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Academic Insights for the Thinking World
As a linguist, I understand that language shifts and changes. The voiced z sound of houses is being replaced by an unvoiced s sound. The abbreviation A.I. has become a verb, as in “He A.I.ed it.” Neologisms abound, tracked by the American Dialect Society, and new words often make us think of things in new ways.
A reader, as I mentioned in one of the most recent posts, called my attention to the 1853 book The Two Babylons by the Reverend Alexander Hislop. The book, which has been reprinted many times since the middle of the nineteenth century and is still easily available, contains an original etymology of the word Yule (and this is why the comment was written)
As promised last week, the topic of this post is the history of the word year. It is hard to tell what hampers etymological discovery more. Consider two situations. If a word is relatively late and has no cognates, language historians are usually lost. This is what happens in dealing with slang and rare (isolated) regional words. For example, someone must have coined dweeb and nerd.
It is almost certain that the main event in the reception in England of the formerly unpronounceable “low” word bloody (which first turned up in texts in 1540 and, consequently, existed in colloquial speech earlier) goes back to 1914, when Eliza Dolittle, the heroine of George Bernard Shaw’s play Pygmalion, uttered it from the stage. Nowadays, when in “public discourse,” the rich hoard of English adjectives has been reduced to the single F-word (at least so in the US), this purism of an age gone by cannot but amuse us.
In August 2024, a special report on ‘ecological medicine’ was published in Psychiatry Online. The authors of the report describe ecological medicine as “the structured and deliberate use of connectedness and interaction with plants, animals, and other species to generate a therapeutic effect for individuals.”
It is almost certain that the main event in the reception in England of the formerly unpronounceable “low” word bloody (which first turned up in texts in 1540 and, consequently, existed in colloquial speech earlier) goes back to 1914, when Eliza Dolittle, the heroine of George Bernard Shaw’s play Pygmalion, uttered it from the stage. Nowadays, when in “public discourse,” the rich hoard of English adjectives has been reduced to the single F-word (at least so in the US), this purism of an age gone by cannot but amuse us.
Every year, Oxford University Press’s trade program publishes 70-100 new books written for the general reader. The vast audience for these trade books comprises everyone from history buffs, popular science nerds, and philosophy enthusiasts pursuing intellectual interests, as well as parents and caregivers seeking crucial advice or support—all readers browsing the aisles of their local bookstore (or the Amazon new releases) for literature that deepens their insight into the world around them.
One of the idiosyncrasies of copy editing that befuddles me involves the word “the”. Should it be capitalized and italicized when one refers to newspaper titles in a piece of writing? The Chicago Manual of Style will tell you no.
It is almost certain that the main event in the reception in England of the formerly unpronounceable “low” word bloody (which first turned up in texts in 1540 and, consequently, existed in colloquial speech earlier) goes back to 1914, when Eliza Dolittle, the heroine of George Bernard Shaw’s play Pygmalion, uttered it from the stage. Nowadays, when in “public discourse,” the rich hoard of English adjectives has been reduced to the single F-word (at least so in the US), this purism of an age gone by cannot but amuse us.
In the decades around 1800—when the European past was (as in the present) the topic of fierce discussion, contestation, and political (ab)use—ideas of Europe were dominated by the shocking events of the French Revolution and its violent aftermath in Europe and beyond. The European order as well as Europe’s place in the world, was destroyed, rebuilt, and redefined at this moment.
It is almost certain that the main event in the reception in England of the formerly unpronounceable “low” word bloody (which first turned up in texts in 1540 and, consequently, existed in colloquial speech earlier) goes back to 1914, when Eliza Dolittle, the heroine of George Bernard Shaw’s play Pygmalion, uttered it from the stage. Nowadays, when in “public discourse,” the rich hoard of English adjectives has been reduced to the single F-word (at least so in the US), this purism of an age gone by cannot but amuse us.
Reading a book on the 1992 chess match between Boris Spassky and Bobby Fischer, I came across this sentence: “Twenty years ago, to the very day, Fischer had swept to victory, to become crowed as the 11th World Champion, against the self-same Spassky, then the Soviet World Champion.”
Assume you know nothing about the First World War, but had heard the name and wish to learn about it. Reasonably, you turn to the latest scholarship on the subject, only to find fundamental differences of view among professional historians.
The blog Oxford Etymologist is resuming its activities. I expected multiple expressions of grief and anxiety at the announcement that I would be away from my desk for a week, but no one seems to have noticed. Anyway, I am back and ready to finish the series on the four cardinal points. Since it is in the west that the sun sets, I relegated this post to the end of my long story.
The blog Oxford Etymologist is resuming its activities. I expected multiple expressions of grief and anxiety at the announcement that I would be away from my desk for a week, but no one seems to have noticed. Anyway, I am back and ready to finish the series on the four cardinal points. Since it is in the west that the sun sets, I relegated this post to the end of my long story.
This year as usual, on either Remembrance Sunday or Armistice Day, many people in the UK will gather at a local war memorial to remember the country’s war dead, those of the two World Wars and other conflicts since 1945.