Monthly gleanings for January 2014
By Anatoly Liberman
Reference works: I received three questions.
(1) Our correspondent would like to buy a good etymological dictionary of English. Which one can be recommended?
Getting back in Blackstone’s game
By Steve Sheppard
In a recent post on Volokh Conspiracy, George Washington University law professor Orin Kerr writes that we have passed the “Golden Age of Treatises.” Considering an obituary of a law professor who had written a law treatise, Securities Regulation, Kerr observed how its author, Louis Loss, had been seen as giving shape and direction to a whole field of law.
Celebrate National Trivia Day with Oxford trivia
Today, Saturday the 4th of January, is National Trivia Day. We may employ a few competitive pub quiz champs in our offices, so we gathered together a few trivia questions from our resources to play a game. Why not bring these puzzlers to your next Trivia Night and let us know how it goes?
Preparing for AALS 2014
By Sinead O’Connor
As 2013 draws to a close, we take the time to ask ourselves, “What does the coming year hold?” At this year’s Annual Meeting, the Association of American Law Schools asks attendees a similar question, “What does the future hold for legal education?”
Gray matter, part 2, or, going to the dogs again
By Anatoly Liberman
I am returning to greyhound, a word whose origin has been discussed with rare dedication and relatively meager results. The component –hound is the generic word for “dog” everywhere in Germanic, except English. I am aware of only one attempt to identify –hound with hunter (so in in the 1688 dictionary by Rúnolfur Jónsson).
Three reasons why we’re drawn to faces in film
If we were to measure looking time (for instance, with an eye-tracking device), we would probably find that most people would scan all the pictures, but focus mostly on the frames with the faces. Even though the exterior shots and full-figure frames are more complex and colorful, our gaze would tend to fix on the faces.
An uncertain future: Human, plant, and animal survival in the Arctic
By R.M.M. Crawford
The Arctic is changing. How it will change is uncertain. In contemplating the future in the far north a distinction has to be made between the maritime and the terrestrial Arctic. The Arctic Ocean is a relatively monotonous region, whether it be frozen or unfrozen.
‘Paul Pry’ at midnight
By Simon Eliot
Until the 1840s time in Oxford, and therefore at the University Press, was five minutes behind that of London. With no uniform national time until the coming of the railways and the telegraph, the sealed clocks carried by mail coaches would have to be adjusted to Oxford or London time as they were shuttled between the two cities.
Tatiana Shchepkina-Kupernik, Anton Chekhov, and Moscow Tales
By Sasha Dugdale
Tatiana Shchepkina-Kupernik was a friend of the Chekhov family and a frequent visitor to Melikhovo, Anton Chekhov’s house just outside Moscow.
Is it a dog’s world?
By Steven Heine
Like a number of other traditional East Asian cultural phenomenon, such as kabuki, kimono, kimchee, and kung fu—just sticking to terms that start with the letter “k”—the koan as the main form of literature in Zen Buddhist monastic training has been widely disseminated and popularized in modern American society.
Solomon Northup’s 12 Years a Slave, slave narratives, and the American public
By Mitch Kachun
Like many scholars who study nineteenth century African American history and literature, I am excited by the attention surrounding the newly released film, 12 Years a Slave, based on the experiences of Solomon Northup, a free black man from New York who was kidnapped in 1841 and sold into slavery.
Journalism: journey to an uncertain destination?
By Ian Hargreaves
Returning to any book script created a decade ago involves lexical shock. When the subject is journalism and the decade the one just gone, the effect is more that of lexical implosion.
What about Henry Hudson?
By Roger M. McCoy
Henry Hudson envisioned that he would be the first explorer to find the elusive western passage through North America to the Orient. He persisted in this westward looking vision although his financier, the Dutch East India Company, insisted that he search eastward through the ice-bound sea north of Russia. Hudson had previously tried this northeastern route as well as a northerly route directly over the North Pole. Both had failed due to impassable ice.
The trouble with Libor
By Richard S. Grossman
The public has been so fatigued by the flood of appalling economic news during the past five years that it can be excused for ignoring a scandal involving an interest rate that most people have never heard of. In fact, the Libor scandal is potentially a bigger threat to capitalism than the stories that have dominated the financial headlines.
Alphabet soup, part 1: V and Z
By Anatoly Liberman
It is common knowledge that an average page of an English dictionary contains at least twice as many borrowed as native words, even though come, go, see, sit, stand, do, make, man, woman, in, on, and other similar heavy duty words go back to Old English.
Foolish, but no fool: Boris Johnson and the art of politics
By Matthew Flinders
It would be too easy – and also quite mistaken – to define Boris Johnson as little more than the clown of British politics; more accurate to define him as a deceptively polished and calculating über-politician.