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This Week’s Language Blog Roundup

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.

Earlier this week was Burns Night, and while we celebrated Scottish poet Robert Burns with some Scottish food words, BBC gave us some Scottish food recipes (haggis, anyone?). This week was also the Lunar New Year, which The Atlantic rang in with some gorgeous pictures, while at Language Log, Victor Mair wrote about the year of the dragon.

Mr. Mair also discussed pinyin faux amis and Google translate and Chinese. Mark Liberman explored Finnish language flowers (crash blossoms in English), snowmanteaux, the word quite, and the phrase only and only if. Geoffrey Pullum pointed out an Australian company’s right to use another phrase, nuckin futs, and was puzzled in Tarrgona about elevators and baffled in Barcelona about an airport sign. Mr. Pullum also advised politicians not to borrow from Hollywood (at least not without proper citation) when making speeches.

Mr. Liberman bemoaned the loss of the apostrophe from Waterstones, while Mr. Pullum gave his two cents and wondered if the apostrophe ever represents a sound. Stan Carey considered apostrophe apostasy and rounded up apostrophic reactions from around the web. Mr. Carey also explored new abbreviations, as did Ben Yagoda at Lingua Franca (and don’t forget Erin McKean’s piece on clipped words from October).

Macmillan Dictionary blog offered a great primer on American political discourse, while Johnson pondered mixing languages, losing certain types of British accents, and the word issue. Ben Zimmer discussed American dialects from A to Z, while at Lingua Franca, Geoff Pullum wrote about the singular they and what’s normal and what’s formal; Lucy Ferris commented on comments; and Ben Yagoda read the newspaper with a grammar geek’s eye.

Kory Stamper discussed defining obscenities, and editorial correspondence and the dictionary. Arnold Zwicky considered the word fanny, “an area ripe for trans-Atlantic misunderstanding and offense,” and the geek voice. Sesquiotica examined spoffle (as coined by actor Hugh Laurie); scattermalia, “little details passed back and forth one at a time until you lose track entirely of who said what when in response to what”; and the elusive geoduck (which by the way is not an earth duck).

The Virtual Linguist took a look at masher, “well-to-do young men who came [to the music-hall] mainly to look at the women”; women’s use of vastly and other adverbs; and the dwindling use of barrow boy stock market slang. The Word Spy spotted black-hole resort, “a resort that blocks all incoming and outgoing Internet signals”; workshifting, “using portable devices and wireless technologies to perform work wherever and whenever it is convenient”; and Eurogeddon, “an extreme European economic, political, or military crisis.”

In the week in words, Erin McKean noticed Chollima, a rather frightening North Korean version of Pegasus; neophiliac, those “who chase the new at all costs”; mouse type, “6- or 7-point type” largely used for “warnings, disclaimers and legal jargon”; and weibo, “Twitter-like microblogs” in China (“Because weibo sounds like the Mandarin word for ‘scarf,’ microblogging in China is sometimes referred to as zhi weibo, or ‘knitting a scarf’”).

Erin also collected some new words from noncelebrity neologizers, such as nukepicking, “the combination of nitpicking and blowing things out of proportion”; estiknow, “to assert that you’re 90 percent sure of something”; and technoschmerz, “the emotional pain (schmerz comes from a German word meaning ‘pain’) caused by difficult interactions with electronic gadgets or unhelpful websites.”

Fritinancy’s word of the week was grandiosity, “greatness of scope or intent; feigned or affective grandeur or pomposity; excessive use of verbal ornamentation.” Fritinancy also examined incorrect usage of the word infamous, and the anachronistic usage of the phrase to contact in period drama Downton Abbey. Dialect Blog delved into Downton Abbey’s accents, and the supposed decline of the New York accent. Editor Mark offered an updated archive of very helpful tweeted tips; Lists of Note listed William Safire’s Fumblerules of Grammar; and Mental Floss gave us Ben Franklin’s 200 synonyms for drunk.

We learned that a town in Western France has banned the word mademoiselle, arguing that “women, like men, should not be defined by their marital status”; some teen slang from British TV; the 20 biggest differences between British and American English; the unexpected inspirations behind some children’s books; and the origin of the snark.

We loved this letterheady website and the new look this artist is giving the print dictionary. We were amused by the idea of rabbles at underground Scrabble meetings, and would very much like to read this book, “a historical and cultural study of fiction fandom.”

Finally, we thoroughly enjoyed this Maurice Sendak interview (otherwise known as “Shit Maurice Sendak Says”) with Stephen Colbert. Here’s part two.

That’s it for this week! We hope you Burns Supper suppers enjoyed your haggis, tatties, and neeps, and we wish everyone a lucky and prosperous year of the dragon.

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WotD Perfect Tweet Challenge Roundup

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.

Here are our favorites from last week:

Thanks to everyone for playing! You’ll have another chance this week to perfect your word of the day perfect tweets. To get the word of the day, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, or subscribe via email.

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Scottish Food Words: Celebrating Robert Burns

Robert Burns Day, otherwise known as Burns Night, honors the birthday of Scottish poet, or makar, Robert Burns. Lovers of Burns, Scots poetry, and haggis gather together every January 25 to celebrate with a Burns supper, which involves a toast to the lassies, a recitation of Burns’ poetry, and the ingesting and imbibing of many Scottish eats and drinks.

For the first course, you may start with some cockieleekie, “soup made of a cock or other fowl boiled with leeks,” or Scotch broth, “a thick soup made from beef or mutton with vegetables and pearl barley.” Afterward is the “entrance of the haggis,” at which time bagpipes (or zampognas, gaidas, cornemuses, or loures) play some music, such as a pibroch, “a wild, irregular kind of music, peculiar to the Scottish Highlands, performed upon the bagpipe.” The word pibroch comes from the Scottish Gaelic piobaireachd, “pipe music,” which ultimately comes from the Latin pipare, “to chirp or peep.”

Just so you know what you’re in for, haggis is “a dish made of a sheep’s heart, lungs, and liver, minced with suet, onions, oatmeal, salt, and pepper, and boiled in a bag, usually the stomach of a sheep.” The origin of this word is unknown. It may come the Old French agace, “magpie,” playing on the idea “of the odds and ends the bird collects,” and the odds and ends in the dish. Another possible origin is the Middle English hagese, which may be related to haggen, “to chop.” Haggen also gives us haggle, perhaps with the idea of “hacking or chopping” prices.

Haggis

Haggis by tjmwatson on Flickr

[Photo: CC BY 2.0 by tjmwatson]

Along with haggis, Burns supper diners might also have some neeps, otherwise known as the rutabaga, the Swedish turnip, or the swede, and which “originated as a cross between the cabbage and the turnip.” The word neep may be a corruption of “new turnips.” Don’t forget your potatoes or tatties, which presumably comes from the -tat- of potato (see tater), or perhaps some clapshot, “a traditional Scottish dish comprised of boiled potatoes and boiled swede (or Scottish turnip) mashed together with chives.”

Haggis, Neeps and Tatties!

Haggis, Neeps and Tatties! by tjmwatson, on Flickr

[Photo: CC BY 2.0 by tjmwatson]

While the origin of the word clapshot is unknown, World Wide Words speculates it may be similar to that of the Irish dish colcannon, a dish of “mashed potatoes and cabbage, seasoned with butter,” which was “pounded together in a mortar,” and “that vegetables such as spinach were formerly pounded with a cannon-ball,” hence, the cannon of colcannon. Col is derived from cole, or cabbage (see coleslaw). Clapshot may imply the clap or loud and sudden noise of a cannonball shot.

You may end the evening with some cranachan, “a traditional Scottish dessert made with whipped cream, whisky, oatmeal, honey, and raspberries.” The word is Gaelic in origin and originally referred to a kind of churn or “beaten milk.” A similar British dessert is syllabub.

Of course no Burns Night would be complete without Scotch whisky (otherwise known as usquebaugh, Gaelic for “water of life”), whether a dram, a tappit-hen, or a quaich. Too much usquebaugh? Try the Irn-Bru, a “fizzy orange-gold drink” touted as the Scottish hangover cure, or a few rounds of the Highland Fling, “one of the oldest of the Highland dances that originated in the Gaelic Highlands of Scotland,” and an ancient Scottish cure.

According to the Porridge Lady, to prevent a hangover before a ceilidh (from the Old Irish célide, “visit”) or a gilvarage (perhaps a combination of gild and ravage), have some crowdie.

And remember: we warned you about the haggis.

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Word Soup

Welcome to another installment of Word Soup!

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 from talk shows, sitcoms, dramas, and just about anything else on TV. Today we take a look at some pickup artist lingo, a few Britishisms, blah people, and more.

authorizing

Bailey: “He counters with some authorizing. He makes it seem like the last thing on his mind is hooking up. He just finds her interesting and wants to talk.”

“Till Death Do Us Part,” Castle, January 9, 2012

Authorizing is part of made-up pickup artist lingo constructed for this episode of Castle, and plays on “real” pickup artist lingo. Authorizing may have to do with the idea of being an authority and having power over women by feigning disinterest in a physical relationship.

blah

Ed Schulz: “Blah isn’t the word I heard.”
Rick Santorum: “I don’t want to make blah people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money.”

The Ed Show, January 6, 2011

Some claim that Santorum said black people, which he denied: “If you look at it, what I started to say is a word and then sort of changed and it sort of — blah — came out.  And people said I said ‘black.’ I didn’t.” Mark Liberman at Language Log asserted that what Santorum said sounded more like bligh, and that perhaps Santorum “started to say ‘black’ and used the vowel in ‘lives’, as an ordinary sort of anticipatory speech error, perhaps enhanced by a sudden doubt about whether it was a good idea to bring race into the discussion.”

bronemy

Schmidt: “He’s my bronemy. My friemesis.”

“The Story of the 50,” New Girl, January 18, 2012

Bronemey is a blend of bro and enemy, and is the “bro” version of  frenemy – a blend of friend and enemy – “someone who pretends to be your friend, but is really enemy,” or someone with whom one has a love/hate relationship. Friemesis is a blend of friend and nemesis. An older term with a similar meaning is backfriend, “a false or pretended friend; a secret enemy,” which seems to have first appeared in the 15th century and is also slang for hangnail.

bug-hunter

Doc [addressing a group of prostitutes]: “Pickpockets, lushingtons, and bug-hunters will be severely dealt with.”

“God of Chaos,” Hell on Wheels, January 15, 2012

A bug-hunter is “a street thief who specializes in snatching (drunken) men’s jewellery.” Bug was once slang for “breast-pin.” See this list for even more words for thief.

butter job

Esposito: “A butter job, what’s that?”
Bailey: “It’s when you flirt with the mark’s friend.”

“Till Death Do Us Part,” Castle, January 9, 2012

Butter job is another example of pickup artist lingo constructed for this episode of Castle, and perhaps comes from the idea of buttering up the targeted woman’s friend in order to get to the woman.

city, the

Anthony Bourdain: “[Sweetings is] one of the great institutions of what’s called ‘the city,’ London’s financial district.”

“London,” The Layover, January 16, 2012

In addition to the city, some other financial district nicknames include Wall Street (New York), FiDi (San Francisco), and La Defense (Paris).

duress

Emily: “Defense lawyers use the term duress to describe the use of force, coercion, or psychological pressure exerted on a client in the commission of a crime. When duress is applied to the emotionally unstable, the result can be as violent as it is unpredictable.”

“Duress,” Revenge, January 4, 2011

Duress comes from the Latin durus, “hard,” and is related to the word endure.

ex-stalk-tion

Bailey: “Mike’s our buddy. He got involved with this crazy stalker chick. Colette something. So we staged an abduction to scare her off. You call it an ex-stalk-tion.”

“Till Death Do Us Part,” Castle, January 9, 2012

Ex-stalk-tion is a blend of the Latin prefix ex, meaning “out of, from,” stalk, and the Latin noun suffix -ion. It may also be a play on extraction, “the act of taking out.”

faffing

Chris: “I’m sorry, but the Ben Wyatt that I know – I just don’t think he’d be happy sitting here faffing around.”

“The Comeback Kid,” Parks and Recreation, January 12, 2012

To faff is British slang that means “to waste time on an unproductive activity,” and originally meant “to move violently.” According to World Wide Words, faff may have started “as a dialect word in Scotland and Northern England at the end of the eighteenth century, as a description of the wind blowing in puffs or small gusts,” and “may have been imitative of the sound of gusty wind.” Another possibility is that it was an alteration of maffle or faffle, both of which mean “to stammer.”

Special thanks to Fritinancy for pointing this out.

lushington

Doc: “Pickpockets, lushingtons, and bug-hunters will be severely dealt with.”

“God of Chaos,” Hell on Wheels, January 15, 2012

A lushington is a tippler or habitual drinker. The word may came from lush, a drunkard, which may come from “the old German word Loschen, which also means strong beer, or possibly from lush in the Irish traveller argot Shelta, which meant to eat and drink.”

pannenkoek

Anthony Bourdain: “This place supposedly is where the Beastie Boys were inspired to write the lyric ‘When I am in Holland, I eat the pannenkoeken‘ which is a lyric I’ve had tattooed on my inner thigh since the release of Super Disco Breakin’.”

“Amsterdam,” The Layover, January 3, 2012

Pannekoek (pannenkoeken is plural) is a type of large Dutch pancake which can be savory or sweet.

pop-up

Anthony Bourdain: “Pop-up means just what it sounds like: a joint that pops up anywhere it can, for a few hours or days, then moves on.”

“San Francisco,” The Layover, January 9, 2012

Pop-up in this context refers to a pop-up restaurant, a temporary restaurant which often operates “from a private home, former factory or similar and during festivals.”

rice queen

Becky [in voiceover to Mike Chang]: “No, Chang Du, I’m no rice queen.”

“Yes/No,” Glee, January 17, 2012

Rice queen usually refers to “a gay non-Asian man who is mostly attracted to East Asian men,” with rice as a disparaging yet, some may argue, reappropriated reference to East Asian culture and queen as a disparaging yet reappropriated term for a gay man. This instance of rice queen could be considered an example of cultural appropriation, “the adoption of some specific elements of one culture by a different cultural group.”

sexpionage

Beckett: “That’s espionage.”
Castle: “More like sexpionage.”

“Till Death Do Us Part,” Castle, January 9, 2012

Sexpionage is a blend of sex and espionage, and means using sex to commit espionage, “the practice of spying.”

Siegbarste

Nick: “He was big. And he has this rare genetic disorder that deadens the nerves. And abnormally dense bones.”
Eddie: “Siegbarste. Your basic ogre.”

“Game Ogre,” Grimm, January 13, 2012

Siegbarste is German in origin. Sieg translates as “victory” while barste may be a corruption of bersten, “to burst or crack.”

straw man

Nash Castor: “That’s our Democratic straw man.”

“Politically Inept, with Homer Simpson,” The Simpsons, January 8, 2012

A straw man is “a person who is set up as a cover or front for a questionable enterprise.”

tweaky

Josh: “So, there were an unusual amount of tweaky looking vampires scuffling around the doorstep last night.”

“Turn This Mother Out,” Being Human, January 16, 2012

Tweaky means having the attributes of a tweaker, slang for “a person addicted to methamphetamines.” Tweaking describes a tweaker’s behavior, which is often compulsive and repetitive, and is a a type of stereotypy. The origin of this sense of tweaking is unknown, as far as we could find, but may be imitative of twitch, tik, or twinge.  The vampires in this instance are craving blood, and as a result act like tweakers or drug addicts.

yobbery

Anthony Bourdain: “The dark side of British night life: binge drinking, drunken rickshaw tours, general yobbery.”

“London,” The Layover, January 16, 2012

Yobbery refers to behavior like that of a yob, British slang for “a rowdy, aggressive, or violent young man.” Yob is boy spelled backwards (presumably, a yob behaves in the opposite way a proper boy should) and attests to 1859.

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!

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Stop SOPA and PIPA

Wordnik is participating in the day of protest against the (now-temporarily-shelved) SOPA Act (Stop Online Piracy Act) and the (still active) PIPA Act (Protect IP Act).

What’s SOPA? Here are some example sentences that we think make it clear that this bill is a bad idea:

SOPA – the Stop Online Piracy Act – and a sister bill, PIPA – the Protect IP Act – seek to minimize the dissemination of copyrighted material online by targeting sites that promote and enable the sharing of copyright-protected material, like The Pirate Bay. While this goal may be laudable, entrepreneurs, legal scholars and free speech activists are worried about the consequences of these bills for the architecture of the Internet. Ethan Zuckerman: MIT Media Lab opposes SOPA, PIPA

[T]he bills represent an unprecedented, legally sanctioned assault on the Internet’s critical technical infrastructure. Based upon nothing more than an application by a federal prosecutor alleging that a foreign website is “dedicated to infringing activities,” Protect IP authorizes courts to order all U.S. Internet service providers, domain name registries, domain name registrars, and operators of domain name servers—a category that includes hundreds of thousands of small and medium-sized businesses, colleges, universities, nonprofit organizations, and the like—to take steps to prevent the offending site’s domain name from translating to the correct Internet protocol address. These orders can be issued even when the domains in question are located outside of the United States and registered in top-level domains (e.g., .fr, .de, or .jp) whose operators are themselves located outside the United States; indeed, some of the bills’ remedial provisions are directed solely at such domains. Stanford Law Review: Don’t Break the Internet

At a minimum, this means that [under SOPA] any service that hosts user generated content is going to be under enormous pressure to actively monitor and filter that content. That’s a huge burden, and worse for services that are just getting started – the YouTubes of tomorrow that are generating jobs today. EFF: “SOPA: Hollywood Finally Gets A Chance to Break the Internet”

Now, enter SOPA. § 103 of SOPA allows private parties to require payment processors and advertising services to cut ties with websites that are allegedly “dedicated to the theft of U.S. property.” Note: this is all done outside of the court system, so no judge actually reviews any of these claims before they’re enforced by the payment and ad networks. Public Knowledge: SOPA and Section 1201: A Frightening Combination

The latest move in a decades-long battle with piracy and copyright infringement is a bill called the PROTECT-IP Act that would essentially allow the U.S. government to block access to sites they deemed inappropriate. The bill would criminalize posting all sorts of standard web content — music playing in the background of videos, footage of people dancing, kids playing video games, and posting video of people playing cover songs. A move that would not only stifle free speech and creative expression, but potentially endanger hundreds of user-generated media sites like Vimeo, Tumblr, SoundCloud and more. The Creators Project: Artists Band Together To Fight Censorship And Oppose The PROTECT-IP Act

Laws like SOPA make us sclerotic as a country, where we have all these extra burdens that provide little benefit. In general it makes America less competitive. If SOPA goes through, it could very well force certain innovative companies to go offshore. There are incumbent industries that will always protest every new technology; but any forward-looking country needs to protect its emerging industries. GigaOm: Tim O’Reilly: Why I’m fighting SOPA

So you don’t run a website … how might SOPA and PIPA affect you?

The harm that does to ordinary, non-infringing users is best described via a hypothetical user: Abe. Abe has never even so much as breathed on a company’s copyright but he does many of the things typical of Internet users today. He stores the photos of his children, now three and six years old, online at PickUpShelf* so that he doesn’t have to worry about maintaining backups. He is a teacher and keeps copies of his classes accessible for his students via another service called SunStream that makes streaming audio and video easy. He engages frequently in conversation in several online communities and has developed a hard-won reputation and following on a discussion host called SpeakFree. And, of course, he has a blog called “Abe’s Truths” that is hosted on a site called NewLeaflet. He has never infringed on any copyright and each of the entities charged with enforcing SOPA know that he hasn’t.

And yet, none of that matters. Under SOPA, every single one of the services that Abe uses can be obliterated from his view without him having any remedy. Abe may wake up one morning and not be able to access any of his photos of his children. Neither he, nor his students, would be able to access any of his lectures. His trove of smart online discussions would likewise evaporate and he wouldn’t even be able to complain about it on his blog. And, in every case, he has absolutely no power to try to regain access. That may sound far-fetched but under SOPA, all that needs to happen for this scenario to come true is for the Attorney General to decide that some part of PickUpShelf, SunStream, SpeakFree and NewLeaflet would be copyright infringement in the US. If a court agrees, and with no guarantee of an adversarial proceeding that seems very likely, the entire site is “disappeared” from the US internet. Bricoleur: Overbroad Censorship & Users

You can track this legislation and read the full text here.

At Wordnik, we’re against piracy, but we think that SOPA and PIPA create more problems than they solve. So we’re happy to stand alongside such giants of the Internet as Wikipedia, the Internet Archive, O’Reilly Media, WordPress, Reddit, BoingBoing, and ICanHazCheezburger and add our voices to the chorus of those protesting this ill-thought-out and Internet-wrecking legislation.

Want an easy way to make your opinion heard in Congress? You can send emails via FightForTheFuture.org and AmericanCensorship.org. (AmericanCensorship.org also has HTML code for you to use to add a black “Stop Censorship” banner to your own blog or site.)

If you’re in San Francisco, you can join an in-person protest Wednesday from noon to 2 p.m.; details here. (Ditto New York and Seattle.)

And if you have an Android device, here’s a link to an app that will help you boycott SOPA-supporting companies and organizations.

PS Our word of the day today, spiflicate, is also in protest of SOPA and PIPA. SOPA and PIPA are set to spiflicate (‘stifle, suffocate, kill’) the Internet; but before that happens we hope to spiflicate (‘beat, confound, dismay’) them!

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WotD Perfect Tweet Challenge Roundup

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.

Here are our favorites from last week:

Thanks to everyone for playing! You’ll have another chance this week to perfect your word of the day perfect tweets. To get the word of the day, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, or subscribe via email.

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This Week’s Language Blog Roundup

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.

Last week the American Dialect Society picked its 2011 word of the year, occupy, “verb, noun, and combining form referring to the Occupy protest movement.” Other categories included Most Useful (humblebrag, “expression of false humility”); Most Creative (Mellencamp, “a woman who has aged out of being a ‘cougar’ (after John Cougar Mellencamp)”); and Most Outrageous (assholocracy, “rule by obnoxious multi-millionaires”). Ben Zimmer, chair of the New Words Committee of the American Dialect Society, gives a recap at Visual Thesaurus.

The Economist discussed the gift of learning foreign languages, while Johnson discussed lexical accuracy in politics; the dreaded comma splice; fewer versus less; and Rick Santorum and the word santorum (NSFW), as coined by Dan Savage.

At Language Log, more Santorum shenanigans went on as Mark Liberman considered “blah” people. Mr. Liberman also examined political speech errors; “g-dropping” in songs and life; the origins of the phrase just sayin’; and the “floating discourse adjunct,” kind of thing. Victor Mair explored sauce in Texas and caravanserai on the Silk Road, and Mandarin Chinese in Mainland China versus Taiwan. Julie Sedivy wrote about the loss of speech, while Geoff Pullum discussed the passive voice and the stupidity of commenters.

In other political misspeaking, Jan Freeman posted about Ron Paul’s statement that he’s “nibbling,” as opposed to nipping, at  Mitt Romney’s heels. At Lingua Franca, Lucy Ferriss explored day and month words; Geoff Pullum revisited the singular they; Ben Yagoda peeved on a variety of topics; and Allan Metcalf asserted that efforts to revive and banish words make no difference (don’t tell that to British journalist John Tottenham – awesome!). At Macmillan Dictionary blog, Michael Rundell explained the difference between terminology and jargon, while Stan Carey got into inkhorn terms, and on his own blog engaged in some baby talk.

Fritinancy got hoity-toity and was all about the umlauts. Her word of the week was emoji, “Cartoonish icons used to communicate emotion in email and texting,” which is  “from the Japanese; a blend of ‘e’ (Japanese for ‘picture’) + ‘moji’ (‘letter’).” Word Spy spotted showroom, bustaurant, ineptocracy, and Janopause, “the practice of abstaining from alcohol for the month of January.”

Erin McKean rounded up the interesting words and linguistic trends of 2011, and noticed this week in words, like-jacking, moitié-moitié, resto-mod, and supremes. At The Boston Globe, Erin confronted the horror of ungrammatical song lyrics, and on the Colin McEnroe show talked dictionaries, print and otherwise.

Lynneguist explained the British English phrase just about, and the difference between the American English haste makes waste and the British English more haste, less spend. Kory Stamper described life as a lexicographer while Arnold Zwicky took a look at gastropubs and separated spellings. Sesquiotica considered triolets, ballades, and toques – or is it tuques? The Virtual Linguist told us it was Irish monks who first put spaces between words, and that “Germany has a problem with so-called ‘opium grandpas‘.”

Dialect Blog delved into t-tapping (“‘bitter’ sounds like ‘bidder’”); compared the New England and East Anglia accents; and wondered if there was ever a “veddy British” R. Grammarphobia explained where the word hobnob comes from; Motivated Grammar assured us hashtags aren’t ruining anything; and Grammar Girl told us the origins of the @ symbol and the word OK.

Meanwhile, The New York Times’ crossword puzzle editor Will Shortz was schooled on the true meaning of the word illin’; J. R. R. Tolkien’s chances at a Nobel were dashed by “poor prose”; and Mark Twain ranted about bad writing. We were excited to read this posthumous article from Christopher Hitchens, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time, and to imagine Daria, Rory Gilmore, and Rupert Giles as lit bloggers.

We learned that robots show randomness in language, that language is hardwired to be positive, and that there are some filthy words we still can’t say on TV. We found out which books were the most metal of 2011; that people crazy about Downton Abbey are probably crazy for books; why authors tweet; and why libraries have that smell.

We loved this dictionary of superstitions (“Finding a hairpin promises making a new friend; losing one is more ominous, suggesting that an enemy is close at hand”); this website that is attempting “to create a multi-layered ‘storyverse’ that links, cross-references and catalogues every mention of pretty much everything in fiction”; these 25 epithets from literature; and this Tokyo bookstore that personally recommends books to its customers. We also loved this Japanese store and its “fuckin’” sale (fuckin’ was a play on the Japanese word fukubukuro, meaning “lucky bags,”) and were saddened that they changed their sign.

Finally, thanks to Word Blog for including us in their 50 Best Blogs for Word Lovers.

That’s it for this week!