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

In The New York Times, Philip Corbett noted words The Times’ writers love too much; Constance Hale remembered loving the sound of a sentence; and Erin McKean wrote about “madeupical” words. The New Yorker invited readers to make up their own words, while at The New York Review of Books, Zadie Smith expounded on the essentialness of a local library and bookshop.

In American politics, a third spelling error arose in Mitt Romney’s campaign (if you’re keeping count, that’s Amercia, sneak-peak, and offical). Ben Zimmer discussed the new, overly friendly political speech and the controversy over the definition of marriage. Geoff Pullum and the Virtual Linguist both wrote about the death of the Queen’s English Society. Meanwhile, the language wars continued with a post from Arrant Pedantry on what descriptivism is and isn’t and from Mark “Descriptive Destroyer” Liberman.

At the Language Log, Mark discussed pronounceable snack ingredients, the case of “vinyls,” and e-publishing string replacement gone wrong. Ben Zimmer also posted on unfortunate search and replace results, namely Nookd for kindled and deDeputys for devices. Barbara Partee considered the negative event, and Victor Mair had some cheese bacon mushroom face.

At Lingua Franca, Allan Metcalf considered not; Geoff Pullum explored the however myth; and Ben Yagoda rounded up some comma comments, broke down the anatomy of a catchphrase, and examined the phrase, yeah, no. At Macmillan Dictionary blog, Orin Hargraves got granular, Robert Lane Greene talked go, and Stan Carey considered commas and at Sentence First taught us how to stop confusing pore and pour. Meanwhile, Motivated Grammar compared “than I” and than me” and the Grammar Monkeys told us about style and grammar, and why lots of things aren’t “wrong.”

In the week in words, Erin McKean spotted desquamation, a condition in which “all your skin falls off”; chinoise, a type of sieve for cooking; gaokao, China’s “grueling college entrance exam”; and miche, a type of bread. Fritinancy noted blazerati, “officials of amateur sports associations who are identified by their colored blazers”; and prochronism, “a chronological error in which an event or usage is dated earlier than its actual occurrence.”

Fritinancy also described how General Tso’s chicken got its name, while we learned that in Paris “there is currently no greater praise for cuisine than ‘très Brooklyn,’ a term that signifies a particularly cool combination of informality, creativity and quality.”

Sesquiotica was entertained by gecko, get-go, and get; got into some frenzy words; and corroborated on a corroboree. Lynneguist compared the American and British ways of introducing oneself. The Virtual Linguist traced the origins of jubilee and nemesia and nemesis, and rounded up some bun phrases. The Dialect Blog dropped some Hs, measured –ness, and discussed the profane conversion of dick.

We loved these Star Wars alphabet prints and these of London in the 1850s, and were terrified by these French children’s books. And we still can’t get enough of anachronisms in Mad Men and Downton Abbey.

That’s it for this week! Yeah, no, really.

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

A language war ensued this month when two New Yorker writers, Joan Acocella and Ryan Bloom, took a stance again descriptivism. Never fear: Ben Zimmer, Nancy Friedman, Christopher Shea, the Dialect Blog, and Johnson, the Economist’s language blog, all weighed in on descriptivism’s side.

In politics, we learned that Mitt Romney wants a better “Amercia” (improved, apparently, by a name change) and were delighted by the subsequent snarky tumblr. Ben Zimmer noted the backronym of the week, the Ex-PATRIOT Act, while at Language Log, Mark Liberman discussed the speech levels in politics.

Also at Language Log, Liberman had a few things to say about the word hopefully, including the history of the word and hopefu(ly) grammar, while Geoff Nunberg gave his two cents as well. Victor Mair gave us some mistranslation “tips from the British royal breast” and analyzed this poetic piece of Chinglish, and Julie Sedivy explored some shocking shades of gray lingo.

The Macmillan Dictionary blog rounded up their bloggers’ favorite words that aren’t found in English. At Lingua Franca, Allan Metcalf discussed the importance of names and lexicography as the oldest profession, and Ben Yagoda took us to an article-less prom. At The New York Times, Yagoda identified the most comma mistakes, while at The Boston Globe, Zimmer opined on the golden age of proverbs.

Stan Carey explained the interstellar etymology of mazel tov, the word fell, and reflected on the reflexive, themself. Fritnancy’s words of the week were ganja-preneur, an entrepreneur dealing in ganja, or marjuana, and rampture, “the traffic congestion that’s expected to ensue after the closing of Wilshire Boulevard on- and offramps to (the) northbound I-405 on Los Angeles’s Westside.”

Erin McKean spotted over-sharenting, “the tendency for parents to share a lot of information and photos of their kids online”; social jet lag, “discrepancy between your natural body clock and your social clock”; Geuro, a “Greek parallel currency to the euro”; and green shoe, a reserve used by underwriters “in successful IPOs. . .to meet soaring demand.” Meanwhile, Word Spy caught unsourcing, “transferring company functions from paid employees to unpaid volunteers, particularly customers on social networks.”

The Dialect Blog explored place names, Sean Connery’s apical /s/, and the Brooklyn accent. Sesquiotica examined the word cicisbeo, “the recognized gallant of a married lady,” and delicious risotto. The Virtual Linguist served up the origin of the word tea, while Oz Words gave us the history of vegemite. We learned of a new fruit, the papple, which “looks and tastes like an apple but has the skin and texture of a pear,” and that America’s favorite condiment, ketchup, actually came from a Chinese word.

Finally, we had a huge laugh over these names that Donald Trump trademarked. Our favorite? Donald J. Trump, the Fragrance.

That’s it for this week!

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

Early last week Maurice Sendak, beloved children’s writer, passed away. While we mourned his loss, we enjoyed his memory through these Sendak-esque Avengers on parade; Ben Zimmer’s piece about the wild words of children’s literature;  and these hilarious interviews with Stephen Colbert (including this uncensored, NSFW one).

Speaking of dirty words, Johnson recounted the F-word in court; Arnold Zwicky reported on the reporting of the profane; the Dialect Blog wondered about the dirtiness of bloody; and Stephen Fry extolled the virtues of the “unnecessary” art of swearing.

In politics, Mighty Red Pen red-lined Mitt Romney’s grammar (mmm, pizza magnet); John Edwards’s defense team relied on the definition of the; and Barbara Partee at Language Log delved into weak definites. Meanwhile, at the Macmillan Dictionary blog, Stephen Bullon explained the origins of the left and the right.

Back at Macmillan, Orin Hargaves discussed English’s jumbled history; Gill Francis examined changing uses of “grammar” words; and Stan Carey looked at different ways of apologizing, and on his own blog, scared up some scary quotes and explored a skeptical Irish expression. At Language Log, Mark Liberman verbed some words and called some BS, while Ben Zimmer solved the mystery around a Sherlock Holmes “typo,” and at The Boston Globe got meta on the word meta.

At Lingua Franca, Ben Yagoda considered a racist word, while Allan Metcalf looked into generations and the word hip and the decline of ain’t. Fritinancy had it out with violent snacks, and for words of the week noted grasstops, “the leadership in a community or organization,” and wantologist, “a coach who sells his or her assistance to people unclear about what they want.” Erin McKean’s weekly wordy selections included belted lav, a passenger seat on a charter jet located in the bathroom; FPC, flavors per calorie; sauropod, a plant-eating dinosaur; and subluxation, misalignment in the joint.

Kory Stamper wrote a letter to a prospective lexicographer. The Virtual Linguist traced the history of the word cynic. The Dialect Blog posted on the impolite “please” and Pennsylvanian accents and dialect.

This week we also saw the rise of the twitchfork mob; thought about taking a long remode; and learned the difference between your and you’re from the fastest white rapper. We loved these punning policemen, these geeky insults, and this letter on plagiarism from Mark Twain to Helen Keller. We enjoyed these good portmanteaus and even these bad ones. Finally, we will immediately start incorporating these words and phrases from Game of Thrones into our vocabulary.

That’s it for next week! Till next time, here’s wishing you a wild rumpus.

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

Margaret Atwood played ambassador to the Martians this week, and used literature to tell them about America. In The Boston Globe, Christopher Muther wondered if email and text have driven people to overuse the exclamation point; Erin McKean reviewed invented languages and “From Elvish to Klingon,” a new collection of essays edited by Michael Adams; and Ben Zimmer unraveled the history of a very long, fanciful word.

At Language Log, Ben Zimmer noted a 50 Cent Malaysian mistranslation; Victor Mair examined a new non-stigmatizing Chinese word for epilepsy; and Mark Liberman considered Noam Chomsky and anticipation. Geoff Pullum discussed ongoing lexical fascism, a couple of rare words, and at Lingua Franca, the foolishness of hopefully. Also at Lingua Franca, Carol Saller wrote about writing “by ear” or “by eye”; Ben Yagoda quizzed us on modern proverbs; and Lucy Ferriss pondered word lovers hating on certain words.

At Macmillan Dictionary Blog, Orin Hargraves broke down compound fractures, and Stan Carey showed us the unreality of real estate language, and on his own blog, commented on the problem with banning words. In the week in words, Erin McKean noted particularist, “those who adhere to particularism, a term used to refer to several different ‘particular’ behaviors”; hotelling, when employees reserve work space in advance rather than having a permanent desk; and actigraphy, the monitoring of motion.

Word Spy spotted tweet seats, “a section in a theater set aside for people who want to tweet during a performance,” and schtick lit, “a writing genre in which the author undertakes an odd or stuntlike project with the intention of writing about the experience.” Meanwhile, Fritinancy served up copypasta, “text or data (such as lines of code) copied and pasted from one website to another”; N.R.A. mottos, then and now; -kini words; and vowel-free restaurant names.

Sesquiotica gave us a hand with chirality; the different meanings of expletive; some acoustic phonetics; and the etymology of vamp. Lynneguist explained the difference between tidbit and titbit, while the Virtual Linguist explained the history of the word luddite; the origin of omnishambles; and words that will be banned during the Olympic Games in London. The Dialect Blog dialogued on idiolects and the other American dialects, such as Pennsylvania German. Oz Words conversed on the billy can; that other c-word, convict; and the very scary skullet.

LA Weekly told us about some phrases that originated in our home state of California, while Brainpicker let us know about this book on the whimsy of words. In plant news, we would like to nominate Gozillus as the best prehistoric cactus name ever.

We loved this letter from Benjamin Franklin to Noah Webster, and this one on spelling reform. But to have spelling reform, one must first be able to spell, unlike these guys.

That’s it for this week. Se u neks taim!

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

The new season of Game of Thrones has begun, and the linguist who created the Dothraki language on the show explained how to create a language from scratch. Meanwhile, The Economist fretted over panflation, the inflation of everything, while at the Macmillan Dictionary blog, Stan Carey wondered if linguistic inflation was insanely awesome. Also at Macmillan, Orin Hargraves discussed adverbial modification in British and American English, and Michael Rundell explored true synonyms.

In The New York Times, Ben Yagoda delved into the comma, and at Lingua Franca answered readers who had trouble with his only placement. Constance Hale kicked back with some verbs while Geoffrey Pullum took issue with Hale’s description of passive and active verbs – “Where does she get the idea that become is ‘passive’ and wonder ‘active’?” – and Lucy Ferriss expressed concerns over the writing ability of Hale’s readership.

Jan Freeman covered hoodies, hoods, and ‘hoods; Mr. Verb noticed a new Dubya-ism, some other body; and Ben Zimmer examined Obamacare. Arrant Pedantry questioned grammar, morality, and the real George Zimmerman’s really bad grammar, while Johnson considered the memorability of Hollywood phrases as well as Sweden and gender neutrality.

At Language Log, Mark Liberman gave us a taste of evaluative words for wine, such as leesy, “descriptor of a wine that possesses a rich aroma and/or flavor that is a direct result of the wine resting on the lees,” and deliberated on baboons and word recognition. Ben Zimmer posted about cupertinos, mistakes made by autocorrect, and the first “asshole” in The New York Times. Meanwhile, Victor Mair tried to figure out the Chinglish, shut the fat fully.

At Lingua Franca, Carol Saller pondered repetition avoidance, Ben Yagoda mused on repetition compulsion, and Allan Metcalf analyzed nicknames for the heroic and divine and the value of OK. At Sentence First, Stan Carey examined unusual uses of sparse and cahoot while Arnold Zwicky discussed who(m). Jessica Love at The American Scholar explained what makes nouns and verbs sound real; Motivated Grammar wrote about the meaning of moot in American English; and the Dialect Blog looked at inmigration, “transplantation within the borders of a single country,” and the importance (or not?) of vowels.

Fritinancy was soitenly perplexed over The New York Times’ spelling of a Stoogeism, and for words of the week noted chewdaism, “the theory that chewing food slowly and thoroughly delivers health benefits,” and subsidiarity, “a Roman Catholic principle that says policy decisions should be made at the lowest level possible and the highest level necessary.”

Erin McKean’s lexical roundup included mevushal, a wine that has “been heat-treated so that [it] might be handled and opened by people other than Sabbath-observant Jews”; fungoes, in baseball, grounders served up by coaches “during the dead time between pitches”; and dark pool, “a platform that brings buyers and sellers together privately, using software to match their orders.” In The Boston Globe, Erin wrote about nounjectives, “the conversion of adjectives to nouns.”

The Word Spy spotted success disaster, “massive problems created when a person or company is unable to handle an overwhelming success,” and diarrheaist, “a person who shares too much online.” The Virtual Linguist wrote about nutmeg as a footballing term and the origin of naysayer.

We learned how this year’s full moons got their strange names (Full Strawberry Moon, a partial eclipse or Prince’s new album?); what it’s like to edit at Hustler magazine (cover babe or coverbabe?); and some valuable Seuss-isms. We discovered why puns and playful language matter, and that there is a disease that causes people to make jokes and puns constantly. It’s called Witzelsucht, which translates from the German as “laugh or joke (Witz) addiction (Sucht).”

That’s the week in a nutmeg. We soitenly hope you had fungo!

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

Erin McKean kicked off the week, and celebrated April Fool’s Day, with a piece about the language of hoaxes. Ben Zimmer honored the start of the baseball season by telling us how the ball game gave us the word jazz, while Ben Yagoda examined elegant variation and baseball writers, and we got in on the game with Japanese baseball words.

The Hunger Games inspired Stan Carey to consider a lesser-known meaning of starve. Slate explained some of the unusual names in the books and movie, as well as French-Canadian swearing in Mad Men. The Telegraph went as far as to call Mad Men the most literary show on television.

Johnson discussed split infinitives and journalese. Robert Lane Greene traced the rise of dude. At Language Log, Mark Liberman talked to the TV and took Rush Limbaugh Literalville-ly; Julie Sedivy looked into death by Balzac and grenade-like words; and Victor Mair stressed the importance of spacing, and delved into illiteracy in China and feihua, or nonsense, poetry.

David Crystal spoke with NPR about the story of English. Stan Carey referenced Crystal’s book in his post on standard English and bad grammar, and assured us who to follow is grammatically fine. At Macmillan Dictionary Blog, Michael Rundell explored irony and dictionaries, Stephen Bullon gave us the story behind jerrycan, and guest poster Heng-ming Carlos Kang compared infinitives and gerunds. In The NY Times, Constance Hale desperately sought some synonyms while Kitty Burns Florey diagrammed sentence diagramming.

At Lingua Franca, Allan Metcalf deliberated on language purity, or lack thereof, in English, and enjoyed some one-syllable gems; Lucy Ferriss wandered through Zuckerverb land; and Carol Saller discussed difficult writers, which John McIntyre found disturbing. We’re glad he recovered and gave us words describing the space between a curb and sidewalk.

Lynneguist counted seconds, American and British-style. Fritinancy examined a name in the news, Oikos University, and for words of the week, picked stockist, “a retailer or distributor that stocks goods for sale,” and demise as a verb, “to grant or transfer by will or lease.” Erin McKean’s wordy choices were flexicurity, a blend of flexible and security; nibs, coffee beans with the shells removed; and adularescence, the effect of light on “adularia, a kind of moonstone.”

Word Spy noticed pink slime, “an industrial meat byproduct consisting of compressed low quality beef trimmings treated with ammonia gas and used as a filler for ground beef”; hashtag activism, “activism that uses a Twitter hashtag to promote a project or cause, particularly when it requires no other action from people”; and hackerazzi, “a person who breaks into a celebrity’s email account or computer.”

The Virtual Linguist discussed the suffix –buster, while Sesquiotica hurried on about jildi, had a word about you guys, and got behind bakkushan. The Dialect Blog gave us some words of faint praise and hey and its variants. Chicago Magazine explored the Chicago accent, while BBC wondered why fantasy world accents are British. Meanwhile, Lapham’s Quarterly defended the thesaurus.

Some words were banned from New York City school tests, and then they weren’t. Jezebel told us the linguistic history of a certain male body part, while we learned a few factlets about the factoid, some modern phrases we owe to Shakespeare, and  gangster language. We also learned that PTSD was once known as nostalgia and soldier’s heart, that soda has overtaken tonic, at least in Boston, and that some British foods are extremely misunderstood. We agree that Kraft is no cunning linguist when it comes to a new (unfortunate) snack name.

We were excited about this newly translated fairy tale. We loved these minimalist posters of children’s books and this list of alternative names for the Seven Dwarfs. We’re so happy someone is taking “dead words” and turning them into art. We felt bad for these monks (“Oh, my hand”), and will take C.S. Lewis’s advice on writing.

Finally, we were saddened by the passing of poet Adrienne Rich.

That’s it for this week. Until next time, please enjoy some of Ms. Rich’s poetry.

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

In case you didn’t know, a little show called Mad Men is having its season premiere this Sunday. While the show may get most fashion and design details right for the period, what about the language? “Anachronism machine” Ben Schmidt takes a look.

In the Boston Globe, Ben Zimmer discussed Dr. Fill and the rise of crossword puzzle-solving robots, while Erin McKean considered the QWERTY effect and why we like some more words more than others. Johnson weighed in on linguistic manners and the rivalry between two slang-masters.

At Language Log, Geoff Nunberg also had some words about the slang dictionaries in question, while Mark Liberman shed and cast some doubt and light, and Victor Mair interpreted a dubious Chinese tattoo. Meanwhile, BBC News profiled Zhou Youguang, the man who helped invent pinyin, “a writing system that turns Chinese characters into words using letters from the Roman alphabet.”

At Macmillan Dictionary Blog, Orin Hargaves explained speech acts, and Stan Carey posted about nonsense terms (balderdash!), and on his own site, had some great suggestions for new language sites, including Oz Words. Check out their posts on budgie smugglers, “a colloquial term for a pair of men’s swimming briefs” (and an excellent name for a rock band); stormstick, or umbrella; and Johnniedom, “the social world of fashionable young men.”

At Lingua Franca, Ben Yagoda discussed double standard logical fallacies, and glottalization, Mockney, and why some 20-something women from New Jersey sound like Jamie Oliver. Allan Metcalf told the story behind the phrase OK, which originated today.

Across the pond, Lynneguist parsed the difference between get a break and catch a break. Fritinancy deliberated on two big companies with bad name changes (why, Kraft?), and picked for words of the week, minaudière, “a small, hard-sided, often bejeweled evening bag meant to be carried in the hand,” and akrasia, “a lack of command over oneself; a weakness of will.”

In her week in words, Erin McKean noticed stiction, “surface friction that tends to keep mechanisms from beginning to move’”; cheechako, “Alaskan slang for ‘newcomer’”; shengnu, “used to describe an unmarried woman ever so precariously teetering near the age of 30,” literally, “leftover woman”; and quenelle, a kind of dumpling. Meanwhile, Word Spy spotted cisgender, “identifying with one’s physical gender.”

The Virtual Linguist drank in some builder’s tea, the origin of the word gossip, the word cabbage meaning “stuff made out of over-ordered material in a factory,” and the history behind scruple, which once meant “a small unit of weight, as used by apothecaries.” Sesquiotica opined on pell-mell, euphuism, mojo, and irregardless, and Dialect Blog offered up some ‘going to’ contractions and lax vowels for English learners.

NPR dished on that other four-letter word, slut, and the bad girls of history and their not-so-good nicknames. Some weird restaurant names had us scratching our heads (not sure we’d eat at a place called Virus), while these regional sandwich names got our stomachs growling.

We learned about the benefits of bilingualism, the science of the birth and death of words, and the controversial claims one linguist is making about Universal Grammar. We loved this letter from screenwriter Robert Pirosh (“I like fat buttery words, such as ooze, turpitude, glutinous, toady”) and this piece from Jhumpa Lahiri (“The best sentences orient us, like stars in the sky, like landmarks on a trail”). We wanted to know what books these guys were fighting about.

Finally, our favorite site of the week is Good Show Sir, “Only the worst Sci-fi/Fantasy book covers.”

That’s it for now! We’ll see you next week (though we won’t call you “rock god“), OK?