tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25579542187601616202012-02-13T07:45:06.570+11:00parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.comBlogger1371100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-59473917515800110002012-02-08T20:24:00.003+11:002012-02-08T21:19:36.576+11:00

What's going on? I thought this was Australia. Since when are women here addressed as ma'am? I've heard it twice in two days.Urban dictionary defines ma'aming someone as using this term when the woman thinks she's too young to deserve itto call a woman "ma'am," especially when she is (or thinks she is) way too young to be considered one.(some twenty-something): oh my god, that waiter just ma'amed

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-7662543853755676582012-02-03T22:14:00.004+11:002012-02-03T22:27:34.831+11:00

Arriving home recently after a somewhat worrying visit to the vet, I took a moment to enjoy a new word. Ascultation. There it was in the consultation notes.Hmm... he'd been listening to my dog's gut through his stethoscope and I seem to recall I heard the Italian teacher at school, when she wanted a child to listen to her, say something like: "ascolta!'So, it must mean listening.Over to the

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-70367683260188552372012-01-24T20:38:00.005+11:002012-01-24T22:07:41.956+11:00

In our local library today I heard a new word in use. One librarian said to another that he would ' 'recalendarise it'.The meaning seemed obvious from the context. I thought he was going to rearrange a schedule. I've just checked online for a definition and found calendarize at Urban Dictionary: 1. calendarize To add a scheduled event to a planning calendar, so that it may serve as a future

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-21358443088516220202012-01-06T21:16:00.006+11:002012-01-06T21:48:13.870+11:00

Tonight we'll take the decorations off our Christmas tree, because we follow the tradition that on the 6th of January Christmas is over. It's a Wollemi pine, and we are happy to grow an amazing tree that dates back to prehistoric times and was thought to be extinct until its recent discovery.I once heard this is the only Christmas tree available for Melbourne that actually enjoys being inside

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-51118889434559134702011-12-31T14:13:00.005+11:002011-12-31T15:41:44.627+11:00

I loved the novel Pompeii so much that I can't resist writing about it again.I don't want to post a spoiler, of course, so I have to be careful here...But the whole time I was reading it I was thinking of the fact that the Romans didn't know what a volcano could do, because the only volcano to have erupted near a city was Etna, in Sicily. Only an extremely highly educated and well-read citizen

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-12992858333959670472011-12-29T22:40:00.009+11:002011-12-29T23:56:11.780+11:00

Matrix. What a word. It has so many meanings these days that I won't even try to cover them all. However, I will mention the fact that matrix comes from Latin and has a sense of 'pregnant animal', 'womb', or 'mother'.I've just finished reading the novel Pompeii by Robert Harris. Unputdownable! It's quite a feat to keep the reader's interest to the last word when a story is set in Pompeii in AD 79

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-21147922342843976402011-12-22T21:57:00.006+11:002011-12-22T22:32:55.746+11:00

In Overland Issue 205 There's an article titled 'Language and politics in Indigenous writing'. It's a report on a PEN panel, originally presented at the 2011 Melbourne Writers Festival.In the first of three follow-up essays, John Bradley talks about his work with the Yanyuwa people of the south-west Gulf of Carpentaria.He writes: The more, however, I think about this language, the hardest thing

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-25118780936749114002011-12-21T00:08:00.005+11:002011-12-21T00:34:42.413+11:00

As I drove along today, I passed a Volkswagen Golf, and wondered why they named it that. I thought I recalled that Golf is the German word for a gulf. (I checked it on my great little Franklin electronic translator, and I was correct.Wikipedia gives this etymology of the name:The Golf name is derived from the German word for Gulf Stream and the period in its history when VW named vehicles after

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-7372268076443052072011-12-19T20:28:00.000+11:002011-12-19T20:28:00.393+11:00

My new word for today comes from an article in The Age about young Victorian, Anand Bharadwaj, who recently became the World Youth Scrabble Champion, in Malaysia. He said his favorite word is douleia, meaning worship of saints and angels. It uses all the vowels.The word wasn't in the dictionary on my computer, nor was it in the online Macquarie Dictionary, but I presume it is one of the 130,000

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-27500968642465130752011-12-18T21:49:00.003+11:002011-12-18T22:27:18.851+11:00

When I was discussing concepts with some students this afternoon, I asked them what the word wand made them think of.I was surprised to find most of these twenty-first century children initially had the same image as I did, a short piece of wood with a star on the top and lots of glitter - a magic wand that a picture-book fairy might carry. I had expected that the juggernaut Harry Potter

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-58947361013578689912011-12-18T21:05:00.005+11:002011-12-18T21:49:16.479+11:00

I have the pleasure of working sometimes with young people who want to improve their ability to read and write. Today I wanted to talk to a group about concepts. We read about Helen Keller and how she first began to attach a word to the concept of 'water'. There's a moving film adaptation of Helen Keller's life story here, in which we see the moment when she realised the connection between the

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-66050990070407917912011-11-30T20:53:00.003+11:002011-11-30T21:26:55.134+11:00

We need a plumber. We need someone to find the leak in our water pipe that is costing us money. And wasting water. As we were discussing who would be appropriate for the job, it occurred to me to hope he would deal with the problem with aplomb.I wondered, 'Why did that word pop into my head?'And then I realised my subconscious was at work, thinking of the etymological roots of these two words.But

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-64311249302526553602011-11-28T22:27:00.004+11:002011-11-28T22:49:17.116+11:00

As I was browsing Slavenka's blog I noticed a word usage that is new to me - murmuration, as a collective noun for a flock of starlings.Nancy Friedman, on her blog, Fritinancy, quotes the OED on this usage: “one of many alleged group terms found in late Middle English glossarial sources, but not otherwise substantiated”.Starlings are a pest species here in Melbourne, and to me the noise they

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-80903262574539850892011-11-16T22:05:00.008+11:002011-11-16T23:15:41.222+11:00

I've just come home from attending a talk by Dr Rachel Nordlinger about Australia's indigenous languages. She presented the Margaret Lyttle 4th Annual Oration at Preshil School in Kew.Like most Australians, I am appallingly ignorant about the wealth of languages that existed here before the arrival of Europeans. And about the languages that still exist today.If I remember correctly, Dr Nordlinger

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-18934833114107142542011-10-27T22:09:00.013+11:002011-10-27T23:22:05.733+11:00

As I walked up the stairs in the Melbourne City Library today, I came across an exhibition about the 400th year celebration of the King James version of the Christian Bible.After tomorrow it moves to Brisbane.The first section to draw my attention sat below a poster with a picture of Shakespeare.It claimed this version of the Bible has influenced our modern English language even more than

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-49554674632727919162011-10-04T15:55:00.006+11:002011-10-04T16:43:59.724+11:00

Last week I had a quinsy. Well, I probably didn't have a full-blown case of quinsy, because that would involve 'a severe sore throat', and mine wasn't too bad. Annoying and inconvenient, though.I came across the word quinsy in a book called growing berries and currants, a directory of how to cultivate them successfully. (I love growing berries and I'm excited that my raspberries already have

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-67812758649137815082011-10-03T22:46:00.010+11:002011-10-03T23:34:07.747+11:00

Walking in Darebin Parklands today, my companions and I noticed a crowd of sawfly larvae crawling across the path. I took a photo, but didn't try to get a good one, because it didn't occur to me that I would want to post it here on my word blog...The larvae were clumped together, but not in a ball, as they are often seen. I presume they were more spread out because they were headed across the

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-83695162252682105832011-09-29T19:18:00.005+10:002011-09-29T19:51:18.598+10:00

I was musing about the word apocalypse - as one might do when reading the newspapers, these day - and began to wonder how it's related to the word calypso.It turns out that if I'm thinking about the sea nymph in the "Odyssey," there is a common origin to the two words, but if I'm thinking of the West Indian song, it's not clear how the two words are related.Online Etymology Dictionary says, of

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-50365745391623661222011-09-14T11:32:00.004+10:002011-09-14T12:29:18.414+10:00

After satisfied my curiosity about the origin of the word flamingo, as I played Birdwatching on Luminosity recently, I got to wondering about the word ostrich when I bagged one with my virtual camera. (I can't be certain that playing Lumosity is helping to keep my brain active - I think it is - but it's definitely giving me words to blog about, so that's a win for me.)The online Oxford Dictionary

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-51268780468644549742011-09-11T18:38:00.006+10:002011-09-11T19:54:27.044+10:00

Tonight as I played games on Lumosity, trying to keep my brain active, I scored a point for 'shooting' a flamingo - with a camera.I remembered many years ago seeing a flock of these magnificent birds in Munich Zoo, and I began to wonder about the origin of their name. Flamingo sounds like flaming.The Flamingo Resource Centre says:There are two theories on the derivation of flamingo. The word may

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-36624016568220261462011-09-10T13:06:00.012+10:002011-09-10T14:02:49.596+10:00

Long ago, when people didn't work on Sundays - or didn't dare be seen to work - my mum said if I knitted or sewed on Sunday I would pull it out with my nose in heaven. That didn't make heaven sound too inviting, so maybe I was going to do the pulling out in Purgatory. I can't remember the details. On the other hand, one of her favorite sayings was, 'The better the day, the better the deed', so

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-75285925799701677532011-09-09T19:08:00.004+10:002011-09-09T20:20:45.002+10:00

Today's email from A Word A Day was attaboy! (The focus this week is on interjections, those useful little words or phrases that act as a 'filler' and have no grammatical relationship to the rest of the sentence.)I can't recall the last time I heard anyone use this interjection, but I know it was used in my family when I was growing up. Of couse, I preferred attagirl! seeing I'm female. I suppose

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-31104443749908308762011-08-18T22:38:00.002+10:002011-08-18T23:08:47.517+10:00

therigatha asked me to define supercilious and when I looked at the meanings, I thought at first it should only be used to refer to facial expressions or bodily posture. The online Macquarie dictionary says:adjective haughtily disdainful or contemptuous, as persons, their expression, bearing, etc. [Latin superciliōsus] Dictionary.com says:adjective haughtily disdainful or contemptuous, as a

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-36034907599767768802011-08-16T20:41:00.004+10:002011-08-16T21:05:48.667+10:00

As I was browsing gardening sites to check where I should plant my twenty-one baby asparagus plants, grown from seed last year, I came across a reference to sparrowgrass. I think I prefer that name. It's a folk etymology. It came into English from the Latin form, asparagus, but by the seventeenth century had been shortened to sparagus, after which it was anglicised to sperage. Alongside this

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-3718100485374623662011-08-07T22:36:00.004+10:002011-08-07T22:54:14.518+10:00

When I posted recently about Tennyson's poem 'Break, Break, Break', I referred to 'cold grey stones' in my post title. But I did notice that the word was spelled gray in the poem:Break, break, break, On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!So I started to wonder - as apparently many have before me - whether one spelling is preferred over the other. I thought the British and Australians used grey and

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-32218045124909308252011-07-15T22:05:00.008+10:002011-07-15T22:40:57.032+10:00

I've been in Lorne for a few days, and each time I saw the wintry sea breaking on the stony outcrops I wanted to recall the exact words of Tennyson's poem about loss and sadness.So I looked up my copy of The Norton Anthology of Poetry:Break, break, break, On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!And I would that my tongue could utter The thoughts that arise in me.O, well for the fisherman's boy, That

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-89389749769342988552011-07-08T20:15:00.005+10:002011-07-08T21:04:45.818+10:00

Well, the title of this post is an exaggeration. My life isn't full of adumbration, but there have been two occurrences of it in twenty-four hours, and that's spooky.Yesterday I was reading book called cabbages & kings; the origins of fruit and vegetables, by jonathan roberts. (The title page and cover used lower-case letters, so I thought I'd better do the same in quoting it.) I read the

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-29276737984375576872011-05-30T22:54:00.003+10:002011-05-30T23:16:39.855+10:00

Last night I watched the first episode of the period drama 'Downton Abbey'. Well, actually I watched until the first advertisement irritated me into leaving the room, but I've recorded it and I'll watch the rest tomorrow. I was surprised to find that the pronunciation of the word valet includes the final T. In the modern usage of the word, valet parking, we say the word as if it were a French

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-90888177874855621602011-03-29T18:16:00.003+11:002011-03-29T18:36:22.547+11:00

I visited Lillydale Lake recently. It's odd that this lake is smack in the middle of a township called Lilydale.Apparently there are a few theories as to why the township was originally spelled with the doubled letters. Here's an explanation from OnlyMelbourne:The discovery of gold in the upper Goulburn River and Woods Point areas in the late 1850s caused the formation of a miners' access track.

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-85268135239653931612011-03-01T21:46:00.002+11:002011-03-01T22:04:23.595+11:00

Yesterday I received an email about a word that I love - sitzfleisch. The email came from "A Word A Day", and defines this word as noun:1. The ability to sit through or tolerate something boring.2. The ability to endure or persist in a task. If I were talking about that second concept I would have thought of the old-fashioned sticktoitiveness - which probably isn't too old, actually. And Word A

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-51850707265927240452011-02-24T20:06:00.005+11:002011-02-24T20:39:43.733+11:00

As I waited for the train today, I wandered down to the end of the platform and saw this sign: I didn't feel very exciting, but my hand itched to reach into my handbag, pull out a black texta and add a letter 'c' to that first word. Luckily I didn't have a texta with me.Which got me thinking about a great little book I had at home called 'Lost Consonants'. It has pictures of such gems as 'The

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-15346121060389116502011-02-04T17:30:00.002+11:002011-02-04T17:43:18.693+11:00

Every now and then a new word is so perfect that you wonder why it wasn't invented sooner. For years I've been surreptitiously searching the internet for my own name, sometimes to see whether anyone visits my totally boring home page (they don't), and sometimes to see who has the same name as mine.And now I can come out of the closet with this activity, because once an activity has a name, of

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-92171379053755704402011-01-22T04:49:00.003+11:002011-01-22T05:07:45.944+11:00

I was browsing the site of a writer, The Raven's Eye, and noticed she has self-published one of her short stories. It was only about $2 to buy a copy, so I thought I'd be part of The Long Tail and buy it. Of course, this led to a discussion in our household about how many copies the writer would have to sell in order to 'make a living'. In my opinion, if an author self-publishes online, as long

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-49319555854929191262010-08-17T13:26:00.010+10:002010-08-17T14:35:46.861+10:00

Language change is interesting, so I considered myself lucky to be in Daylesford recently for the Words in Winter festival and able to attend a talk on this topic by Professor Kate Burridge, linguist and radio commentator.She started by showing us the rate of change is not constant. For centuries the norm was rapid change in spoken English. For instance, between the times of Chaucer (fourteenth

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-89987751306683931512010-08-07T21:04:00.003+10:002010-08-07T21:19:01.351+10:00

A friend told me today that the original meaning of the word boudoir is a place where a lady goes to sulk. Seeing my friend is a lover of words, I presumed she had told me the correct etymology.But, of course, I checked online...In the search for confirmation I've come across a fabulous site, Webster's Online Dictionary, where I found not only the meaning, but translation of the word into a range

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-3213601147444147842010-08-03T22:21:00.003+10:002010-08-03T23:01:12.536+10:00

I was watching QI on television just now and Stephen Fry said Charles Dickens coined the word boredom. Many sites on the internet agree that Dickens was the first to use this word in print, in his novel Bleak House, giving as the date 1852, but Language Log says the word was first used in print in 1864.I hadn't realised that Dickens invented words, but of course it's obvious he would have, as all

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-67806762770386821122010-07-30T10:11:00.000+10:002010-07-30T10:13:31.175+10:00

A joke from the weekly Friday Funnies:A little boy walked up to the librarian to check out a bookentitled "COMPREHENSIVE GUIDE FOR MOTHERS."When the librarian asked him if it was for his mother, heanswered 'no.'"Then why are you checking it out?""Because," said the little boy confidently, "I just startedcollecting moths last month!"

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-13883181948354973462010-07-25T18:58:00.005+10:002010-07-25T19:16:00.939+10:00

As I browsed the internet looking for information about my dog's limp, I came across a new word - new to me, that is. The word is anamnesis. From the context I took it to mean the information I would give the vet about my dog's normal behaviour. The online Merriam-Webster gives it two meanings, and dates it from circa 15931 : a recalling to mind : reminiscence2 : a preliminary case history of a

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-55766686808243103482010-07-22T15:58:00.003+10:002010-07-22T16:16:01.853+10:00

The headline in our local paper, the Heidelberg Leader, says Community produce plan flowers. "What in the world does that mean?' was the first reaction of each family member to read it. I think it's clever headline, because it makes you think. At first it appears to be two nouns, an adjective and a verb: Community (noun) produce(verb) plan(adjective) flowers(noun). When it doesn't make sense, you

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-69159029231981909322010-07-06T22:40:00.003+10:002010-07-06T22:49:13.878+10:00

I've come across an article in The Age, an appraisal of the Bebook that looks at its good and bad points. The writer, Adam Turner, basically concludes that it's overpriced, but that it has some useful features. The comments below his article are very helpful, too. I still love my Bebook.

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-6528690180245556422010-07-02T20:18:00.009+10:002010-07-02T21:24:12.473+10:00

After two long years of trying to get my hands on an e-book reader, I've bought a Bebook. Quite impulsively, I must say. I've haunted Dymocks, Borders, Readers' Feast and other shops over the last couple of years and haven't been able to find a person on duty who could actually show me one working. (Oh, I just remembered that in the last couple of weeks Borders has introduced an e-reader and has

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-64971223819473710642010-06-29T20:23:00.003+10:002010-06-29T20:55:45.235+10:00

Crepuscular...I just came across this favorite word in a book about dogs. I've enjoyed the word since reading and loving the hilarious novels of P G Wodehouse about Bertie Wooster, who was crepuscular. (Maybe it was another of Wodehouse's wonderful characters who was crepuscular, but I think it was Bertie Wooster.) I'm chuffed to see that someone else loves this word; it's number 26 on the BBC

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-32329674248590843142010-06-27T22:25:00.003+10:002010-06-27T22:50:06.909+10:00

Since I've been living with a dog I've often thought about some of the things we humans take for granted - for instance our dependence on our sense of sight, our enjoyment of 'good manners', our constant worrying about the future. Dogs don't care about things like that and seem all the happier for it. In Stanley Coren's book, 'How Dogs Think', he says: Plato's contemporary Diogenes, another

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-65538472918734193652010-06-21T17:52:00.006+10:002010-06-21T18:15:11.711+10:00

I've learned a new expression today, and with it a new concept. On ABC Radio's Counterpoint program this afternoon I was listening to three philosophers discuss Enlightenment Values in the Twenty- First Century , and one of the speakers referred to what I thought was a black swan effect. Or maybe he referred to a black swan event. It was immediately apparent that it meant a circumstance that

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-22642085512878736942010-05-26T07:06:00.002+10:002010-05-26T07:06:00.863+10:00

A Great Catchy Name: Semi-Supervised Recognition of Sarcastic Sentences in Online Product Reviews. What an amusing title for a research report on teaching computers to detect sarcasm in written text. Computer scientists at a university in Israel 'taught' an algorithm to recognise sarcasm by showing it about 5,500 sentences from Amazon product reviews that human volunteers said were or were not

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-78665114995232436312010-05-25T17:58:00.005+10:002010-05-25T18:26:17.546+10:00

Reading about the Duchess of York today in The Age newspaper, I had to pause to think about the meaning of one sentence: The man who inveigled the duchess into a long, boozy dinner, the sight of $US40,000 ($A48,000) in fresh notes beside an ashtray, and a bottle of wine afterwards is Mahzer Mahmood, whose elaborate stings have trapped celebrities, royals and crooks. It's a sentence that sets the

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-34999210625576684622010-05-17T19:59:00.006+10:002010-05-17T20:22:10.336+10:00

Mary made a comment on my recent post about the Frying Dragon mistranslation from Chinese. She mentioned a game on the Australian music quiz television program, Spicks and Specks. In the game the lyrics of a song are translated into Japanese using an online web program. Then they're translated back into English and the players have to work out what song it was.I couldn't resist trying it out, of

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-88667347774842860502010-05-15T18:13:00.004+10:002010-05-15T19:31:08.322+10:00

Why is it SO amusing when we read a translation from Chinese that involves the letter 'R' instead of 'L'?I bought a lock recently, and I'll freely admit I purchased it only because the name on the box made me feel happy.Frying dragon. I had visions of a cute little children's story about a lonely dragon who succeeds in becoming Mr Popularity by frying up foods for the local villagers who haven't

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-4640030887614375252010-05-09T22:12:00.004+10:002010-05-09T22:25:35.375+10:00

I’ve read a new word lately. It’s the verb to Milo. Weird. I noticed it on the label of my new tin of this delicious drink.I presume it’s an advertising campaign hoping to cash in on the impact of verbing, the use of a noun as a verb. Some people get upset when language is altered in this way, but it’s just one one of the ways languages change and adapt to modern life. It's often the subject of

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-6849279933820548932010-05-06T22:04:00.008+10:002010-05-06T22:49:53.345+10:00

After enjoying the novel Jack Maggs by Peter Carey, I read a review of it on his website. The review's by Peter Kemp, in the Sunday Times of September 21, 1997 and in part he says:Freakish figures with quirky mannerisms and odd names - Mrs Halfstairs, Captain Constable - lurk in skewwhiff little rooms or down narrow corridors lined with ancient, mildewed ballgowns.Skewwhiff - a word I've used all

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-85712421186384341372010-04-14T23:53:00.003+10:002010-04-15T00:13:05.074+10:00

 Words are, indeed, all around us. There I was, driving along Heidelberg Road and a huge sign caught my attention. Collated screws. What is a collated screw? Wait a minute... If you collate some pages, you join them together. So I wasn't surprised to discover that collated screws are stuck together in a band so they can be used in a screw gun. Here's a photo from flickr. I wish I could post it

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-17950295981194827052010-03-29T22:08:00.003+11:002010-03-29T22:34:49.918+11:00

Papillon Bleu - whose blog I love to visit - asked me recently whether I'd heard the story that the Australian word kangaroo means I don't know in an Aboriginal language.I've heard the story, but it didn't seem likely to be true, so I had a look in a couple of reference books on my shelf. They're general interest books, not specialist books, but they did have some information about this

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-76928423982032523052010-01-22T21:49:00.006+11:002011-09-23T13:31:17.891+10:00

I took a trip on the Smartbus yesterday, pretending to be a tourist in my own city, and it was most enjoyable. A friend and I boarded the bus at Heidelberg and went to Mordialloc, breaking our journey at Chadstone Shopping Centre. When we were sitting on the beach at Mordialloc, enjoying the overcast but warm day, I was struck by the fact that Mordialloc sounds as if it might be an indigenous

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-85759193166516593732010-01-17T12:38:00.005+11:002010-01-17T13:12:47.094+11:00

I've just read on Slavenka and Obi's blog about a new punctuation mark that is available for purchase. As it so succinctly suggests in the name, SarcMark, it's for letting readers know your sentence is sarcastic.It might have been useful when a British woman said, "It's jolly decent of them to let me have a half share of my win,"as a court awarded her only part of the prize in a lottery after the

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-27754958561938446592010-01-11T20:41:00.005+11:002010-01-11T21:01:42.058+11:00

The Poet and the Murderer is the story of a forged Emily Dickinson poem and of the man who made it. The forger, Mark Hofman, was brought up in the Mormon faith, but became disillusioned with what he saw as the hypocrisy of the leaders of his society, and eventually began to forge documents to discredit the whole movement. However, he may not have taken this direction if not for an interest in

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-48746948844981914012009-12-27T21:38:00.004+11:002009-12-28T14:42:28.296+11:00

In The Age newspaper yesterday Ken Nguyen wrote about the perils of quoting from the Simpsons; he sets out a range of possible faux pas, the worst of which is 'to use any of the early seasons' self-consciously manufactured catchphrases' - Eat my shorts, for instance. I won't be likely to make this faux pas, as I don't know any phrases from The Simpsons.Not consciously, that is. But I may be

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-17244610919237573362009-12-25T22:32:00.002+11:002009-12-25T22:45:58.643+11:00

Recently I was thinking about the verb to weed, so I was interested to read a post today on Language Log about verbs that mean removing the thing that is named, for instance to bone a piece of meat, to gut a fish or to string a bean. The post also refers to pitting a cherry and says this is why this type of verb is called a pit verb. I would not use the word pit to refer to the seed in a cherry.

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-3946402034116444392009-12-24T18:36:00.001+11:002009-12-24T18:38:10.884+11:00

On behalf of Penny and myself, I'd like to wish everyone a happy holiday season, no matter what kind of celebrations you have at this midsummer/midwinter season.Best wishes for peace and joy.

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-42843107427400394742009-12-23T13:29:00.013+11:002009-12-23T15:46:46.872+11:00

I used to hate weeding the garden. Now I don't mind, because I think of it as harvesting the weeds.My attitude to this task alters with the use of a different verb. I made this change in my vocabulary, and thus in my thinking, when I read a couple of books by Jackie French: Soil Food and Organic Control of Common Weeds. She believes weeds have a place in our gardens, because they stabilise

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-22395717202900406502009-12-21T21:26:00.003+11:002009-12-21T21:42:33.544+11:00

Last September I wrote that I wondered whether the word hell has a similar origin to the German word for a cave, Höhle.I'm still not sure about that point, but in a book called Word Histories and Mysteries; From Abracadabra to Zeus I read that for the Old English, Hell was a black and fiery place, but for the Old Norse, hell was cold. The Old English meaning came about because the Roman Catholic

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-82291418459975622672009-12-17T17:05:00.024+11:002009-12-17T17:43:38.982+11:00

The Australian Government Style manual, the official arbiter of grammar and punctuation in Australian publications, says of apostrophes:It is increasingly common for the apostrophe to be dropped from the names of other institutions where the plural reference is a human reference - for example, Geologists Conference, Plumbers and Gasfitters Union. In all such cases, the plural word is not strictly

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-26772587637367615852009-12-15T19:46:00.003+11:002009-12-15T20:50:41.570+11:00

Here's a pretty good nother try at photographing the strange additional letter on the sign for Kathryn Street on the Metropolitan Ring Road in Melbourne. Oh, I would so-o like to know who did it and why.

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-53125262699577511542009-12-12T09:54:00.000+11:002009-12-12T09:54:00.606+11:00

There's a sign on the Metropolitan Ring Road in Melbourne's north, originally posted as KATHRYN STREET but altered by some brave, obstinate or foolhardy soul to say KATHRYNE STREET.I say 'foolhardy or brave' because it is on a bridge at a busy part of this multi-lane freeway and I can't visualise how the perpetrator got to the sign to insert the small letter 'E' on the end of the sign, or, more

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-46730826191778549522009-12-11T21:05:00.002+11:002009-12-11T21:30:12.736+11:00

I've just noticed some comma splices in such a prestigious text that I'm now doubting my own ability to spot them. It's in a book called Learning to Dance: Elizabeth Jolley: Her life and Work.As the blurb says, 'Elizabeth Jolley is one of Australia's most significant and best-loved writers'. So, if she's using comma splices they must have a role to play. I noticed them most in a short story

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-56500558425257566182009-12-08T10:38:00.005+11:002009-12-08T11:17:42.207+11:00

I've just read a novel I thoroughly enjoyed. It's called Pastworld. After a while, mainly because of the age of the main characters - 17 - I realised the book was written for young people. It's published by Bloomsbury Children's Books. The idea underlying the plot is gripping - London, in the middle of the twenty-first century, has been bought by a mega-Corporation and turned into a huge theme

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-75579982130290291192009-12-08T10:26:00.002+11:002009-12-08T10:38:09.884+11:00

I'm still on the trail of the new word nother. Recently my sister said, 'That'll weigh a good nother kilo, I reckon'. Okay... now I've heard a different word than whole inserted between an and other. So now I think maybe our brains are processing the expression as one word rather than as a phrase. Maybe it's the word another with an infix in it. When I looked up infix in the Merriam Webster

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-74979805046857854652009-12-05T21:44:00.004+11:002009-12-05T21:55:39.002+11:00

I noticed a sign on the back of a van today. It said, 'Pipe and cable locating'.My first reaction was that it should have said, 'Pipe and cable location', as I think location is the noun that best describes what I presume this company does - scan for pipes before the client excavates.But they used a gerund, a verb form that operates as a noun.On reflection, I think the sign is clever, in that the

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-61019659304940913912009-11-29T15:11:00.003+11:002009-11-29T23:55:37.032+11:00

A great use of two letters of the alphabet to transform a boring road sign into something with a message!

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-55251964570475951012009-11-18T14:42:00.005+11:002009-11-18T14:49:38.231+11:00

I wondered whether the British part of the Oxford University Press has a different Word of the Year from the American English one, unfriend, but I haven't found the answer yet.However, I did find a list of the words that were chosen as most prominent, from 1906 to 2006.I estimate thirty-four of those words are part of my regular vocabulary.

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-36882289064286574242009-11-18T13:44:00.003+11:002009-11-18T14:38:49.447+11:00

The New Oxford American Dictionary has declared that the word of the year for 2009 is the verb unfriend.That seems a sign of the times - unfriending people is a word that “has both currency and potential longevity", according to Christine Lindberg, Senior Lexicographer for the New Oxford American Dictionary. It's a pity the friendships don't also have longevity. I must admit to a cynical attitude

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-11159243767092026752009-11-16T20:19:00.002+11:002009-11-16T20:36:53.417+11:00

Papillon Bleu (whose blog about miniatures and dolls I love reading), has told me that when she was growing up in France, she used the term 'pouce' as a truce term in games. I'll post her comment here so you can read it:We used to say "pouce!"when I was little and we had to put both thumbs up.I don't know if the children in France still use this expression.Google translates this word as

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-67627716106373766242009-11-14T14:53:00.004+11:002009-11-14T15:34:01.710+11:00

There's a story making the rounds of the internet, reporting that a tourism advertising campaign for the city of Riga in Latvia accidentally printed the wrong captions on posters. Instead of saying Riga City: easy to go, hard to leave, it said Riga City: easy to go, hard to live.A rather bad mistake!Here are pictures of the posters. Some seem to have the correct word.Given that more are correct

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-28199805156933794992009-11-11T23:32:00.009+11:002009-11-12T10:12:34.992+11:00

When my dog jumps onto her green mat during a game of chase-her-to-get-the-ball, it's called barley, which in our family means a truce and no-one can grab the ball from her.I got to wondering whether other families use the expression 'barley' in this sense, and found it's not widely used.The Virtual Linguist is collecting examples of the use of this and similar words. A Wikipedia article refers

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-78999635052478953832009-11-01T21:34:00.002+11:002009-11-01T21:50:23.604+11:00

Browsing the internet tonight to check my understanding of the difference between the prefixes hyper and hypo, I've come across an interesting-looking game called MooT.I was thinking how strange it is that we have taken two similar-sounding prefixes from the Greek language and thus set ourselves up for confusion - hyper meaning above, and hypo, meaning under. I always remember that hypo means "

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-79766544079064921972009-11-01T08:00:00.000+11:002009-11-01T08:00:02.958+11:00

Douglas Bader was one of my heroes when I was growing up. I'd almost forgotten his name, but was reminded of him when Richard Stubbs mentioned him recently on his afternoon show on ABC radio 774 Melbourne. Stubbs says this is one word we should all remember - and I agree.The word Bader is a synonym for courage and determination. He lost both legs in a time when disability was seen as a barrier to

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-1655648816620136862009-10-31T12:20:00.003+11:002009-10-31T12:42:50.288+11:00

Today in The Age newspaper Danny Katz referred to a theremin. Actually, he mentioned a Dr Who theremin.I didn't have the least idea what it would be - turns out it's a musical instrument. Aha, so that's how they made that weird sound in the Dr Who theme. Here's a guy having fun trying to play the theremin. Amazingly, you don't touch it to produce the music. The story of the inventor is

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-91146973386167732862009-10-30T20:58:00.004+11:002009-10-30T21:37:52.419+11:00

Today Richard Stubbs on ABC Radio 774 Melbourne talked with Felix Francis, the younger son of Dick Francis, the author of so many horse-racing related thrillers.I've already mentioned that Hackpacker had a cross-posted report from the Edinburgh Book Festival in which it was said that most of Dick Francis' books were ghost-written by his wife.Felix Francis explains the writing of the novels -

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-31886893622538461272009-10-29T19:37:00.003+11:002009-10-29T19:47:12.410+11:00

Still on the track of that elusive new word, nother, I found a trace of it today on the radio, on ABC 774, when Jon Faine, a presenter whom I respect, used it. He was talking to John Alexander, former tennis star, about Alexander's try for preselection in the electorate of Bennelong, and Faine said a particular topic (I forget what) was "a whole nother conversation".As far as I can see, the new

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-11527980032233851632009-10-28T15:12:00.003+11:002009-10-28T15:38:41.827+11:00

I often notice the words stationery and stationary used interchangeably, and wish the writer had been fortunate enough, as I was, to have a teacher explain a useful mnemonic for remembering which is which.(In researching this post, I've come across a fun site called Mnemonic Dictionary where people suggest their own mnemonics for various words.)The trick I was taught for distinguishing between

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-42072910924513904922009-10-24T22:33:00.004+11:002009-10-24T22:48:22.123+11:00

The latest edition of the local paper for the Upper Yarra Valley has an advertisement for a building for sale. I don't expect to learn more about the meaning of words from real estate ads, but I did today. The building in question is a Mechanics Institute. I've seen them all around our own state, Victoria, but didn't realise until I started writing this post that they are part of a world-wide

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-80609832326587611232009-10-23T23:22:00.003+11:002009-10-23T23:30:46.483+11:00

Now that I've acquired the word interstitial as a part of my vocabulary, it's great to have a chance to use it, so I'll link to a Boing Boing post on interstitial writing.The post says, 'Interstitial art is found in the interstices of recognized category and genre.' For eight weeks The Interstitial Arts Foundation will be publishing one short story a week.Hmm... the more times I write this word,

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-8465087525879446742009-10-23T22:34:00.006+11:002009-10-23T22:56:31.210+11:00

As I was listening to a discussion today on the ABC about the future of the Southern Bluefin Tuna, an expert in the area said they might possible go extinct if we don't work out whether we are overfishing this species. I don't say "go extinct". I would normally say become extinct. I was surprised to hear the former phrase used on the ABC, and by an expert. I had noticed the same phrase used in

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-34968215955244468502009-10-07T22:08:00.006+11:002009-10-07T22:41:09.112+11:00

Okay, I couldn't resist heading this post with a feeble pun. Today I read an article in The Age about the launch of a book by Mick Gatto, an autobiography. I think it's interesting that the launch featured three Mick Gattos; Gatto himself; the actor who played him in Underbelly, a recent televison series about gangland warfare in Australia; and, not least, the writer who ghosted the book.The

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-18093421004704668832009-10-05T10:14:00.001+11:002009-10-05T10:14:00.129+11:00

In searching out information about befriend as a verb, I came across a word I hadn't heard before - it's privative. I came across the word in the summary of an article about be- and bi- used as prefixes in verbs of deception, like beguile and betray. There's another word, bewray, meaning to divulge, reveal or betray, but that word's not used nowadays at all.I think the article argues that this

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-37324794313667111692009-10-04T10:03:00.004+11:002009-10-04T10:03:00.381+11:00

I'm still wondering about the difference between the verb befriend and the verb, to friend.I thought I'd have a look at the meaning of the prefix be-.The dictionary on my computer has this entry for be- in the formation of verbs:• all over; all around : bespatter.• thoroughly; excessively : bewilder.2 (added to intransitive verbs) expressing transitive action : bemoan.3 (added to adjectives and

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-57944335042393293392009-10-03T23:11:00.004+10:002009-11-18T14:36:23.920+11:00

I've just noticed a post on LanguageLog Grammarphobia Blog about the verb friend. The post cites a history for the verb friend going back to 1225!I love reading LanguageLog. What a coincidence that it has a post on the very topic I'm interested in right now.

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-10998694739718681842009-10-03T21:50:00.002+10:002009-10-03T22:03:20.210+10:00

I posted about the new word friend, a verb meaning to make friends with someone on Facebook. (I don't think I've seen this word used as a verb on Facebook itself, though.)I was wondering why we don't use the existing word, befriend, but perhaps befriend has too specific a meaning:verb [ trans. ]act as a friend to (someone) by offering help or support.Maybe when we friend someone on Facebook we

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-51451199032399328152009-10-03T21:09:00.004+10:002009-10-03T21:50:06.941+10:00

Chad Taylor wrote an article in The Age newspaper last week about turning his back on Facebook because it no longer serves his needs. He said, I liked it at first. I joined and was quickly “friended” by an ex-colleague… and…I didn’t “friend” strangers or celebrities.It’s a relatively new word, friended, so it seemed logical to me that Chad Taylor would place it in quotation marks. After all, he’

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-26506221850921309482009-09-27T15:16:00.003+10:002009-09-27T15:54:28.786+10:00

It's surprising how often peope accidentally use the word ancestor when they mean descendant.Today an article in The Sunday Age said:During the Cultural Revolution between 1966 and 1976, Confucius - "Kong Fuzi" in Chinese - was reviled as a "stinking corpse" by Chairman Mao, whose Red Guards were ordered to destroy Confucian artefacts and persecute his ancestors as symbols of feudal oppression. I

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-321913080123417612009-09-26T23:22:00.004+10:002009-09-26T23:38:47.987+10:00

I was listening to a report about the amazing discovery of a hoard of Anglo-Saxon metal artifacts, a discovery that will change the way historians view the seventh century. The reporter said the finder was 'doing a spot of metal detect-' and I expected to hear detecting.But she said detectoring.My computer dictionary doesn't like this word detectoring and insists on putting a little red dotted

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-14921520974855698582009-09-25T07:38:00.002+10:002009-09-25T07:40:02.606+10:00

A friend forwarded me this short clip on how mediaeval readers might have coped with changes in the technology of reading.

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-24980745870022621652009-09-23T20:52:00.004+10:002009-09-23T20:55:45.274+10:00

Robyn Williams, on The Science Show, was recently in Britain talking to scientists in Guilford, in Surrey, at The British Festival of Science. He said this festival has been going for about 180 years. I was interested to hear him say it was here that the word scientist was first coined, in 1833.The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy says that William Whewell (1794-1866), who originated the word

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-40474882088440052962009-09-23T20:28:00.003+10:002009-09-23T20:34:04.365+10:00

I've just been laughing out loud at the photos on the "blog" of "unnecessary" quotation marks. It's hilarious.What a money saver it would be if someone told the sign-writers not to waste paint on those unnecessary punctuation marks.I found this great site by following a link from Language Log.

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-7635515076653444862009-09-23T11:42:00.006+10:002009-09-23T16:36:25.477+10:00

Sometimes the origin of a word is so obvious that I wonder why I never thought of it.I'm still reading (and loving) The Link; Uncovering our Earliest Ancestor, as I mentioned on 17 September. Last night I was struck by the simple word graze when I was reading about the important role grass has played in the history of our planet.But grass has always been important to us. The evolutionary rise of

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-89553233920826163912009-09-22T22:28:00.002+10:002009-09-22T22:35:35.450+10:00

I came across a new word today, one I simply have to have, because it says something so economically. It's lagniappe and I saw it at Language Log. It means something thrown in as a free extra. It's pronounced lan-yap and comes from the US, from American French, via American Spanish, from Quechua.Merriam-Webster dates it from 1844I'll be looking for a chance to use it.

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-36340813815607466432009-09-19T21:57:00.005+10:002009-09-19T22:35:43.827+10:00

A research project at LaTrobe university aims to study ways to help people remember faces and names. Since I'm terrible at both of these tasks, I volunteered to take part. In the course of the first interview, one of the strategies mentioned was to make a memorable association with a newly heard name. So, today, when I was trying to memorise the name Morgan (the name of a dog, I might mention), I

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-56239710790288115572009-09-18T21:42:00.004+10:002009-09-18T22:29:17.131+10:00

When I posted about the use of bloody as a highly informal insertion into Australian English words, I didn't know this form of expression is called an infix, until Anonymous commented on the post.Since then I've discovered that this particular infix is a FREE morpheme (smallest unit of meaning) because it can also operate as a stand-alone word - that is, it can move freely within a sentence

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-6951048319745050042009-09-17T13:03:00.005+10:002009-09-17T13:33:51.494+10:00

I'm reading a book about the discovery of the most complete early primate fossil ever found. It's called 'The Link' and it's by Colin Tudge. (If you click on the link - no pun intended - to the book, you'll arrive at a wealth of information about this fossil, and you can download the first chapter.)I'm fascinated by the story of Ida, the young creature who breathed carbon dioxide, died and fell

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-40813855112087836492009-09-16T21:01:00.003+10:002009-09-16T21:19:36.984+10:00

We received a strange brochure in our letterbox today. It's from Australia Post and shows pictures of various computing devices for sale. At the top it says: Part of me staying up to date.Uhhh? There's a picture of a man typing at a computer. I thought maybe his hands are the part of his body staying up to date. Or maybe his brain...And then I wondered if the word 'staying' is a gerund, and not a

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2557954218760161620.post-81817678724696076912009-09-14T20:13:00.006+10:002009-09-14T20:47:24.979+10:00

When I roam around the internet, I come across blogs where the writers are experts on language. I also enjoy looking at ones like mine, where the writers are simply interested amateurs. But I think I enjoy most of all coming across sites where an expert has used language to achieve an effect. By this type of expert, I mean, advertising executives.For instance, here is an interesting discussion of

parlancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11175843064324380048noreply@blogger.com2