Gobshite: or, strumpeth under the majis
Two items from the Saturday Evening Post, Autumn 1936
Archive for Specific Words
Guaranty/Guarantee
Is the -y version overly pretentious? Because if it is, I should start using it.
Boots up!
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.
happy-making
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 […]
shonky
Such a great sounding word, too. Shonky.
What’s the crack?
Is it pathetic Anglophilia if it's Irish?
Blag, Blagger, Blagging
Does the US need a version of this one? Or can we just use the Brits, but in a funny accent?
Word aversion
From 2013, an article about some people’s aversion to words like moist. More or less NSFW.
orthogonal
From 2010: US Supreme Court Justices react to use of the word “orthogonal” in an oral argument. (In case any of y’all aren’t familiar with this use of the term: in computer circles, it generally means something along the lines of “unrelated” or “independent”; if you say “that issue is orthogonal to what we’re discussing,” […]
Mx
The other day, Mary Anne linked to an article that claimed that the new gender-neutral title “Mx” was being officially added to the OED. I'm not linking to that article...