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Welcome to the Language Blog Roundup, in which we bring you the highlights from our favorite language blogs and the latest in word news and culture.

At Language Log, there was much contention over Oxford English Dictionary’s word of the year, squeezed middle. Geoffrey Pullum thought the WOTY should be a word and not a phrase, while Ben Zimmer thought the WOTY need not be a word. Mark Liberman was also puzzled by the OED’s choice, but basically agreed with Mr. Zimmer, and also suggested a separate phrase of the year.

Eric Baković considered Michelle Bachmann’s lack of a gaffe and the importance of context; while Mr. Pullum took on the politics of prescriptivism, and Mr. Liberman talked peever politics. Meanwhile, Arnold Zwicky rounded up Language Log’s peever posts.

Over at the Boston Globe, Mark Peters wrote about why “personhood” is powerful; The New York Times discussed the lexicon of Occupy Wall Street; and BBC Magazine wondered about wealth words and who exactly count as “the rich.” The Macmillan Dictionary blog finished up Class English month with posts from Dan Clayton on the language of the “common people”; John Wells on the rise of the “r-ful” class; and a roundup from Laine Redpath Cole of words loaded with the most class content. At Johnson there were posts about legislative acronyms; that “vile Americanism,” the word likely; and untranslatability and forced distinctions.

In words of the week, Erin McKean spotted appumentary (“an app with the same sort of material you’d find in a documentary film”); BYOD (“bring your own device”); holothurian (another word for sea cucumber); and postprandial somnolence, “after dinner sleepiness.” Fritinancy noticed sharrow, “a road marking indicating that the road is to be shared by cars and bicycles”; caramel, of which there is disagreement about both etymology and pronunciation; and the loneliest wine in the world, which would actually go perfectly with this very lonely cookbook (but perhaps not this one of terrible banana recipes).

Stan Carey explored how the Klingon language was invented; hybrid etymology; and strange usage of the word too. The Virtual Linguist noted that Brits are saying thank you less (though are no less polite), and examined another word of the year. Sesquiotica explained haplology, “removing one of two sequential identical or similar sounds or syllables,” and celebrated his 1000th post with a discussion about milli. Superlinguo had a case of the hiccoughs but could still appreciate President Obama’s attempt at Australian lingo.

The Dialect Blog explored the changing dialect of hip-hop; the different meanings of geezer; noun phrases and stress; and how people think they make sounds. The Word Spy spotted drunkorexia, “eating less to offset the calories consumed while drinking alcohol”; diabulimia, “an eating disorder in which a diabetic person attempts to lose weight by regularly omitting insulin injections”; smartphoneography, “photography using a smartphone’s built-in camera”; and mailstrom, “an overwhelming amount of email; an email deluge.”

Smithsonian Magazine took a look at the science behind sarcasm, while the Richard Dawkins Foundation explored language and evolution. The Library as Incubator Project seeks to connect artists and libraries, while the British Library has made 300 years of newspaper archives available online. Meanwhile, X-Men writer Chris Claremont donated his archives to Columbia University’s Rare Book and Manuscript Library, and the library phantom of Edinburgh, Scotland has returned, leaving behind exquisite paper sculptures.

In author news, Wednesday marked Mark Twain’s 176th birthday. The Morgan Library celebrated with an online exhibition; Flavorwire reminded us of a lovely love note from Twain to his wife; and Mental Floss listed 10 quotes Twain didn’t really say. Google honored the author with a doodle depicting a scene from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, while we offered a list that was more Huck Finnian.

We were excited to see Maragret Atwood’s own illustrations for her latest book, In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination, as well as Madeleine L’Engle’s first story, written when she was 15 and included in the collection, First Words: Earliest Writing from Favorite Contemporary Authors. Slate gave us a brief history of invented languages in music, while The NY Times mused on traffic warnings in haiku. The Independent imagined food writing in different authors’ voices; McSweney’s translated one sentence into multiple literary genres; and BlogHer Offered these 17 gifts for grammar geeks.

Our favorite new website is That Is Priceless, which pairs classic art with hilarious captions. Meanwhile, our friends over at Bab.La are searching for the most beautiful English word. Help them out!

That’s it for this installment! Keep up with our blog by subscribing to the blog feed or follow us on Twitter.

We’re happy to announce we’ve made some updates and improvements to our site.

Feedback

Your feedback is important to us and so we’ve made it even easier for you.

Wherever you are in the site (except, for now, the blog), at the top left you’ll see a gray Feedback tag. To send us a comment, just click on the tag and fill in the dialog box.

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In addition, if you have a picture uploaded in Gravatar, it will automatically appear beside your user name.

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Definitions are now grouped by dictionary source.

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As on the Profile Page, recent comments are the focus of the Community page. You can still also find:

• recently loved (or favorited) words
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Lists

Comments are back! You can now add comments to your own and anyone’s lists.

You can also now see the list’s Contributors and how many words each Contributor has added to that particular list.

To see a word’s stats, just hover it.

You’ll see number of other lists that word appears in, and the number of comments the word has.

Also, you can now add multiple words at once to each list, by separating each word with a semicolon.

Go to the bottom of the list to add words.

We’ll be rolling out more updates over the next several weeks. As always, let us know what you think, either via the Feedback tag or by emailing us at feedback@wordnik.com

We’re happy to announce the addition of Gregg Carrier to Wordnik!

Gregg joins us as a Senior Server Engineer and comes to us from DreamWorks Animation, where he worked on core service infrastructure for their next generation of animation tools. Gregg has also taught community college CS classes, beertended in the Anderson Valley, worked at a winery, was a park ranger at Shenandoah National Park, and has been a ski instructor!

In his non-server-engineering time, Gregg homebrews (and has for 18 years!), loves scuba diving, hiking, and camping (and is waiting for his two little boys to get big enough to do those things, too). He also plays the ukulele and spins glow poi. Gregg (the extra ‘g’ is for ‘great’) can be reached at gregg@wordnik.com.

While the television show The Soup brings you “the strange, obscure and totally unbelievable moments in pop culture, celebrity news and reality TV,” Word Soup brings you those strange, obscure, unbelievable (and sometimes NSFW) words.

buffering

Jon Stewart [on Herman Cain blanking on President Obama’s actions in Libya]: “It’s like he’s trying to download the answer. It’s just that little ball spinning. He’s just buffering.”

November 15, 2011, The Daily Show

Buffering refers to the holding or collecting of data in a buffer, “a device or area used to store data temporarily,” often seen in the loading of online videos. In this context the word has the figurative meaning of “stalling while trying to think of an answer.”

dipsomaniac

The Swede: “When harlots and dipsomaniacs are killed, I’m not concerned.”

“Immortal Mathematics,” Hell on Wheels, November 13, 2011

A dipsomaniac is “one who suffers from an irresistible and insatiable craving for intoxicants.” The word contains the Greek dipsa, “thirst,” plus mania, “madness.”

Dudesgiving

Schmidt: “It’s our thing, Jess. Dudesgiving.”

“Thanksgiving,” New Girl, November 15, 2011

Dudesgiving is a portmanteau or blend of dude and Thanksgiving, and implies celebrating the holiday with only men. Another Thanksgiving portmanteau is Franksgiving, named for President Franklin Roosevelt who in 1939 “moved Thanksgiving one week earlier than normal, believing that doing so would help bolster retail sales during one of the final years of the Great Depression.”

five-0

Eddie: “Whoa there five-0. Don’t you have a partner for this?”

“Beeware,” Grimm, November 11, 2011

Five-0 (pronounced “five oh”) is slang for “police” and seems to come from the police drama, Hawaii Five-0.

forewithal

Moderator: “How do you prevent the European crisis from becoming a problem on Wall Street?”

Rick Perry: “Well, the French and the Germans have the economic forewithal to deal with this, they have the economy.”

Republican Foreign Policy Debate, November 12, 2011

Mr. Perry appears to have conflated the words fortitude, “strength,” and wherewithal, “the necessary means, especially financial means.”

gaffe crack

Jon Stewart: “Daddy needs another gaffe crack.”

November 15, 2011, The Daily Show

A gaffe is “a clumsy social error; a faux pas.” Stewart has become addicted to political pundits’ gaffes (such as Rick Perry’s oops), as one would with crack cocaine.

happy ending

Phil: “I know you were reluctant to get that massage, but I think we can both agree it had a happy ending.”

Jay: “Please don’t say that.”

“After the Fire,” Modern Family, November 16, 2011

The meaning of happy ending is twofold here. While Phil means a “conclusion in which all loose ends are tied up and all main characters are content,” Jay’s interpretation is of the meaning, “a handjob,” known to be given at the end of some massages.

Hexenbiest

Adalinde: “It won’t just be a Grimm killing a Hexenbiest. It’ll be a cop letting an innocent woman die.”

“Beeware,” Grimm, November 11, 2011

A Hexenbiest is a ferocious demon-like creature with great strength. Hexen comes from the German hexen, “to hex,” which is related to Hexe, “witch.” Biest is German for “beast.” Hexengeist schnapps is a type of alcoholic drink, where geist means “ghost or spirit.” Thus, Hexengeist may be translated as “witch’s spirit.”

mellifer

Nick: “We’re following two guys who turn out to be mellifers.”

“Beeware,” Grimm, November 11, 2011

A mellifer is a bee-like creature that can take on human form. Melli is the Greek word for “honey.” The queen mellifer is named Melissa, Greek for “honeybee.” Mellifluous means “sweetly or smoothly flowing, especially in sound.”

methstaurant

Homer [upon stumbling on a meth lab]: “It’s not a restaurant! It’s a methstaurant!”

“The Food Wife,” The Simpsons, November 13, 2011

Methstaurant is a blend of meth, or methamphetamine, an addictive narcotic, and restaurant.

sassy

Dean Pelton: “I want you to be more – what’s that word for happy-threatening?”

Shirley: “The word he’s looking for his sassy. He better pray he don’t find it.”

“Documentary Filmmaking: Redux,” Community, November 17, 2011

The word sassy has multiple meanings: “rude and disrespectful; lively and spirited; stylish; chic.” Sassy is an alteration of saucy, which first meant “resembling sauce,” then in the 16th century came to mean “impertinent, cheeky,” with the idea of the “figurative sense of ‘piquancy in words or actions,’ and the slang phrase, to have eaten sauce, meaning “be abusive.”

self-refilling prophecy

Virginia: “It’s like a self-refilling prophecy.”

“Burt’s Parents,” Raising Hope, November 15, 2011

By self-refilling prophecy, Virginia means self-fulfilling prophecy, a prophecy that comes true by one’s own doing. Virginia’s mistake could be classified as a malapropism, “ludicrous misuse of a word, especially by confusion with one of similar sound,” but seems more like an eggcorn, a misuse that makes sense to the speaker. In this case Virginia is referring to her husband’s repeated – or refilling – dysfunctional behavior with his disapproving parents.

sequestration

Jon Stewart: “Failure [to reduce the deficit] would trigger sequestration, a process that combines Congress’s least favorite things, sequestering and castration.”

November 16, 2011, The Daily Show

Sequestration in this context refers to “catastrophic automatic cuts,” says Stewart, as part of the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985.

sleep clown

Mitchell: “Some people have been known to sleepwalk or even sleep-drive on that medication. Cam’s reaction is much worse.”

[Cut to Mitchell waking to find Cam in full clown makeup and costume]

Cam: “I sleep clown.”

“After the Fire,” Modern Family, November 16, 2011

To sleepwalk, or somnambulate, is “to walk or perform other motor acts while asleep.” Sleepwalking is a parasomnia, or sleep disorder. Other parasomnia include sleep-driving and sleep eating, also known as night eating syndrome. Sleep clowning is at once ludicrous and frightening.

supercommittee

Jon Stewart: “Ah yes, the supercommittee. A group of 12 lawmakers who gained their powers after having been bitten by a radioactive accountant and are now called upon to slash our deficits!”

November 16, 2011, The Daily Show

The supercommittee refers to the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction.

Ziegevolk

Nick: “I have identified him as a Ziegevolk, sometimes known as a Bluebeard.”

“Lonelyhearts,” Grimm, November 18, 2011

A Ziegefolk is a goat-like creature that in human form appears mild and even unattractive. However, it gives off irresistible pheromones that women can’t resist. Ziege is German for “goat” while volk is German for “folk or common people.” Bluebeard refers to a French folktale in which a noble has the habit of murdering his wives.

Finally, our reader-submitted word of the week is occutard, pointed out to us by Superlinguo.

According to the Urban Dictionary, occutards (a blend of occupy and retard) are those Occupy Wall Street protesters who “blame hard-working, successful people for magically causing the failures of their own lives” and “expect the government to arrive in place of their [coddling] parents and provide everything their hearts desire for free.”

That’s it for this week! Remember, if you see any Word Soup-worthy words, let us know on Twitter with the hashtag #wordsoup. Your word and Twitter handle might appear right here!

Every week, we pose a challenge: using any word of the day from the week, create a perfect tweet, otherwise known as a twoosh. If we like it, your tweet will appear on our blog.

Last week’s theme was Thanksgiving. Here are our favorites:

Thanks to everyone for playing! This week the challenge will be on hiatus due to the holidays, but you’ll have another chance next week to perfect your word of the day perfect tweets.

To get the word of the day, just follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, or subscribe via email.

With Thanksgiving just a few days away, we thought we’d take a look at words related to that big dumb bird, the turkey.

Where does the word turkey come from? In short, it’s named for the country Turkey, “from a confusion with the guinea fowl, once believed to have originated in Turkish territory.” According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the “Turkish name for [the bird] is hindi,” literally “Indian,” “based on the common misconception that the New World was eastern Asia.” The Virtual Linguist says “the original full name of the bird was turkey-cock, but this applied to a different bird — the guinea-fowl, a native of Africa,” while Dan Jurafsky at The Language of Food traces the bird’s history, from its domestication in south-central Mexico to its journey to Europe and the U.S.

How about those turkey sounds? Gobble, which also means “to swallow in large pieces” and “to seize upon with greed,” is imitative in origin and comes from the Middle English gobben, “to drink greedily.” Gobben probably comes from gobbe, “lump, mouthful.” Related are gob, “a mouthful; a little mass or collection; the mouth,” gobbet, goblet, and gobsmacked.

Related also is gobbledygook, nonsense or unclear jargon. The word was first used in 1944 by Congressman Maury Maverick (a grandson of Samuel Augustus Maverick, “an American cattleman who left the calves in his herd unbranded,” for whom the word maverick is named) in a memo banning “gobbledygook language.” As for its origin, “Maverick said he made up the word in imitation of turkey noise.”

The word cluck,“to utter the call or cry of a brooding hen or a hen with young chicks,” comes from the Old English cloccian, which is imitative in origin. A Turkish word for turkey is culuk. Jollop is another word for the cry of a turkey, and according to World Wide Words “was at one time a name for the wattles of the bird, probably from dewlap.” Another meaning for jollop is “a strong liquor or medicine,” also spelled jalap and perhaps influenced by the word dollop.

How about turkey sayings and slang meanings? Turkey meaning “a failure, especially a failed theatrical production or movie,” attests to 1927 while the meaning “a person considered inept or undesirable,” is from 1951. Both come from the idea of the turkey being a silly and stupid animal. The meaning “three consecutive strikes in bowling,” may come from a 19th century American tradition of awarding a turkey to such a bowler.

Turkey also has the lesser-known meaning of “a bag containing a lumber-jack’s outfit.” The origin is unknown, though perhaps it’s named for the bag’s turkey-like appearance. A blind turkey is a sack “stuffed with rags or waste, “deaconed” with a tattered pair of overalls and of a pair of shoes and designed to deceive those labor agents who decline ship laborers who have not baggage stand hostage for their arrival at the job.” To hoist the turkey means “to take one’s personal belongings and leave camp.”

Talk turkey means “to talk or negotiate plainly, frankly, or seriously.” World Wide Words says the phrase was first recorded in 1824 “but is probably much older,” and originally meant “to speak agreeably, or to say pleasant things.” This meaning may come from “the nature of family conversation around the Thanksgiving dinner table,” or “because the first contacts between Native Americans and settlers often centred on the supply of wild turkeys.” The most complex explanation is:

a story about a colonist and a native who went hunting, agreeing to share their spoils equally. At the end of the day, the bag was four crows and four turkeys. The colonist tried to partition the spoils by saying “here’s a crow for you” to the Indian, then keeping a turkey to himself, giving another crow to the Indian, and so on. At this point the Indian very reasonably protested, saying “you talk all turkey for you. Only talk crow for Indian”.

The meaning changed to “frank talk” in the 19th century when “to ‘talk turkey’ was augmented” to “talk cold turkey,” with no relation to cold turkey’s meaning of “immediate, complete withdrawal from something on which one has become dependent, such as an addictive drug.” This meaning of cold turkey stems from 1910 and came from the idea that “cold turkey is a food that requires little preparation, so ‘to quit like cold turkey’ is to do so suddenly and without preparation.”

A jive turkey is “someone who is jiving, as in behaving in a glib and disingenuous fashion.” The turkey portion of the phrase presumably comes from the word’s meaning of a stupid person while jive’s origin is more complex. The word’s meanings of “to deceive playfully,” “empty, misleading talk,” and “a style of fast, lively jazz and dance music” attest to 1928. Some claim the origin is the language of the Wolof, “West African people primarily inhabiting coastal Senegal.” However, others doubt this claim, saying that:

although the Wolof are relatively prominent to many Americans because of the large number of Senegalese immigrants in this country, and to black Americans because the Goree Island slaving settlement is a popular tourist attraction, the fact is that there is no evidence that Wolof speakers were predominant among slaves in the United States, numerically or culturally.

Other turkey phrases include turkey-shoot, “a rifle-shooting match in which a live turkey is the target and the prize,” which gives us the figurative meaning of “something easy.” A turkeycock is “a pompous or self-important person,” probably from the image of a strutting male turkey. The turkey-trot is “an eccentric ragtime dance, danced with the feet well apart and with a characteristic rise on the ball of the foot, followed by a drop upon the heel,” which was popular in the early 20th century.

Has all this turkey talk gotten you hungry? How about some tofurkey, “a meat substitute resembling turkey, usually made from tofu,” or unturkey, “a vegetarian substitute for turkey, particularly a turkey-shaped ‘bird’ made with wheat gluten, soy, and other vegetarian ingredients”? If meat’s your thing, then you might want a turducken, a turkey stuffed with a duck stuffed with a chicken, or a turbaconducken, a turducken with each bird wrapped in bacon. “It’s a real lardapalooza!” as Fritinancy says.

Or you may want to try the turducken of desserts, the cherpumple, “a three-layer cake with an entire pie baked into each layer—a cherry pie baked inside a white cake, a pumpkin pie baked inside a yellow cake and an apple pie baked inside a spice cake.”

For even more Thanksgivine-related fare, check out Fritinancy’s post on how Butterball got its name, her terrific roundup of fun turkey and Thanksgiving related info, and Cracked’s list of the five most insane versions of Thanksgiving from around the world.

Welcome to the Language Blog Roundup, in which we give you the highlights from our favorite language blogs and the latest in word news and culture.

In the world of politics, Rick Perry said “oops,” and Slate told us where oops comes from. Mark Liberman at Language Log took issue with Perry’s latest campaign ad and his lack of a verb, as well as speech-based lie detection “software” that supposedly proves Herman Cain is innocent of sexual harrassment. Meanwhile Robert Lane Greene at Johnson discussed Newt Gingrich and language, and Spanish in America.

In dictionary news, Ben Zimmer discussed the latest edition of the American Heritage dictionary, while the Scottish Language Dictionary charity is putting together the Concise Scots Dictionary. Erin McKean reviewed books that promise to help you talk better, and spotted in the Wall Street Journal week in words tobashi, solomo, and bronies, as well as Likeonomics, handwiches, and dead doubles.

At Language Log, Mark Liberman wrote about kids yesterday (and made us feel Principal Vernon old) and wondered if Lincoln could have furled his brow. Geoffrey Pullum objected to another’s objections about the passive voice, and kicked himself over tiramisu. Ben Zimmer considered Kate Bush’s 50 Words for Snow, while Mr. Pullum at Lingua Franca poked another hole in the many-Eskimo-words-for-snow argument.

Also at Lingua Franca, Ben Yagoda advocated going with the shorter word, and examined the overuse of right (I know, right?). Carol Saller wondered if all lawyers are not liars, while Allan Metcalf discussed the word guy.

At Macmillan Dictionary Blog, Ben Trawick-Smith considered the fall of the r-less class, while Stan Carey discussed Received Pronunciation and Dortspeak and questioned the “ideal” form of English. On his own blog, Mr. Carey let us know about the very cool Spaceage Portal of Sentence Discovery, “a database in which we the English-loving citizens of Internet can store countless examples of all the interesting language patterns and elements we are able to categorize.”

John McIntyre shook his head over usage literalists, while Motivated Grammar asserted that descriptivism doesn’t mean “anything goes.” Lynneguist gathered a month’s worth of American and British English untranslatables; and Johnson presented its results from its British and American English survey. The Virtual Linguist wrote about the experiences of Monica Baldwin, who spent 27 years in a closed convent and “could not understand much of the English being spoken around her when she finally rejoined the outside world”; brand names of Western products in China (“Hey, you dinged my Precious Horse!); and a study that showed that lower-pitched voices attract more votes.

Fritinancy’s words of the week were murmuration, a flock of starlings (her post includes a truly amazing video), and Semmelweis reflex, “the tendency to reject new evidence because it contradicts established norms or practices.” Fritinancy also wrote about tech jargon of yore, merry as a Starbucks verb, and this Mr. Tea set, which we have added to our Christmas list. In tooting our own horn news, Fritinancy gave a shout-out to our new series, Word Soup, in her November linkfest (thanks!).

Sequiotica posted about swizzle, umpteen, plouk, and mondegreens. Dialect Blog explored Multicultural London English; Chicano English; dialect work in the old days; and when Twitter words are spoken. The Word Spy spotted, among other words, war texting, “using text messages to break into a remote system such as an automobile or a GPS tracking device”; no planer, “a conspiracy theorist who believes that no planes were involved in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001”; and two-pizza team, “in a business environment, a team of employees that is not too large (and so can be fed with at most two pizzas).”

Speaking of food, we learned where the hot dog and hamburger got their names; all about It’s-It ice cream; and the history of macarons, macaroons, and macaroni. We were grateful for this list of non-errors, and chuckled over this punctuation cartoon from the Grammar Monkeys and this list of seven bar jokes involving grammar and punctuation. We pondered the language of the future, and what gets lost in translation. We learned that “only one veteran Navajo code talker remains of the original 29 Navajo Marines,” and that immigrant entrepreneurs often don’t need English to succeed. We wondered if comedy foreign accents are ever a good idea (depends on the accent).

We enjoyed these 20 Vonnegut-isms (well, except for the semi-colon remark), these 50 literary put-downs, and these six authors’ reading habits. We were delighted to learn that Neil Gaiman will be on The Simpsons this Sunday, and were a bit a creeped out by this Lego statue of Mark Twain. We were shocked to hear that Jane Austen might have been murdered, and were astounded that Salman Rushdie had to fight to use his own name on Facebook. We loved Salvador Dali’s 1969 drawings for Alice in Wonderland, as well as these vintage illustrations from Old French Fairy Tales.

Flavorwire gave us a brief history of time travel literature; this collection of rejected titles for classic books; and 10 famous literary characters and their real-life inspirations. They also offered 10 wonderful fake books by TV characters and a comprehensive rule book to pop culture’s fictional games (Calvinball, anyone?). Meanwhile, the PW blog told us about 6 fictional drugs with unintended consequences, Anglophenia offered up some money slang, and Time interviewed Michael Adams, the editor of Elvish to Klingon: Exploring Invented Languages.

Finally, our favorite Tumblr of the week was The Books They Gave Me, reflections on books given by lovers.

That’s it for this week! Check in the week after next for the next Language Blog Roundup installment, and don’t forget to catch our new series on Wednesday, Word Soup.