A funny piece in The New Yorker by Jay Martel suggests a new lexicon for the pandemic, including the body mullet worn on Zoom calls (“Business up top, party down below”), and new names for days of the week to reflect the way they all...
Everyone knows you don’t start a sentence with but. But why? Also, how voice recognition technology is changing the way we think and write and what English sounds like to foreigners. Plus, where cockamamie comes from, oddly translated movie...
Ben Zimmer published a brilliant collection of internet memes from the past twenty years in a the journal American Speech. Memes like facepalming and the O, rly? owl have allowed us to communicate otherwise unwritable sentiments via the internet...
Martha and Grant offer gift recommendations for language lovers: Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages, by Guy Deutscher. OK: The Improbable Story of America’s Greatest Word, by Allan Metcalf. Lost in...
scrotology n.— «He takes a dim view of the film’s “scatology and scrotology”-based humor, saying that it’s not that Apatow’s characters “have to talk dirty; it’s their only lexicon.”» —“Peter Bart: Variety’s...
lazylancing
n.— «Lazylancing is when you subsidize your travel with freelance work.» —“Recession Lexicon: Lazylancing” by Sara Clemence Recessionwire Aug. 5, 2009. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)