A few things at a glance
The Oxford Etymologist responds to readers comments on his most recent blog post topics.
Irregular gleanings and a last shot at Modern English usage
The Oxford Etymologist responds to readers comments on his most recent blog post topics.
In praise of phrases
Writers need to love words—the good, the bad, and the irregular. And they need to respect syntax, the patterns that give words their form. But when writers understand the power of phrases, their sentences shine.
An etymological cul-de-sac: the verbs “flaunt” and “flout”
The Oxford Etymologist explores the history and development of the verb “flaunt”, “to display ostentatiously,”
Language history and we, part two (actually, a conclusion)
The Oxford Etymologist considers feminist perspectives of language development, split infinitives, and the pronoun “they” as discussed in Valerie Fridland’s “Like, Literally, Dude: Arguing for the Good in Bad English.”
Exploring language and masculinities in the media landscape
Robert Lawson explores both toxic masculinity and positive masculinity in the media landscape, from Andrew Tate to the television show Brooklyn 99.
Language history and we: the case of “like”
The Oxford Etymologist considers “like” as discussed in Valerie Fridland’s “Like, Literally, Dude: Arguing for the Good in Bad English.”
Etymology gleanings for June 2023
The Oxford Etymologist answers readers’ questions about American English vowels, the word “night”, and “love” in English and Greek.
Dangerous neighbors: “sore” and “sorrow”
Quite naturally, speakers connect words that sound alike. From a strictly scholarly point of view, “sore” and “sorrow” are unrelated, but for centuries, people thought differently, and folk etymology united the two long ago.
Helping verbs are curious, AND fascinating
English has a big bagful of auxiliary verbs. You may know these as helping verbs as they help the main verb express its meaning.
“Lying” in computer-generated texts: hallucinations and omissions
There is huge excitement about ChatGPT and other large generative language models that produce fluent and human-like texts in English and other human languages. But these models have one big drawback, which is that their texts can be factually incorrect (hallucination) and also leave out key information (omission).
Plain as day?
The Oxford Etymologist looks at the origin of the word “day” and its connections across the Indo-European language world.
Real patterns and the structure of language
There’s been a lot of hype recently about the emergence of technologies like ChatGPT and the effects they will have on science and society. Linguists have been especially curious about what highly successful large language models (LLMs) mean for their business.
Confronting bud and buddy
The Oxford Etymologist tackles the convoluted history of “bud” and “buddy” – the final part of the series.
The company we keep, part two: bud(dy)
The Oxford Etymologist tackles the convoluted history of “bud” and “buddy”.
What can Large Language Models offer to linguists?
Does the recent, impressive performance of Large Language Models, such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, have any repercussions for the way in which linguists carry out their work? And what is a Language Model anyway?