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Titanic Words

Her Maiden Voyage

Her Maiden Voyage

One hundred years ago today, the RMS Titanic set sail on its first and only voyage, and thanks to James Cameron, most of us know the story of the ship and its fateful meeting with a big block of ice. But how about the story behind those titanic words?

The RMS Titanic was a passenger superliner, an ocean liner “of over 10,000 gross tons.” In the 19th century, the term was coined “when ocean liners were rapidly increasing in size and speed.” In the first half of the 20th century, superliners became “the primary means of intercontinental travel … as passengers favoured large, fast ships.”

Why RMS? That stands for Royal Mail Ship or Service, “used for seagoing vessels that carry mail under contract to the British Royal Mail.” As opposed is HMS, which stands for “Her (or His) Majesty’s Ship,” a designated British warship. As for titanic, it means “of, pertaining to, or characteristic of the Titans; hence, enormous in size, strength, or degree; gigantic; superhuman; huge; vast.” Titan may come from the Greek tito, “sun, day.”

How about that iceberg? An iceberg (from the Middle Dutch ijsbergh, “ice mountain”) is part of a glacier (from an Old French word meaning “cold place”) that has broken off by a process called calving. Calving is the same term used for when animals such as cows, whales, or seals give birth to calves. Thus, that broken piece of ice is often referred to as a calf.

Icebergs come in different sizes. Smallest is brash ice, according to the U.S. Geological Survey,  fragments of ice “less than 2 meters big,” so-called perhaps from the “brittle” meaning of brash. Next is the growler, measuring less than one meter high and less than five meters long. Growlers, according to Mariana Gosnell in her book, Ice, “got their name from the sound they make when. . .they plunge deeper into the water, sucking and growling.” A bergy bit is slightly larger than a growler, while the iceberg that sunk the Titanic seems to have been medium-sized.

When glacier ice melts, it makes bergy seltzer, also called ice sizzle, “a crackling or sizzling similar to that made by soft drinks or seltzer water,” and “made as air bubbles formed at many atmospheres of pressure are released.”

Since glaciers are formed from snow “falling on the higher parts of those mountain-ranges which are above the snow-line,” they are freshwater, unlike floe-bergs, “ice resulting from the freezing of the surface-water of the ocean.” Floe probably comes from the Norwegian flo, “layer.” A cloud-berg is “a mountainous mass of cloud which looks like an iceberg on the distant horizon.”

Typically only “one-ninth of the volume of an iceberg is above water,” hence the phrase, tip of the iceberg, “a small evident part or aspect of something largely hidden.” The phrase may have originated in the mid-1950s. Iceberg lettuce is “a lettuce cultivar noted for its crunchiness; the most familiar of all lettuces sold in the United States.” The name attests to 1893 (despite claims that Fresh Direct creator Bruce Church invented the phrase in 1926).

Glacionatant means “belonging to or affected by floating ice, as distinguished from ice moving on land,” as in “The Titanic’s sinking was glacionatant.” The word comes from the Latin glacies, “ice,” plus natare, “to swim.” Naufragous means “causing shipwreck,” as in, “The iceberg was naufragous.” The word may come from the Greek naus, “ship,” and the Latin fragmentum, “a fragment, remnant.” Naufragiate means to cause shipwreck, while naufrage refers to shipwreck itself.

Jetsam (from the Middle English jetteson, “a throwing overboard“) is that which has been “thrown overboard to lighten a ship in distress.” Flotsam (from the Old French floter, “to float“) is “wreckage or cargo that remains afloat after a ship has sunk.” Ligan or lagan (possibly from the Old Norse lagu, “law”) is “anything sunk in the sea, but tied to a support at the surface, as a cork or buoy, in order that it may be recovered.” Have a dispute about these items? Enlist a scrutator, “a bailiff appointed to protect the king’s water-rights, as flotsam, jetsam, and wrecks.” Scrutator comes from the Latin scrūtinium, “inquiry.”

Finally, be sure to check out these lists of glacial effects, ice phenomena, and famous ships.

Now that you know the story behind some titanic words, we hope you feel like the king of the world.

[Photo: “Her Maiden Voyage,” CC BY 2.0 by Patrick McConahay]

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How to Speak Rabbit

Raving Rabbids

Raving Rabbids

Easter is right around the corner, and you know what that means: a visit from the Easter Coney.

Don’t know what a coney is? Neither did we, at first. The word rabbit once only referred to rabbit young, according to the Online Etymology Dictionary. An adult rabbit was called a coney, which ultimately coming from the Latin cuniculus, “like a rabbit.” (Cuniculus also refers to “a small underground passage,” similiar to rabbit burrows, and “a genus of lemmings,” so-called because they “somewhat resemble small rabbits.”) Coney got dropped for rabbit in the 19th century after “British slang picked up coney as a punning synonym for cunny,” a word for a certain female body part. You can still see coney in use today in Coney Island, aka “Rabbit Island,” named because of its “many and diverse rabbits.”

Many and diverse also are rabbit idioms. In cricket, a rabbit is “a very poor batsman.” In running, it’s “a runner who intentionally sets a fast pace for a teammate during a long-distance race,” perhaps named for the artificial rabbit in dog racing. A rabbit punch isn’t a punch from a rabbit but “a chopping blow to the back of the neck,” so-called “from resemblance to a gamekeeper’s method of dispatching an injured rabbit.”

Rabbit food refers to “vegetables, especially those that are raw.” To rabbit on is to “talk in a noisy, excited, or declamatory manner,” and is a shortening of Cockney rhyming slang, rabbit and pork. Rabbit rabbit is “a common British superstition,” in which one must say, “Rabbit, rabbit, white rabbit,” or some variation thereof, “upon waking on the first day of each new month,” to receive good luck for that month.

As for bunny, it first came around in the 1580s meaning “squirrel,” then in the 1680s become a pet name for rabbit. The word may ultimately come from the Scottish bun, “tail of a hare.” (Bun meaning a roll or biscuit may come from the Old French buignete, “a fritter,” which originally meant “boil, swelling.”) The bunny hug is “a syncopated ballroom dance” made popular in the U.S. in 1912.

The bunny hop is another type of dance, “created at Balboa High School of San Francisco in 1952.” A Playboy Bunny is a waitress at Hugh Hefner’s Playboy Club, while a badge bunny is “a woman who is romantically attracted to police officers.” Under most of our beds are dust bunnies, “a mass of fine, dry particles of matter, especially hair and skin particles, that is formed by static electricity,” named presumably for their fluffy, bunny-like appearance. An older term for dust bunny is beggar’s velvet.

If you want to get all scientific, there’s lagomorph, “any of various plant-eating mammals having fully furred feet and two pairs of upper incisors.” The word comes from the Greek lagos, “hare,” literally “with drooping ears.” Lagos also gives us lagotic, “rabbit-eared,” and related is lax, “slack, loose, relaxed.”

Rabbit fur is lapin, “especially when dyed to imitate a more expensive fur,” and is an alteration of the Old French lapriel. Civet is “a stew, usually of rabbit or hare, flavored with onion, cives, garlic, or the like,” and may ultimately come from an Arabic word meaning “cream.” Gibelotte is another type of rabbit stew originating from France, and translates as “fricassee of game.”

A fricassee is “a dish made by cutting chickens, rabbits, or other small animals into pieces, and dressing them with a gravy in a frying-pan.” The word probably comes from the French frire, “to fry,” plus casser, “to break, crack.” Meanwhile, Welsh rabbit, also known as Welsh rarebit, isn’t rabbit at all but a dish of “melted cheese over toasted bread, flavored in various ways, as with ale, beer, milk, or spices.” Welsh was “used disparagingly of inferior or substitute things,” while rabbit, according to World Wide Words, “is here being used in the same way as ‘turtle’ in ‘mock-turtle soup’, which has never been near a turtle, or ‘duck’ in ‘Bombay duck’, which was actually a dried fish called bummalo.”

And in case you’re wondering what the heck rabbits have to do with Easter anyway, Discovery News says the origin of the Easter rabbit “can be traced back to 13th century, pre-Christian Germany, when people worshiped several gods and goddesses,” including Eostra, “the goddess of spring and fertility,” whose symbol “was the rabbit because of the animal’s high reproduction rate.” As for Easter eggs, they “represent Jesus’ resurrection.”

We hope you enjoyed this trip down the rabbit hole of rabbit words. Now excuse us while we revive ourselves with bunnies of the chocolate variety.

[Photo: “Raving Rabbids,” CC BY 2.0 by Ken’s Oven]

 

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Palindromes and Other Word Play

satorsquare

2011 has been chock full of palindromic dates. First there was 1/11/11 (or 11/1/11, for Europeans), then 11/1/11 (or 1/11/11), then “the very rare, eight-digit” palindrome date, 11/02/2011. Aziz Inan, a professor of electrical engineering “who has taken on the discovery of palindrome dates as a sort of hobby, explained that there will only be 12 eight-digit palindrome days this entire century.”

Then there’s today, 11/11/11, which like 1/11/11 and 11/1/11 is both a palindrome and an ambigram, something that can be read the same way backward, forward, right side up and upside down.

A palindrome is “a word, phrase, number or any other sequence of units” that reads the same backward or forward, like eve, mom, and the phrase, Madam I’m Adam. The longest English palindrome is tattarrattat, onomatopoeia for a rapping on the door, as coined by James Joyce in his novel Ulysses. The longest palindrome in everyday use seems to be the Finnish saippuakivikauppias, “a soapstone vendor.”

The word palindrome comes from the Greek palindromos, “running back again, recurring,” with palin meaning “again, back” and dromos meaning “a running.” Palin also gives us palimpsest, “a parchment or other writing-material from which one writing has been erased or rubbed out to make room for another”; palinode, “a poetical recantation, or declaration contrary to a former one”; and palingenesis, “a new or second birth or production; the state of being born again.”

How about a word that spells a different word when read backwards? That’s a semordnilap, which is palindromes in reverse. The term was probably coined by “logologist Dmitri A. Borgmann,” and includes examples such as reviled/deviled, loot/tool, and mood/doom. Backmasking is “a recording technique in which a sound or message is deliberately recorded backwards in a track that is meant to be played forwards.” An example is supposed Satanic messaging found in certain heavy metal songs when played backwards. Backmasking is also known as backward masking.

Have aibohphobia? Then you might prefer an anagram, “a transposition of the letters of a word or sentence, to form a new word or sentence,” or an antigram, “an anagram that means the opposite of the original word or phrase.” A heterogram is “a word or phrase in which no letter occurs more than once” while a pangram is “a sentence that contains every letter of the alphabet” (The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog). A kangaroo word is “a word that contains letters of another word, in order, with the same meaning.” A ghoti is “a constructed word used to illustrate irregularities in English spelling” and “a respelling of the word ‘fish’.”

Have a touch of paronomasia? Don’t worry, you just have the puns. Have a Tom Swifty – a phrase that uses an adverbial pun (“I’m cold,” she said icily) – and call me in the morning.

What about word play by mistake? A spoonerism is “a transposition of sounds of two or more words, especially a ludicrous one” (A daisy lay for A lazy day) and is named for William Archibald Spooner, a British cleric and scholar who was supposedly prone to this inadvertent play on words. A spoonerism is also known as a marrowsky, named after a Polish count who supposedly had the same affliction.

If someone says “I scream!” and you hear “Ice cream!” that’s a mondegreen. The word mondegreen is itself a misinterpretation, specifically of the line hae laid him on the green, as Lady Mondegreen, in the song “The Bonny Earl of Murray.” Another example can be found in the film Roxanne:

C.D. Bales: Ten more seconds and I’m leaving!
Roxanne Kowalski: What did you say?
C.D. Bales: I said, ten more seconds and I’m leaving! Wait a second! What did you think I said?
Roxanne Kowalski: I thought you said, “Earn more sessions by sleeving.”
C.D. Bales: Well, what the hell does that mean?
Roxanne Kowalski: I don’t know. That’s why I came out.

The Virtual Linguist lists several mondegreens in the form of misheard lyrics, while Mark Liberman at Language Log takes a look at the Anthology of Rap, which may be better named the Anthology of Mondegreens.

A malapropism is the “ludicrous misuse of a word, especially by confusion with one of similar sound” (As Bob as my witless for As God as my witness, from an episode of the cartoon series, Rugrats), and is named for Mrs. Malaprop, a character in an 18th century play “noted for her ridiculous misuse of large words (e.g. ‘contagious countries” for “contiguous countries’).” Her name comes from malapropos, “inappropriate; out of place,” which comes from the French mal à propos, with mal meaning “badly” and à propos meaning “to the purpose.” The opposite of malapropos is apropos.

An eggcorn is “a series of words that result from the misunderstanding of a word or phrase as some other word or phrase having a plausible explanation, as free reign for free rein, or to the manor born for to the manner born.” An eggcorn is similar to a malapropism, except that while a malapropism results in a ludicrous phrase, an eggcorn “makes sense,” according to Chris Waigl at the Eggcorn Database, “for anyone except lexicographers or other people trained in etymology, more sense than the original form in many cases.” Language Log’s Mark Liberman explores the example whoa is me (for woe is me). The term was coined by Geoffrey Pullum, and named for the mishearing of eggcorn for acorn.

A crash blossom refers to a newspaper headline with syntactic ambiguity, or which may be interpreted in more than one way. The phrase was coined by Dan Bloom and Mike O’Connell “based on a headline ‘Violinist linked to JAL crash blossoms.’” The Language Log has many examples.

But this post is about palindromes, right? Check out this piece from The Believer about “master palindromist” Barry Duncan, and this tribute to Bob Dylan from “Weird Al” Yankovic done entirely in palindromes. You might also like this post from the Grammar Girl further explaining the differences between language mix-ups; this list of palindromes and semordnilaps; this one of panvocalics, or words that contain all the vowels; and this one of ROT13 pairs.

[Photo: CC BY 2.0 by Lord Jim]

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Words on Plot and Treason

“Remember, remember, the fifth of November, Gunpowder Treason and Plot.”

Tomorrow is Guy Fawkes Day, “observed in England to commemorate the foiling of the attempt led by Guy Fawkes in 1605 to blow up the king and members of Parliament in retaliation for increasing repression of Roman Catholics in England.”

In her post on autumnal holidays, Lynneguist says “the main autumn ritual in the UK is Guy Fawkes Night or Bonfire Night.” In Lewes, “a site of Protestant martyrdom,” Guy Fawkes Night is “huge,” often involving bonfires, fireworks, and parades (or “Mardi Gras with fire,” as Lynneguist puts it).

lewes bonfire night 2010

lewes bonfire night 2010 by http://heatherbuckley.co.uk, on Flickr

[Photo: CC BY 2.0 by heather buckley]

Guy Fawkes’ foiled attempt is also known as the Gunpowder Plot. The word plot originally referred to “a piece of ground; specifically, a small piece of ground of well-defined shape,” and comes from the Old English plot, “small piece of ground.” The meaning, “a stratagem or secret plan; a secret project; an intrigue; a conspiracy,” is from the 1580s, says the Online Etymology Dictionary, “probably by accidental similarity to complot,” meaning “a plotting together; a joint plot; a confederacy in some design; a conspiracy,” and may be a “back-formation from [the Old French] compeloter, ‘to roll into a ball.’”

A plot is also known as a conspiracy, “an agreement to perform together an illegal, wrongful, or subversive act.” The word conspiracy comes from the Latin conspirare, “to agree, unite, plot,” and which literally means “to breathe together.” Conspiracy theory, “a theory seeking to explain a disputed case or matter as a plot by a secret group or alliance rather than an individual or isolated act,” is attested to 1909.

A stratagem is “any artifice; a trick by which some advantage is intended to be obtained,” and comes from the Greek strategein, “to be a general, command,” which also gives us strategy and stratocracy, “a military government; government by force of arms.”

A subterfuge is “that to which a person resorts for escape or concealment; a shift; an evasion; artifice employed to escape censure or the force of an argument.” Subterfuge comes from the Latin subterfugere, “to evade, escape, flee by stealth,” with subter meaning “beneath, secretly” and fugere meaning “flee.” Fugere also gives us fugitive.

Intrigue is “secret or underhand plotting or scheming; the exertion of secret influence for the accomplishment of a purpose,” and comes from the Latin intrīcāre, “to entangle.” An intrigante is a female intriguer. Machination is the act of “contriving a scheme for executing some purpose, particularly a forbidden or an evil purpose; underhand plotting or contrivance.” The word ultimately comes from the Latin machina, “machine, engine, fabric, frame, device, trick,” which also gives us machine and the phrase deus ex machina, “an unexpected, artificial, or improbable character, device, or event introduced suddenly in a work of fiction or drama to resolve a situation or untangle a plot,” literally “the god from the machina,” with machina referring to “the device by which ‘gods’ were suspended over the stage in [Greek] theater.”

Treason is “violation of allegiance toward one’s country or sovereign, especially the betrayal of one’s country by waging war against it or by consciously and purposely acting to aid its enemies,” and comes from the Latin traditionem, “a handing over, delivery, surrender,” which also gives us tradition. High treason is “criminal disloyalty to one’s country,” while petit treason (petit is French for “small”) is “the crime of killing a person to whom the offender owed duty or subjection, as one’s husband, master, mistress, etc.,” and “is now not distinguished from murder.”

Perfidy is “deliberate breach of faith; calculated violation of trust; treachery.” The word perfidy comes from the Latin perfidus, “faithless,” which comes from the phrase per fidem decipere, “to deceive through trustingness,” where per means “through” and fidem means “faith.” Treachery comes from the Old French trichier, “to trick.”

A traitor is one who is guilty of treason, and comes from the Latin trādere, “to betray.” Some eponymous synonyms for traitor include Benedict Arnold, a general during the American Revolutionary War who later defected to the British; quisling (named for Vidkun Quisling, “head of Norway’s government during the Nazi occupation”); and Judas, “one of the twelve original Apostles of Jesus, known for his role in Jesus’ betrayal into the hands of Roman authorities.”

But Guy Fawkes Day gives us more than words about plot and treason. The word guy, an informal term for a “man or fellow” or “persons of either sex,” comes from Guy Fawkes himself. Guy earlier referred to “a person grotesque in dress, looks, or manners; a dowdy; a ‘fright,’” which came from the meaning of “a grotesque effigy intended to represent Guy Fawkes.” Around 1847, guy came to mean “a fellow.” The name Guy is French in origin and related to the Italian Guido, “leader.”

How about that mask? It was first made famous by the comic book series and film, V for Vendetta, and then taken up by the hacktivist group Anonymous. It can now also seen at Occupy protests all over the country.

Disobey

Disobey by mediafury, on Flickr

[Photo: CC BY 2.0 by mediafury]

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Work Words

work

While for many Labor Day weekend signals the end of summer, it was originally started to celebrate the “laboring classes.” In this post we’ll be celebrating working hard or, as the case may be, hardly working.

If you have ergasiomania, you have “a restless desire, amounting at times to an insane impulsion, to be continually at work.” (The word also has a meaning that pertains specifically to surgeons: “a desire. . .to operate at every opportunity, whether or not the operation is indicated or justifiable.”)  As an ergasiomaniac, you may be a workaholic, “a person who feels compelled to work excessively”; or a sleep camel, “a person who gets little sleep during the week, and then attempts to make up for it by sleeping in and napping on the weekend.” You may practice inemuri, “the Japanese practice of sleeping on the job. . .to show how committed you are to working.”

You may experience job spill, “work or work-related tasks that carry over into personal time.” You may practice the art of weisure, “free time spent doing work or work-related tasks”; experience vacation deprivation; or take fake-cations, “a vacation where a significant amount of time is spent reading email and performing other work-related tasks.” Maybe you’re a mucus trooper, “an employee with a cold or the flu who insists on showing up for work,” practicing presenteeism, “the act of being present at work even if one’s too sick to be productive.” Hopefully you’ll never succumb to karoshi, a Japanese term for “death, such as from heart attack or stroke, brought on by overwork or job-related stress.”

On the other end of the ergo (that’s Greek for “work”) spectrum is ergasiophobia, “an irrational fear of work.” (Again, the word also has a surgeon-specific definition: “excessive timidity, on the part of a surgeon, and fear to perform an operation even when it is urgently indicated.”) This phobia isn’t due to laziness but rather to performance anxiety and a fear of failure.

A luftmensch doesn’t have ergophobia but prefers not to work, and is “more concerned with airy intellectual pursuits than practical matters like earning an income.” A luftmensch may keep company with slackers, or underachievers; NEETs, those “not in employment, education, or training”; or freeters, young people who “work only when they need cash,” and otherwise “hang out, travel whenever possible and celebrate their rejection of their parents’ old work-aholic lifestyle.”

Or maybe you have a job and work hard, but occasionally find yourself practicing eyeservice, “service performed only under inspection of the eye of an employer”; glazing, or “sleeping with your eyes open,” during meetings; or social notworking, “surfing a social networking site instead of working.” You may do a desk tour, “when you and at least one other co-worker tour the desks of other workers, ideally in other divisions, floors, etc.,”; some smexting, texting while smoking; stealth parenting, “performing childcare duties while pretending to be at a business meeting or other work-related function”; or getting paid for some undertime, time stolen “during the day to compensate for heavier workloads and more stress” by running errands, shopping, or surfing the Internet.

While you’re busy pretending to work, gain some inspiration from these lists of irresponsibilites and laboredoms, and hope you don’t get called one of these. While you’re at it check out these interesting occupations, these occupational surnames, and these occupational hazards. Or how about these archaic occupations, these defunct professions, and these sellers and makers?

Whether you’re a salaryman, a dogsbody, or a desk jockey; a lychnobite, a nine-to-fiver, or arubaito; whether you’re in middle management or a muckety muck, we hope you enjoy these occupational words (and a sinecure). Now get back to work! Or at least pretend to.

Special thanks to Word Spy for some of these great working – and non-working – words.

[Photo: CC BY 2.0 by Sean MacEntee]

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Cricket!

Cricket!

Photo by, and licensed (C BY-NC-SA 2.0) from, kkseema.

At Wordnik, we love all the words (that’s what the heart in the logo means, after all) but there are some words that are especial favorites (that’s what the favorite function is for, after all) … and quite a few of those words are cricketing terms. Only a couple of Wordniks can honestly claim to be true cricket fans (Krishna and Kumanan) but none of us can resist the lure of words like googly (“A googly is a ball delivered by a bowler that looks as if it ought to break from left to right across the bat of a right-handed batsman.”) and Dilscoop (” … [the] stroke “Dilscoop” [ invented by Tilakaratne Dilshan] which involves going down on one knee and scooping the ball over his head in area behind the wicketkeeper.”) Not to mention the best phrase in all of sports: silly mid-off. (Which is the same as the silly mid-on, just on the other side of the pitch. Make sense? No? Well, it doesn’t matter.)

Cricket words are so compelling, in fact, that Wordnik has three different lists devoted to cricket! They are: Sportie: Cricket, i don’t like cricket — i love it, and Cricket! That last link is to an open list — feel free to add your own favorite cricket terms to it!

Is there some other topic that you think has better words than cricket? You can always sign in to Wordnik and create your own list of great words to share …

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Serendipi-tag

“It used to be my little secret, my secret that is until I found out that many of the writers I know practice the same habit. We love to read the dictionary. Many times I have pulled out the dictionary to look up the spelling of a particular word and then another word on the page catches my eye. Twenty minutes later I am still engrossed in the dictionary, browsing through the less familiar definitions.” —Creating Copy by William Ackerly

vacuum tube schematicIt’s true for more than just advertising copywriters: people love the serendipity of a dictionary. They like to get lost for a while, to be distracted, to learn something new.

We like to do that, too, so we’ve made many ways to explore Wordnik.

For example, you can explore another user’s lists. You can look at the related items for a word. You can check out zeitgeist and see what other words people are visiting right now.

But for my money, tags are the feature that offers the most subtle pathways to the unexpected. You can find tags on the right-hand side of a word’s main page.

There’s nothing particularly Linnaean about tags. They’re not meant to be universal. No governing body is going to insist on a hierarchy, a structure, or a form. Unlike Wordnik lists, which can have a mission statement (such as “words I found while reading Great Expectations by Charles Dickens“), tags’ intentions are usually silent.

Tags are personal. They are a way of classifying a word in a way that suits you. Beyond “don’t be a knucklehead,” there aren’t really any rules. You can use short tags, long tags, tags in other languages. You can tag a lot or a little. You can let that basic human need to sort and organize take over. Tag like a maniac in any way that is useful to you or the world.

In lieu of rules, I offer two tag guidelines that have been helpful to me:

1. Make your tags true as far as you know.
2. Make your tags memorable to you.

That way, you’ll have left clues for yourself (if you forget the word) and for other serendipiters who come across the same word. (See, I used a new word there and then tagged it with “neologism.”)

Tags are so personal that often the only obvious intention behind a tag is to demonstrate a connection between two words. For example, if someone tags the word basilect with language, then there’s a pretty good chance that basilect has something to do with language. That’s about as much as we can glean.

However, if someone tags the word language with cvccvvcv, most people are going to be mystified. It doesn’t even look like a word! But there was indeed a connection there for somebody, and, it turns out, the tags are useful if you need to know something about the orthography of a set of words. (Hint: each “c” stands for “consonant” and each “v” stands for “vowel.” Full explanation here.)

Remember that a word can both be tagged and can be a tag itself. At the top of every word’s tag page you’ll see “words tagged” with the word you’re looking at and at the bottom you’ll see “the word has been tagged.” Check out the tag page for neologism to see what I mean.

If you want a bit of guided serendipity, you can browse the tags made by any user who has a public profile. Here are some of mine.

If you’re looking for a little more about tagging from an insider’s point of view, I recommend the book Tagging: People-powered Metadata for the Social Web.

Happy tagging!

Photo by Paula Rey. Used under a Creative Commons license.