Serial Blogging: “Copycat” – Part 6
This Friday on Serial Blogging, we’re proud to present the finale of Jeffery Deaver‘s “Copycat,” which was first published in A New Omnibus of Crime. Read from the beginning of the story by clicking here!
Erin McKean, lexicographer and blogger
It really wasn’t cool to keep this from you. Sorry! Erin McKean, Editor-in-Chief of Oxford’s American Dictionary program and one of our favorite people, is blogging this week at Powells.com. Read Erin’s posts HERE! P.S. – Powell’s is this blog’s newest partner – check out the new 7.5% discount for OUP Blog readers! We promise […]
Questions for Eviatar Zerubavel
Eviatar Zerubavel has been writing for years about the hidden, and often unquestioned, patterns in everyday life, like the seven day week and collective memory. In his latest book Elephant in the Room: The Social Organization of Silence and Denial he tackles the “conspiracies of silence” that lead to “open secrets” among families, companies and […]
Unsung Heroes of Etymology
By Anatoly Liberman
Those who look up the origin of a word in a dictionary are rarely interested in the sources of the information they find there. Nor do they realize how debatable most of this information is. Yet serious research stands behind even the controversial statements in a modern etymological dictionary.
Serial Blogging: “Copycat” – Part 5
This week in Serial Blogging – part five of Jeffery Deaver‘s “Copycat,” which was first published in A New Omnibus of Crime. Read from the beginning of the story by clicking here!
The Oddest English Spellings,
Or, the Unhealing Wounds of Tradition (Part 1)
by Anatoly Liberman Once out of school, we stop noticing the vagaries of English spelling and resign ourselves to the fact that rite, right, Wright (or wright in playwright), and write are homophones without being homographs. In most cases such words sounded different in the past, then changed their pronunciation, but retained their spelling. Such […]
What is “American” in American art?
Thoughts on the Whitney Biennial
by Barbara Novak The Whitney Biennial has been notably challenged lately for including European artists in a show at a Museum of American Art. But such critiques misunderstand the nature of the question “What is American in American Art?” “American” is not a nationally distilled “ingredient” injected into our art by virtue of birth or […]
Song of Myself, I, II, VI & LI
by Walt Whitman
I I Celebrate myself, and sing myself, And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. I loafe and invite my soul, I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass. My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, […]
Jeffery Deaver’s “Copycat” – Part 4
This week in Serial Blogging – part four of Jeffery Deaver‘s “Copycat,” which was first published in A New Omnibus of Crime. Read from the beginning of the story by clicking here!
Monthly Etymology Gleanings for March 2006
This blog column has existed for a month. It was launched with the idea that it would attract questions and comments. If this happens, at the end of each month the rubric “Monthly Gleanings” will appear. Although in March I have not been swamped with the mail, there is enough for a full post. Also, one question was asked privately, but in connection with the blog, so that I think I may answer it here.
Brown vs. Baigent
Bart Ehrman weighed in today on the ‘Da Vinci Code lawsuit’ brought by Holy Blood, Holy Grail author Michael Baigent. You know, the brou-ha-ha that has been grabbing headlines for the last few weeks. Ehrman proposes it is much ado about nothing. From the Reuters article: [Ehrman] dismisses the more controversial theories put forward by […]
Why Dubai’s Geography Matters
By Harm de Blij The debate over the prospective takeover of several U.S. port operations by a company based on the Arabian Peninsula is over. Both sides marshaled powerful arguments. Proponents favored rewarding a progressive, modernizing Arab ally in the struggle against terrorism. Opponents cited dangers of infiltration and security risks. The opponents prevailed. President […]
A Democratic Agenda
As The New York Times reported yesterday, Jacob Hacker presented his view that middle-class families face “a harsh new world of economic insecurity” to former Democratic Vice Presidential candidate John Edwards last week. Edwards, who did pretty well in the 2004 race by talking about “two Americas,” one for the rich and one for the […]
Serial Blogging: “Copycat” – Part 3
This week in Serial Blogging – part three of Jeffery Deaver‘s “Copycat,” which was first published in A New Omnibus of Crime. Read from the beginning of the story by clicking here!
Pre-Word History,
Or, Does the Buck Stop Here?
by Anatoly Liberman Modern English is swamped with words borrowed from other languages. One does not have to be a specialist to notice the presence of the Romance element in it or to guess that samovar has come from Russian and samurai, from Japanese. It is the details that, as usual, pose problems. Not only […]
Ew-La-La
Witold Rybczynski, the architecture columnist at Slate.com and Oxford author, noted in a column yesterday a disturbing trend towards “conspicuous architecture” in very exclusive zip codes. On a recent trip to Palm Beach, FL, Rybczynski was shocked to find its posh beachfront filled with “some of the least graceful buildings [he’d] seen in a long […]