October 10, 2013Today’s Bizarro, with the suggestive word screwage:
It turns out that screwage is attested in at least three senses, involving differet bases screw and different uses of the derivational suffix -age.
selfie
September 27, 2013From a friend yesterday:
Recently the word “selfie” has been showing up, referring to images taken of oneself, usually with a cell phone.
I was wondering how long it takes for a word such as this to become accepted and recognized by you authorities on words.
Two matters here: the word selfie; and acceptance and recognition by authorities on words.