Oxford University Press's
Academic Insights for the Thinking World
By Anatoly Liberman
Lunker seems to be well-known in the United States and very little in British English. Mark Twain used lunkhead “blockhead.” Lunker surfaced in books later, but lunkhead must have been preceded by lunk, whatever it meant. In today’s American English, lunker has several unappetizing and gross connotations, and we will let them be: one cannot constantly deal with turd and genitals.
By Anatoly Liberman
For this essay I have to thank Walter Turner, who asked me about the origin of larrup. The verb means “beat, thrash, whip, flog.” Long before my database became available in printed form as A Bibliography of English Etymology, I described in a special post what kind of lexical fish my small-meshed net had caught. (Sorry for the florid style. I remember a dean saying in irritation to one of the speakers at
By Mark Peters
If I had a lemon for every time I heard “When life hands you lemons, make lemonade,” I’d have enough lemons to open a lemons-only Wal-Mart. If I had another lemon for every time I heard a variation like, “When life hands you lemons, run straight home and hide them because the apocalypse is upon us and soon everyone will want them,” I’d have an absolute monopoly on the lemon market, fulfilling my boyhood dreams.
This expression and its variations are everywhere, nowhere more so than on Twitter, the richest source of jokes
By Anatoly Liberman
The best way of finding out whether “the world” is watching you is to err. The moment I deviate from the path of etymological virtue I am rebuffed, and this keeps me on my toes. Even an innocent typo “causes disappointment” (as it should). Walter W. Skeat: “But the dictionary-maker must expect, on the one hand, to be snubbed when he makes a mistake, and on the other, to be neglected when he is right” (1890). Apparently, this blog does not exist in a vacuum, though I would welcome more questions and comments in addition to rebuttals and neglect. Among other things, I noticed that
By Dennis Baron
The USAir emergency exit row seating card reads, “Please contact a USAir Express crewmember if you are not able to read, speak, or understand English.” That’s because the airline won’t let non-English-speaking passengers sit in the emergency exit row, and it requires all passengers who want to sit there to acknowledge that they’re qualified to do so verbally, in English.
By Anatoly Liberman
Habit, in addition to the meaning that is universally known (“settled disposition of mind and body”), can also designate “apparel,” even though in restricted contexts, such as monk’s habit or riding habit. At first sight, these senses do not belong together, and yet they do. The word is, of course, a “loan” from French. (I have mentioned more than once that linguistic loans are permanent, for they are never returned, except when, for example, an ancient Germanic, that is, Franconian word
By Anatoly Liberman
The word beestings once had its day in court. About half a century ago, American linguists were busy discussing whether there is something they called juncture, a boundary signal that supposedly helps people to distinguish ice cream from I scream when they hear such combinations. A special sign (#) was introduced in transcription: /ais#krim/ as opposed to /ai#skrim/. The two crown examples for the existence of juncture in Modern English were nitrate versus night rate and beestings versus bee stings. I remember asking
My favorite poetry form is the sestina. I like them, I think, because they are incredibly difficult to compose and require a fair bit of calculation. This being National Poetry Month, I thought I’d challenge you all to write one.
Not sure what a sestina is?
By Anatoly Liberman
Toasting, a noble art, deserves the attention of all those (etymologists included) who drink for joy, rather than for getting drunk. The origin of the verb to toast “parch,” which has been with us since the end of the 14th century, poses no problems. Old French had toster “roast, grill,” and Italian tostare seems to be an unaltered continuation of the Romance protoform. Tost- is the root of the past participle of Latin torrere (the second conjugation) “parch.” English has the same root in torrid and less obviously
By Anatoly Liberman
Booze is an enigmatic word, but not the way ale, beer and mead are. Those emerged centuries ago, and it does not come as a surprise that we have doubts about their ultimate origin. The noun booze is different: it does not seem to predate the beginning or the 18th century, with the verb booze “to tipple, guzzle” making its way into a written text as early as 1300 (which means that it turned up in everyday speech some time earlier). The riddles connected with booze are two.
By Lisa Shoreland
Despite its reputation for outlandish costumes and outrageous practical jokes, traditional Japanese culture is one of nearly unmatched gravity and obsession with honor. Although tourists can easily learn simple phrases like “Thank you” (arigatō) and “Excuse me” (sumimasen), serious Japanese language learners benefit from understanding the history of the nation’s shame culture.
‘Politics feeds your vanity and starves your self-respect,’ according to the journalist Matthew Parris. In the video below, filmed by George Miller, Antony Jay discusses what makes a good political quotation.
By Mark Peters
Some people and characters are forever associated with a word. I dare you to say refudiate, malaise, nanu-nanu, despicable, winning, and meep without thinking of Sarah Palin, Jimmy Carter, Mork, Daffy Duck, Charlie Sheen, and the Road Runner (or Beaker).
Without a doubt, the poster boy for varmint is Yosemite Sam, the rootin’-tootin’, razzin’-frazzin’ cowboy who
Question: How large is an average fluent speaker’s vocabulary?
Answer: I have often heard this question, including its variant: “Is it true that English contains more words than any other (European) language?” The problem is that “an average fluent speaker” does not exist. Also, it is important to distinguish between how many words we recognize (our so-called passive vocabulary) and how many we use in everyday communication (active vocabulary).
Yesterday I was sitting at my desk, pondering…normal things that bloggers ponder…when my friend Cassie shared this link with me. If you haven’t seen the “Friday” music video, then perhaps the forecast just seems silly, but it inspired me to think about how fast the senses and connotations of words change. For most people, Friday is just the name of a day of the week, but for the moment it’s also the source of many inside jokes and references to Rebecca Black.
There is a lot of mystery behind the Oxford English Dictionary, but I can tell you for sure that it is not compiled in a Gringotts-style castle, all the word slips hidden in secret stone wall compartments, with a team of bearded, vitamin D-deficient lexicographers hunched over great dusty volumes. Today, the OED team is releasing new batch of updates, so I thought I’d share some videos that shed light into the revision process.