Oxford University Press's
Academic Insights for the Thinking World
By Anatoly Liberman It is easy to get used to certain conventions. No characters exist for the initial consonants of the English words shin, chin, and thin, and at an early age we learn that two letters are needed to render them in spelling. In Part 3 of the series “The Oddest English Spellings,” I compared shelf, […]
Ben’s place of the week is Surtsey, Iceland.
OUP talks with author Geneive Abdo about her new book Mecca and Mainstreet.
OUP presents an excerpt from Richard Labunski’s James Madison and the Struggle for the Bill of Rights to celebrate Constitution Day.
It’s Friday so we thought we would lighten things up and give our loyal readers something fun to kick-off the weekend with (not that our other posts aren’t fun!). So today Oxford University Press challenges you to be slothful, to lean back, sink into your couch and to remain there for 48-hours.
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
Some advice for navigating the perils of voting.
This Day in History and the Mexican War.
Only children and foreigners express their surprise when they discover that the verb long does not mean “lengthen” or that belong has nothing to do with longing. When we grow up, we stop noticing how confusing such similarities of form coupled with differences in meaning are.
Totally weird words from Oxford’s word mistress.
Chris Lowney reports on his travels.
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
Cereal commercials, nutritionists, and your mother all agree—breakfast is the most important meal of the day. That’s why Congress has declared September to be "All American Breakfast Month!" That begs the question: what is the all-American breakfast, anyway? The answer to that question has changed over the years. A cowboy in the 1880s may have […]
Richard Posner’s new book and the headlines.
The prevailing wisdom of most African Americanists, is that due to the distinctive history and acculturation of Africans in the British colonies in North America, African-American literature is most meaningfully assessed in the context of multiple geographical, oral, and literary heritages.
On August 23, I appeared on the “Midmorning” show on Minnesota Public Radio. Many of you called in with questions, to some of which I could give immediate answers. But, the origin of several words I did not remember offhand and I promised to look them up in my database. Here are my responses.