Dictionaries
Wednesday Jan 19th, 2011
On nuts, spoons, and the metaphors borrowed from sex & food
Last week I mentioned the idiom to be (dead) nuts on ‘to be in love with’ and the verb spoon ‘to make love’ and promised to say something about both. After such a promise our readers must have spent the middle of January in awful suspense. So here goes. The semantic range of many slang words is often broad, but the multitude of senses attested for Engl. <... read more »
Thursday Feb 9th, 2012
Denim venom: future products in the style of jweats
Word blends are the bunnies of language: they breed like motherfathers.
Wednesday Feb 8th, 2012
Odd man out, a militant Gepid, and other etymological oddities
The odd history of the word odd.
Wednesday Feb 1st, 2012
The deep roots of gaiety
The question about the origin of gay “homosexual” has been asked and answered many times.
