-
Recent Posts
Recent Comments
Blogroll
- 21C Media Group
- A.Word.A.Day
- All Our Words
- English Language and Usage – Stack Exchange
- Ephems of BLB
- Grammar Girl
- Grammarist
- Grammarphobia
- Grandiloquent Dictionary
- Harmless drudgery
- How to Write Badly Well
- Mr. Verb
- Owen abroad
- Peter Harvey, linguist
- Real Grammar
- Sentence first
- Separated by a common language
- Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar
- The Diacritics
- The Grammar Block
- The Proper English Foundation
- The virtual linguist
- Throw Grammar from the Train
- Wordlady
- World Wide Words
Categories
Author Archives: Louise
Fabrication – something made of metal or lies?
If you do a Google image-search on the word fabrication, you’ll most likely see metal, sparks, and men in masks. But if someone says the word fabrication to you, your brain-image search will probably yield a different crop of … Continue reading
Posted in Words, phrases & expressions
Tagged fabricate, fabrication as construction or deceit
1 Comment
A laundry list for Jim
Jim in New York recently posed a question for Glossophilia: “Dear Glossophile, I’ve never in my life made lists for my laundry. Yet I continue to hear the phrase, “laundry list,” as in “laundry list of complaints.” Whazzup? Did folks … Continue reading
BBC English: a flawed quiz – the questionable question
I wrote in yesterday’s post about the BBC’s English quiz, which wasn’t up to scratch in my book. My score was docked because of my answer to question number 3, concerning a certain androgynous sibling called Hilary, which went as … Continue reading
BBC English: a flawed quiz?
The BBC’s News Magazine posted a grammar quiz today – supposedly to test how much we know “about apostrophes, semi-colons and dangling participles”. At least one of the questions seems to contain a fatal flaw, as far as I can … Continue reading
Sarcasm and jealousy: the darker sides of irony and envy (and the irony of Aristotle)
In last night’s production of Giulio Cesare at the Met, our hero — after singing of his love for Lydia-aka-Cleopatra and then finding her vanished — declared that the Gods must have been “jealous of his happiness” to have so whisked her away from him. Was … Continue reading
May Day
The Milkmaid’s Life Upon the first of May With garlands fresh and gay They nimbly their feet do ply, In honour of Th’ milking paile. – c1640 (anon.) The Humours of May Day What Frolicks are here So … Continue reading
Oneword or two? Everyday and forever …
“May you stay forever young,” sang Bob Dylan in 1974. “I’m forever blowing bubbles,” chant the Liverpool football fans in their improbable anthem. These two forevers, in their wildly different musical contexts, also happen to have different meanings — and … Continue reading
Posted in Grammar, Spelling, Yanks vs. Brits
Tagged alright all right, everyday every day, for ever or forever
2 Comments
It’s not just beans that meanz Heinz
When Peggy made her saucy pitch to Heinz on Sunday’s Mad Men — following her former boss’s more cryptic (and in my opinion more classy) presentation to the condiment giant — she drew an interesting distinction between two names of … Continue reading
Posted in Etymology, Words, phrases & expressions
Tagged catchup, catsup, Heinz, ketchup, Peggy ketchup
Leave a comment
It’s Talk Like Shakespeare Day
It’s William Shakespeare’s 449th birthday. Happy Birthday Will! Honoring this special occasion, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emmanuel has officially proclaimed April 23, 2013 Talk Like Shakespeare Day: “Everyone is encouraged to express themselves through the incorporation of Shakespearean language and dialect.” … Continue reading
Who’s Miranda?
There’s much discussion and speculation about the likelihood and legality of suspected Boston bomber Dzhokar Tsarnaev being questioned without being read his “Miranda warning”, since investigators want to invoke a rare public safety exemption. We all know, from watching movies … Continue reading
Posted in Etymology, Words, phrases & expressions
Tagged Miranda rights, Miranda warning, mirandize
Leave a comment