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The pure products of America go crazy– mountain folk from Kentucky or the ribbed north end of Jersey with its isolate lakes and valleys, its deaf-mutes, thieves old names and promiscuity between devil-may-care men who have taken to railroading out of sheer lust of adventure– and young slatterns, bathed in filth […]
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!
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 […]
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 […]
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.
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!
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 […]
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 […]
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, […]
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!
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.
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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!
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 […]