Language changes
I'm reading a science fiction story published in 1958: "Eastward Ho!", by William Tenn. It posited a post-Collapse future in which white people live in low-tech poverty, while American Indians...
Archive for Slang
Indian English
I continue to be intrigued by the differences between British/American English and Indian English. I also wonder regularly if some of the grammatical problems I see in submissions written by...
Variety slang
Variety has been using idiosyncratic and hyperbolic slang for about a hundred years now: ankle, biopic, boffo, chopsocky, helm, hoofer, nix, oater, percenter, scribbler, skein, sudser, terp, warble, whammo, yawner,...
thrupenny bits
Just encountered a comment in an article on Britain's Got Talent that refers to "a dancer who was show[ing] her thrupennie bits to the world." Thruppence, or the threepenny bit,...