Monthly Gleanings
Anatoly answers questions that have come up throughout the month.
A Troubled Marriage Between A Skeptic and an Ascetic, or, The Oddest English Spellings
How did we ever come up with the spelling for scythe? Anatoly looks at the history of conjoined letters “sc”.
When Languages Die: Science and Sentiment
An excerpt from K. David Harrison’s book.
Hippopotomonstrosesquipedalianism!
One question I often field in my capacity as OUP’s editor for American dictionaries is, ‘What’s the longest word in the dictionary?’ I don’t hear it as often as ‘How do I get a new word in the dictionary?’ but it still comes up from time to time. My stock answer isn’t very interesting: ‘It depends…’
Do it Real Quick,
Or The Death of the Adverb
Anatoly Liberman looks at the death of the adverb.
Cheek by jow
English is a language of limitless opportunities. Strange things happen in it. Some words are spelled alike but pronounced differently: ‘bow’ (the bow of a ship) and ‘bow’ (bow and arrows); ‘row’ (she kicked up a row) and ‘row’ (the front row); ‘permit’ (the verb) and ‘permit’ (the noun).
Actually, Like Cures Like (?)
Anatoly Liberman looks at filler words, like and you know.
Between beriberi and very, very:
In Praise of Useful Waste,
Or, Tautological Compounds
By Anatoly Liberman Language is unbelievably redundant. For example, vowels are called vowels because voice (Latin vox; compare Engl. voc-al) is an inalienable part of their production. Yet a word said in a whisper, that is, without the participation of voice, will not be lost. In a language in which the gender, number, and case of […]
Playing Fast and Loose with Meaning in the History of Words
by Anatoly Liberman Language changes because so many people speak it and because even today it is impossible to control the norm. A community of English professors left on a desert island and allowed to breed would probably have preserved their sounds, forms, and vocabulary intact for a million years (if this group survived the […]