There can be only one (or two)
Heard an unintentionally funny line on the radio this morning: "There's only one person who can answer this, and that's y'all." —Car Talk caller, 4 April 2010. Of course, "y'all"...
Archive for Usage
Happy National Grammar Day!
It's National Grammar Day! Apparently created by the folks who brought us the Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar (SPOGG). The National Grammar Day site initially looked annoyingly prescriptivist...
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...
Mama, momma, mom, etc
I was recently discussing various words for "mother," and it occurred to me that words/spellings like mama, momma, mom, ma, and mamma have different connotations to me. MW11 lists them...
that of
In the past few days, I keep seeing people misuse the phrase "that of" in the same kind of way, apparently for emphasis. Like this: * My primary concern is...
Shortening
Is there a name for the particular kind of term-shortening where a term or phrase is abbreviated to its first component, even if that's not the important/meaningful part? The most...
Two arguments about intended meaning
Over at Language Log last week, linguist Geoffrey Pullum posted an entry titled "Yale sluts and Princeton philosophers," about a threatened lawsuit over a Yale fraternity's writing a sign saying...
frozeth
A USA Today blog entry from Kevin Maney, dated 5 April 2006, has the following headline: Apple and XP: Has hell frozeth shut? I'm wondering whether this was an intentional...
distaff
I always had a vague idea that "distaff" referred to a woman specifically in the role of wife. Turns out it just means female more generally, or specifically maternal. MW11...
judicial and judicious
"Judge Alito has been a judicious judge and my confidence he will be a judicial justice is based on my personal knowledge of the man and my belief his...