Unabridged: some thoughts on a new book about dictionaries and words
Unabridged refers to the title of Webster’s great dictionary. The author of the book, published by Grove Atlantic Monthly Press (New York) in October 2025, is Stefan Fatsis.
An etymological hamburger
My thanks are to Keith Ritchie, who in his comment on the previous post noted that in Scotland, trousers are still called breeches. Unintentionally, today’s word also begins with the letter b, as the italicized part of the title indicates, but it has nothing to do with clothes.
Implicit negation is easy to miss
One of the odder bits of language use is the phenomenon of overnegation, or misnegation.
Endless trouble with breeches
The trouble begins with the pronunciation of the word breeches. Why does breeches (seemingly so, in the US) often rhyme with riches, rather than reaches?
Americana: enter hillbilly. Moby Dick follows
This is a continuation of the previous post, devoted to all kinds of country bumpkins. Hillbilly looks like the most uninspiring word to discuss: it is so obviously made up of hill + billy.
Hobnobbing with a hillbilly
It is unimaginable how many denigrating names people have invented for our breadwinners and shepherds! Those names were, I assume, coined by city dwellers who did not want to soil their hands with earth and manure.
A tortuous journey: the word pamphlet
In English, pamphlet is synonymous with booklet, brochure, but in some other modern European languages, a pamphlet makes one rather think of its synonym lampoon.
Bob Turvey, a student of limericks
I have recently read two books by Bob Turvey: The Secret Life of Limericks (Ithaca, NY, 2024. 286 pp.), and Why Are Limericks Called Limericks: An Etymological Detective Story (Bristol, England: Waldegrave Publishing, 2025. 295 pp.).
This old house and these old houses
Book reviews, like books themselves, come in all shapes and sizes. There are the sometimes inflated rah-rahs on Amazon or Goodreads, or short reviews in Kirkus, Publisher’s Weekly, and Choice.
Labor and luck in etymology
The blog is back on track, and I’ll begin where I left off in August. I am now reading two books on the history and etymology of limerick by Mr. Bob Turvey.
The rule of three
I’ve been reading S. Jay Keyser’s fascinating book Play It Again Sam, which (despite its waggish title) is a serious and insightful study of the role of repetition in the verbal, musical, and visual arts.
On reading reviews
Book reviews, like books themselves, come in all shapes and sizes. There are the sometimes inflated rah-rahs on Amazon or Goodreads, or short reviews in Kirkus, Publisher’s Weekly, and Choice.
Unexpected words
When I read slowly, I’m a somewhat easily distracted reader. I might ponder an idea, puzzle at a phrasing, or admire elegance and style. Sometimes, though, it is unexpected words that cause me to stop and wonder about their origins.
“I’m good”
The word good does a lot of work in English. Aside from its garden-variety sense (as in “good game” or “good job” or “good dog”), we find the word has a number of extended uses.
Symbol swearing with the Grawlix
I miss a lot of things about the decline of paper newspapers, especially the comic strips. The comics were verbal humor with pictures and recurring characters, and the language of the comics provided a window into how spoken language was represented in print.
Let’s stop talking about conspiracy “theories”
A few years ago, I taught an undergraduate course on “Cons, Cults, and Conspiracies Theories,” exploring the connections and parallels among those phenomena.