Archive for Specific Words
In a New York Times piece from 2015, Jonah Berger wrote about the longevity of sensory metaphors. An interesting piece, and an interesting idea. Fits nicely with stuff I’ve been reading about metaphors in Lakoff and Johnson’s Metaphors We Live By. I find the piece a little incomplete in its discussion of the word cool, […]
An Ars Technica article from 2014 explains that the word “xenomorph” in Aliens is a generic term and not a specific name for that specific species. Commenters point out that the exhaustively argued conclusion that the article comes to is exactly what they had assumed to be true from watching the movie. Nonetheless, I admire […]
Not that people should go around laming ducks, in hopes that it will reduce the power of the presidency.
I’m disappointed to find that “Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn” doesn’t turn into anything interesting when rot-13ed. (It becomes “Cu'atyhv ztyj'ansu Pguhyuh E'ylru jtnu'anty sugnta.” (Perhaps I’ll try to turn Pguhyuh into a catchphrase, the way alt.folklore.urban turned furrfu into a catchphrase.)
Verboten Siesta would actually be a pretty good name for a band.
Two items from the Saturday Evening Post, Autumn 1936
Is the -y version overly pretentious? Because if it is, I should start using it.
The OED didn't help, although I was surprised to learn that 'booty' (as in pirate) was probably not derived from 'boot' meaning profit (as in the phrase 'to boot'), at least not directly.
I just encountered an authorial note by Robert A. Heinlein, possibly written around 1980, that used the word happy-making. I think I only started to see that word used in the last twenty years or so, so I got curious about when it come into use. My dictionary was silent on the matter, but Google […]
Such a great sounding word, too. Shonky.